Valkip shook his head. “Get back in the wagon, Brela.”
“Don’t do it, Bre,” Elias shouted, silenced only as Valkip brought the sword closer to his neck.
The captain growled and repeated himself. “Get back in the wagon, Brela.”
His eyes darted to Farrah’s movement, faster than Brela expected the woman to call her ice magic after the lightning that still twitched her own muscles.
It was enough for Elias to duck under the sparking sword at his neck, diving toward Farrah, but the captain responded in kind. Fire erupted in a ring around her friends, separating them from Brela as lightning sparked the ground at her feet, forcing her to step back.
Still, her grin widened as the captain’s face paled. To his right, the prince was encased in thick ice, his muffled banging doing nothing to break his cage. Farrah’s hands danced like a shadow behind the tall flames, keeping the prince trapped while keeping the fire controlled with water.
Brela’s eyes narrowed on Night Carver. “Time for a fair fight, Valkip. The Veil Scholar’s dagger belongs to me.”
Valkip’s eyes shifted between the fire that Farrah was dousing and the prince, the ice shrinking around him.
“Do it,” she taunted, keeping his attention away from Farrah as the woman struggled to hold two magic attacks. “Stretch your magic thin, fire breather. Or, you give me Night Carver and we each walk away without killing each other.”
Valkip shook his head. “Let him go and I’ll let your friends go. You stay.”
“I’m leaving with them,” she snapped, jerking her chin to the dagger. “And Night Carver is coming with me.”
The captain just grinned as fire burned hotter.
Four hells, the bastard was digging into his reserves.
“Go!” Brela screamed.
Farrah was smart enough to listen, releasing her hold on the ice around the prince. His prison became water, dumping down and crashing back toward the flames holding Farrah and Elias prisoner. It wrapped around the ring of fire, extinguishing the flames in a whirlpool. But instead of letting it go, Farrah curved it into a wall of ice, stretching to separate Brela from the prince and Valkip.
“No!”
Brela leapt over the ice before it could cut her off, barreling toward Valkip. She didn’t care about the sword he’d lit with lightning. Didn’t care that he was swinging it toward her legs in an attempt to stun her. To keep her alive.
“STOP!”
Serill’s roar had both Valkip and Brela stopped dead in their tracks, eyes wide as they stared each other down. The captain growled, Brela’s own teeth bared in a snarl, but it was a stare down she knew she’d win. She’d challenged a celvusa for the dagger before. Facing fire and lightning was nothing.
“Four hells.”
It was Farrah’s cracked whisper that had both of them breaking their glares. They turned and followed her gaze, to where Serill was pointing over a grassy knoll barely visible by moonlight.
And the twenty or so raiders that were sprinting toward their position.
“Fuck,” Brela hissed.
* * *
The gods-damned Wraturo,raiders who roamed the lands around the Boneguard labor camp. The deadliest non-gods-blessed creatures on this continent, and the biggest deterrent for anyone at the labor camps who thought to escape. The Wraturo traded their teeth for iron spikes and molded their bodies into weapons—often by literally molding the iron to their bodies.
Cason thought that Brela saying she’d carve him up and stake his body parts across the five kingdoms was terrifying.
The Wraturo wouldwearhis skin if given the chance.
Why in four hells were they this close to the river?
“How many?” Brela’s voice actually startled him. He’d forgotten she was standing there.
“Twenty-three,” Cason whispered.
