Anassa chimes in, “I have never heard of this before. But perhaps it is knowledge lost to the Sturmfrost Queens of old and their wolves’ mates?”
I file that away to think more about later, when we aren’t in the middle of a war front.
Everything around us is calm in its horror: mangled bodies. Pools of blood and smashed heads. Metal armor split open and flattened. Broken tentpoles, ripped fabric, and scattered weapons dropped by destroyed hands.
“Guess our theory was right,” Stark observes.“Crushing their skulls completely works just as well as decapitation.”
I let out a choked laugh, the unreality of it all overwhelming.
A few survivors from a distant part of the Siphons’ camp are moving now, assembling. They’re far off, and I squint to try to make out what’s happening.
“They’re regrouping,” I tell Stark.“There’s a force off to the left that’s forming up, more organized this time—”
“I see them,” he cuts me off.“Do you think you can summon the shadows once more when they get close? Do you think we can do—that—again?”
My mind is still numb from the effort, but I set my jaw and focus inward, finding that anger at my core andpullingat the shadows again.
Everything in me strains. It’s as if they are reluctant, or maybe my call just isn’t as strong in my exhaustion.
Finally, that pool of darkness awakens. The shadows start to gather, streaming in slowly, and I grind my teeth, using everything in me to focus my control—
“Meryn,” Anassa’s voice interrupts my focus, and the shadows drop, dispersing back into the landscape around us.
“What is it?”
“They’re retreating.”
Stark and I watch in confusion as the group we spotted movesawayfrom us.
I’m keenly glad: My body is a wrung-out rag. Calling that power again made me feel as if I would burn into ash.
It doesn’t make sense, though. Yes, we wiped out dozens of the enemy, maybe even hundreds. But the fighting force here was at least thousands strong, from what our intelligence gathered. They wouldn’t just give up, would they?
“Something isn’t right,” I tell Anassa. She agrees.
More Siphons emerge from other distant parts of the camp, but none approaches us. Instead, they move off toward the larger group, away from us.
I know better than to see weakness where there is none. It’smytrick.
There’s eerie silence. It lurks in the battle smog, heavy and intrusive. I curl my lip and stare at the retreating line, trying to make out what they’re doing, what’s happening.
Then they part, flowing like water.
And I see it flickering there, traveling down a wide row between distant camp tents.
A white flag waves against the pink-gray sunrise and the crimson-drenched encampment.
A flag of peace.
Immediately, my insides writhe and warp with anger. Cratos and Stark move closer, and I notice absently that Cratos’s fur is wet with blood. Stark is just as filthy as his wolf. There’s a spill of blood down his neck, as if he suffered a deep cut near his ear that Cratos quickly healed.
“This could be a trap. You can’t trust it,” he says sternly.
My lips twitch upward. “I know that.”
He looks surprised, then relieved, then amused. All this in subtle twitches I’m somehow able to read.
He’s right, anyway. It’s likely a trap—every bruised and wearied part of me screams it is—but we’re ready to face it together. And if this grants me crucial time to regain my energy, prepare for another blast of magic, so much the better.
