I throw a startled look up at the general, and while I don’t see her, I realise I don’t hear her either.
The speech is over.
I stagger at Samick’s heels as he weaves through the unit.
The awkwardness of it—brushed up against the wall, the moving warriors shifting on my other side, the outstretch of my arm as he keeps my wrist firm in his fist—means my steps are scuttled.
We move slow.
Congestion. Warrior traffic.
Takes me a moment to realise that there’s order to this.
We’ve passed the first staircase, the one that leads up to a metal balcony overlooking the row of gated cells, when I figure out the movements of the warriors.
Some are gathering wounded and taking them down to the makeshift triage at the far end of the corridor. Others are pushing their way through the crowd to find the humans peppered around, the guards just as strewn about, and I wonder what happened to separate them all.
A few fae are splintering off for the cells.
Samick has the same idea.
Fist tightening on my wrist, he tugs away from the wall—and takes me into the thick of it.
My boots scuff over the stained floor.
A path parts for him.
Warriors must feel his frosty presence just as I do, because without even looking over their shoulders at Samick, they step aside and lean away and push back into others.
We slip through the crowd effortlessly, all the way down to the second length of the cellblock.
So much is happening around me that my attention is pulled in every direction.
The steeds clop and huff back at the entrance, guards hunt down the humans lost in the crowd, warriors are shouldering their way to the walls and the cells as if to escape how claustrophobic it is in here.
Only a few warriors climb the rattling metal staircases, either to the with the overlooking balcony, or one that ends with a metal door that’s bolted shut.
The second party aren’t escaping the crowd.
Weapons drawn, the deputy leads them to the metal door.
I crane my neck to watch as he throws the first kick at it, then the second—but it only gives on the third kick.
The warriors rush into the darkness beyond the door.
Then it’s all out of sight.
Samick drags me down the cellblock, close to the grey wall ending it. At that wall, there’s a queue of wounded growing from the mouth of the very last cell.
I scan the faces, bloodied and battered, but I don’t see Mika or Arwyn among them. Might already be in the cell.
The healer must already be in there, setting up a triage.
It’s strange that hail can cause so much damage to them. The hail must’ve been the size of basketballs to beat them up this bad.
The injured faces are taken from me as we reach the fourth cell from the final wall—
And Samick yanks me into it.
