“I’m not leaving you,”Leon says, his gray eyes boring into mine.“This is war, Ana. He’s already dead. And he died doing his job. Now we have to do ours.”
I watch, helpless, as the guard closes his eyes and tumbles backward off his saddle, hitting the forest floor. We’re moving so fast, he’s gone in an instant, his horse veering off into the trees. My guards close in to fill the gap where he once was.
I swallow. Leon’s right. We have a mission here, and that’s to reach Caledon before he finds the cup. I lock in, focusing on trying to stop any more of my guards from falling foul of the cleavers’ attacks. I scorch one in the shoulder before they can swing their blade, yanking the weapon from their hand with my orbital magic and spinning it over our heads, landing it in the back of another.
We press on as the cleavers give way to soldiers in red uniforms and clerics in crimson robes. We’re moving deeper into enemy territory, and I can see wagons nestled among the trees now, guarded by soldiers. There’s half a dozen, each with a big box-shaped structure on the back of them, but they’re shrouded in cloth. As I try to make sense of them, the cloth shudders, like whatever’s hidden underneath is alive.
“What are those?” I shout out to my guards.
“I don’t know, but I don’t like the look of them,” Drisha bellows back.
Leon’s voice sounds in my mind.“One of Harman’s men is here. He wants to speak to us.”
I look over my shoulder to see a rebel riding up. I’ve met him before in Tread—I think his name is Peler. He’s young, a geostri with a knack for communicating with amphibians. Useful when you need spies in a dense, damp forest.
“Your Majesty,” he calls. “My scouts have seen him—Caledon—he’s a mile ahead of here with the bearers. Northeast.”
I nod and hold up my hand to show him I’ve gotten the message.
Captain Drisha is already pivoting, redirecting us toward Caledon. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the Temple’s soldiers climbing onto the wagons and pulling at the cloth covering whatever sits beneath. I know I should be focusing on the fight immediately around me, but the sight fills my gut with an intense dread I can’t explain. I watch the nearest one, ten feet from us, as the black fabric falls to the ground. Underneath it is a cage, and it’s filled with…people?
No. Not people. Not anymore.
The soldiers pull the cage doors open, and a horde of the ruined claw their way out.
Chapter 30
Morgana
The ruined stretch out their gray limbs, the wounds they’ve gouged into their own rotten flesh gaping as they scrabble over the sides of the wagon. One swings her head around toward a cleric, an eye bulging from one socket, the other an empty, oozing hole. The cleric lifts his hands to cast, but he’s too slow. She grabs hold of him with clawlike hands and starts to rip at his face, her teeth bared in feral rage.
The ruined do not discriminate. Everyone is their enemy. Everyone is their prey. They spread out, sprinting after those who flee from them like they’re possessed. They attack our soldiersandthe Temple’s, leaving nothing but mangled bodies and terrified chaos in their wake. Across the forest, inhuman shrieks tell us more have been let loose.
It’s easy for me to find the darkness this time. All I have to do is look into the ruined’s rotten faces and see that darkness reflected back at me. Whoever these people were, they’ve already been lost to ephilin—the drug that offers a crazed, painless state of oblivion to the mind even as the body is destroyed piece by piece.
What I’m doing now is showing them mercy.
As I reach out for the inner spark of the ruined nearest me, I find its light is ashy and trembling, like it’s being doused in water. I snuff it out, and the ruined drops softly to the grass, dead, as easily as if we’ve both released a breath.
I turn my attention to the next, killing one before it can strangle a cleric, snuffing out the life of another as they sink their teeth into the leg of a terrified Trovian soldier. Again and again I strike, trying to take out every ruined I can see, saving not just their victims but also them from themselves.
So this is why the ruined were removed from Hallowbane, why Sophos said that people have been going missing from Godom. Caledon’s not just been rounding them up—he’s beenmakingthem, feeding people ephilin to create these monsters all so he can release them on us at the opportune moment.
He doesn’t care that they’re tearing his own forces apart as much as ours. Anything to buy himself the time he needs to reach the last artifact, to finally combine the tokens.
“Ana,”Leon shouts to me across the mooring.“We need to get out of here.”
Only now do I realize my hearing is gone, and darkness is creeping across my vision. Killing the ruined doesn’t take much, but I must’ve snuffed out forty celestial flames in five minutes, and it’s taking its toll.
Leon shouts something to Captain Drisha, and then the captain’s grabbing hold of my reins, forcing my horse to gallop alongside his as we push deeper into the forest. I look behind me and see that the Trovian soldiers are starting to rally. But there’s still so many rotting, drug-crazed souls sprinting across the forest floor.
“Help them,”I call to Leon across the mooring. Though my vision is still blurry, I manage to meet his gaze before looking past him to the Trovian soldiers. He understands. A few more minutes of our help, and they should have the upper hand again, but right now it’s still touch and go.
“Okay,”Leon agrees.“I’ll catch up to you soon.”
He knows I have to keep going with my guard. We have to find Caledon. I watch him jump from his horse, swinging his blade as he charges into the battle. After a few minutes of us galloping through the forest, my hearing starts to return, and my vision clears at the same time as I recall what I’d realized as I was wiping out the swarm of ruined.
“That was the final distraction,” I yell to the guards over the sound of the trees, which are still creaking angrily—though, thankfully, none have attacked. I wonder now if so much violence taking place on its ground makes the Miravow reluctant to shed more blood.
