Hundreds of people suddenly appearing with the same tattoo. The same call. Thousands, really, but the Warlord didn’t need to know that.
And when screamed decrees and flashes of skin melded into a crescendo of voices and movement and shirking caravan members, making room, elbowing away, trying not to be muddled together with those who would dare be part of this coordinated trickery, the Warlord finally realized that this was not a stunt.
It was an attack.
“Don’t stand there! Get them!” she yelled to no one and yet everyone all at once.
And that’s when all hell broke loose.
CHAPTER49
HEARTin her windpipe, Amarande could not recall her last breath.
The complete disbelief of Luca calling out to the Warlord—revealing himself, revealing the tattoo—had flamed out, replaced by the complete disbelief that he’d done such a thing and wasstill breathing.
At the Warlord’s order, the entire churning mass moved to chaos, but the dictator’s followers were already a step too slow. Her voice still echoing against the distant mountains, sleeping darts shot through the air.
Not from her side, but the resistance.
Lodging themselves into soft spots of anyone drawing a blade or cuffing their own dart pipe to their lips. Men and women dropped as smoothly as the one Koldo had killed at her back, but no blood shed.
This was exactly how she went down for the man with the black wolf—so very quick. The opposition immediately nulled the Warlord’s swiftest power, simply by having the distraction and wherewithal to strike first.
Make the first mark.
Indeed they did.
Amarande pressed herself against the fireside cell bars, searching for Luca. Where he’d been standing was now a swarm of bodies, churning and moving. It was the chaos of the wedding after she’d killed Renard, but literally a thousand times more frantic. Families raced for the paths leading away from the fire pit, spokes on a wheel, and suddenly just as clogged as they were in the minutes before the lighting ceremony began.
When she’d met her first set of bandits in the Torrent, Amarande had walked away with her life and a sense that she’d finally tasted battle.
That wasn’t battle—this was.
Blood spray, bodies tumbling into the pit, the fire roaring andcoughing smoke with each addition. Daggers and swords met in violent, reverberating clangs. Boots crunched bones, and live bodies, shrieking to the stars.
But she needed him.
“Luca!” Amarande screamed his name with all the love she had, knowing that he would hear that note, along with the anguish and fear that thrust it into the air.
The world seemed to yell back.
He’s coming. He knows I’m here.
Survive the battle, see the war,her father had said, but which was she?
Across the way, the Warlord roared into the air in every direction as the resistance closed in. Five of her guards covered her in round-robin style, the dais creaking under their collective weight. These women had their backs to her directive spew, their swords out front, aimed at anyone who would dare rush at her with a blade.
They dared, of course.
The Warlord’s guards circled her, a moving target aboard the dais, as rebels with blades closed in on the raised platform.
It was protection, yes. But it was also a mistake.
They should have sheltered her on a retreat the moment the fighting started, not let her launch orders into the night. Now they were sitting ducks.
And the rebels knew exactly how to attack.
With practiced precision, members of the resistance turned their sleeping darts on the Warlord’s dais. Aiming for the guards closest to the railing that hung over the lip of the fire pit.
