They’d been running since Zavier had provided them horses and supplies, and they weren’t about to stop. Though now, instead of coming to warn Luca, they were determined to stop Geneva.
And Geneva meant the firepit. Now.
It was only when they’d made it across the distance that they realized they’d lost Amarande and Luca.
“Should we go back for them?” Osana asked, eyes wild as she gripped her sword with both hands.
“No. Geneva. We must get to Geneva.”
They were coming at the roaring flames akimbo, winding through the path of least resistance. As they moved forward, they provided what interference and distraction they could to allow innocents to slip away, while dismantling Geneva’s crop of men, one by one, but mostly, they tried to keep advancing.
“There. Silver stallion. No mask.” Ferdinand pulled Osana close and nodded to where Geneva stomped, double swords threatening but not engaging. She had plenty of men around her, all faces Ferdinand knew. Osana likely did, too.
“Stars,” Osana cursed, eyes caught on the chaos at the lip of the pit, “they’re dumping them in like it’s a laundry pile instead of a funeral pyre.” She shook her head. “How will we stop them? We can’t save everyone from the flames.”
“Perhaps I can distract her. We have to try.”
They set a new course, straight for the midpoint of the line Geneva had been stalking on her horse before the flames. At a hundred paces to the firepit, frantically waving arms caught in Ferdinand’s field of vision, and he glanced toward them as he dodged the smashed wheel of a ruined carriage.
A man was entangled in the rest of the carriage, apparently stuckbetween parts of the hitch. As soon as Ferdinand turned in his direction, the man was screaming at the top of his lungs. “Help me!” he yelled at Ferdinand, reaching out with a single arm.
No one else was close, and the bodies were thick on the ground before him, likely an obstacle providing minimal protection. The man would surely get a knife through the back if he couldn’t free himself.
Ferdinand immediately diverted, but three steps in Osana caught his arm. He glanced back, about to tell her it was fine, but stopped dead when he saw her eyes, cutting and fierce, as she shook her head.
“If a man asks for help it is always a trap.”
Ferdinand didn’t know what to make of her words or her anger. “Come now, there are men in this world unafraid to ask for aid.”
“Few enough that I would never bet my life on it.”
She leaned up to his ear, a hand on his chest. “Be smart about this—off their horses, the enemy looks like us. That man has leverage—he can pull himself clear if he needs to.” Then, louder, so the man could hear, “He’ll stab you in the heart the second your hand reaches his.”
The man’s fevered face crumbled into further pain, eyes pleading across a distance of five paces. His lips dropped open with another plea, but in the space of a feral smile everything changed. “I don’t need you close to do so.”
Osana was in motion the moment his face shifted, shoving Ferdinand with the hand already upon his chest. Her body replaced his, her back to the man’s threat. Ferdinand stumbled and reset, gaining his footing only as Osana’s body shuddered and spun, a knife buried where her shoulder met her back.
She fell toward Ferdinand, and as he caught her, the man wiggled out from between the confines of the carriage hitch. Holding Osana in the crook of his arm, Ferdinand dropped his sword, fished out his boot knife, and hit the man straight in the neck as he freed himself and turned to run.
The man fell hard and fast, and Ferdinand didn’t check to see if he was dead—if he wasn’t he would be soon. The only life that mattered to him at the moment was Osana’s.
Holding her as gently as he would a babe, Ferdinand sank to the ground, gaining coverage by the demolished wheel. It was bent enough to provide some support and he leaned against it, holding Osana to his chest as he inspected the wound. The knife was small but embedded to the hilt—not long enough to go straight through but certainly enough to do fatal damage.
Ferdinand blinked at the ground before him. Now he saw it. Bodies lain before the man’s carriage were marked by similar knives. He’d simply been taking all manner of men out with distraction and well-placed blades.
This knife, however, was not well placed. It had struck between her shoulder blade and the upper part of Osana’s back—right where someone could pat themselves for a job well done. If she hadn’t shielded him, the dagger’s trajectory would’ve embedded it straight in Ferdinand’s heart.
“How does it look?” Osana asked, words muffled, her face smashed into his neck.
“As deep as it feels. Can you move your arm?”
In answer, Osana wiggled her fingers, rotated her wrist, and swung her arm at its elbow, working her way up. Lifting the limb at the shoulder, though, that was where her arm would not obey.
Ferdinand leaned into her ear. “I’m going to pull it out.”
“Don’t give me a warning. Just do it.”
Itwasa warning, but he hadn’t planned to do it right away. Rather, he knew it would be best to prepare bandages first. This wound would require sutures but until then, the fabric of his trousers would have to do. He held Osana close, her heart hammering strong and angry against his own rib cage, and created several long strips from the cleanest section of fabric.
