Page 129 of Beds and Blades

Fear for me.

Beneath it was something else.

Pride.

He could feel what I was doing. He could feel me choosing courage and committing to it.

And he believed I was equal to the choice.

I followed that feeling the way you follow a sound through the dark.

***

The assault struck Nema’s perimeter.

The vampires answered at once.

From the trees came the sound of the garrison making contact: steel crashing against steel, shouted commands cutting through the dark, the hard, disciplined violence of soldiers who knew exactly what they were doing.

Torchlight erupted between the buildings. It flared across walls and rooftops, throwing the village into fragments of fire and shadow.

Men moved through the streets.

And among them, faster than men should have been able to move, darker shapes flashed from one patch of night to another.

The command layer had taken the field.

Morvanna had committed them.

Exactly as we needed her to.

I looked at Gaius and Flavia.

“Now.”

We moved.

***

Nema was quiet, and the quiet was wrong.

The buildings still stood. Snow lay undisturbed across the roofs. At the center of the village, the council hall rose exactly where the map had placed it. It was larger than the surrounding buildings and was built of stone rather than timber. It had survived everything that came before and now served a purpose its builders could never have imagined.

Skip was inside.

I could feel him. Close. Confined within those walls. The sense of his direction had become clearer with every step.

The closer we came to the council hall, the less I had to search for him. A pull. Directly ahead.

Something shifted in him as the distance narrowed. Hope rose through the fear.

He knew I was near.

I looked at the council hall. He was in there.

He knew I was coming.

I could feel panic rising in him. Sharp. Immediate. Something was wrong.