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She nodded, turning her focus back to the battle ahead of them. She’d acquiesce for now, but if Uncle Iyrinder was in danger, she’d disobey that order.

Ahead, the first line of the Mongavarian defenses had been dug into a series of low hills across the landscape. Concrete bunkers with overlapping fields of fire needed to be taken out before the main Alliance force could move forward.

Her objective was a series of bunkers rising onto a hill. She forgot what number Aunt Vriska had given it during the briefing. Not that it really mattered. She’d take the hill regardless of its arbitrary number on a map.

Adry crouched low as she dashed up the hill before her, swords in hand. The bullets of the machine guns in the concrete bunker whizzed by far too close past her small, crackling shield.

Her heart hammered at the thwack of the bullets striking the ground or the shielding saplings the elves had grown in preparation for making this assault. An artillery shell whistled overhead before it slammed into the ground yards behind her, spewing dirt into the air.

She’d never gone into battle quite this vulnerable. Yes, her small shield would protect her from the machine guns. But it was too restricted to do anything against the larger artillery shells.

Another shell whistled overhead, slamming into the field somewhere behind her with enough force that she stumbled, nearly going to her knees.

She could have sent that projectile back toward the Mongavarian lines if she’d used her magic. In any other battle, she would have done just that.

But her orders were clear. Keep a tight hold on her magic until the magic-stealing machines could be cleared from the battlefield.

The wall of the bunker rose ahead of her, a solid edifice of stone with a slit for the machine guns to have a wide field of fire. There had to be a door somewhere around back, but she’d have to tromp her way around the bunker while under fire to find it.

The machine guns swiveled to train on her, the bullets slamming, unrelenting, into her magic. She poured more magic into the storm around her and shoved the magic wider to cover Uncle Iyrinder and the other guards. Uncle Iyrinder shot her a look, but at least he didn’t order her to pull back, despite the fact that he could as her commanding officer.

For a moment she stood there, absorbing the bullets with her magic. Should she wriggle through the machine gun slit to get at the men?

That just sounded awkward. Bother with trying to be subtle.

She blasted a handful of her magic forward, eating the line of bullets until her magic slammed into the machine guns. What wasn’t incinerated or melted was blown backward into the bunker, inciting screams from those inside.

Both wincing at the sounds and steeling herself, she poured more magic into the bunker, silencing those screams rather than letting them linger.

This whole holding her magic in check thing just wasn’t going to work. She might as well not even deploy her magic if she kept it too restricted.

She’d just have to unleash it a little more and trust that Merrik and his squadron would get to her in time. As long as her magic wasn’t caught by more than one of those magic-stealing machines at a time, she should be fine.

As she, Uncle Iyrinder, and her guards stalked past the bunker, Uncle Iyrinder simply huffed a long-suffering sigh and marched at her side.

Once they were far enough past the bunker she’d cleared, she sent a wave of her magic into it, touching off the ammunition stores. The concrete somewhat halted the charge, though one section blew outward and upward, and she shoved the flying debris aside before it could hit any of her guards.

Past the now destroyed bunker, the hill lay clear and open, the elves unable to extend their magic past the first line for fear of those machines. The valley between this hill and the next one over also lay open, the winding road visible where it followed the curving lay of the land.

With the more open sightlines, the machine gunners in the next bunker farther up the hill opened fire as soon as Adry and her guards came into range.

She swept her magic along the line of bullets until she reached the machine guns, blasting them apart as she had before. But as she did so, something grabbed her magic and gave a tug unlike anything she’d experienced before.

Gasping, she braced her feet and yanked back on her magic. It wouldn’t come. Instead, the bolts seemed to be coalescing into a single stream pouring from her. She gritted her teeth, fighting the pull to keep the shield around herself and her guards. “Uncle Iyrinder, I think I found one of those machines.”

He didn’t say anything as unhelpful as I told you so. Instead, he whirled and shouted to Ithronel, who had trailed behind them as he hauled a large radio. “Radio the squadron with our coordinates.”

Ithronel halted the hand cart he was using to drag the radio after them before he crouched next to it. She couldn’t hear him or the radio’s crackling static past the roar of her magic in her ears.

Her grip on her magic felt hot and strangely slippery. The tug had turned into a relentless yanking, as if determined to tear her magic from her mental fingers. It took all of her strength to rip some of her magic away to shove into the shield surrounding her and the guards. Bullets, likely from another machine gun, flashed as they were incinerated. If her shield slipped, she, Uncle Iyrinder, and the other guards would be gunned down.

“Capt. Loiatir is already on his way,” Ithronel shouted, paused, then added, “He also says to duck.”

Adry dropped and flattened herself to the dirt, Uncle Iyrinder copying her only a heartbeat later. The others pressed themselves to the ground moments later, even as the whine of an aeroplane joined the roaring of her magic and the crack of the machine guns.

The shadow of an aeroplane whipped over her a moment before the aeroplane itself zoomed over her head, so close to the ground she felt like she could reach out and touch it. The art on the side—a leaf with an elf ear emblazoned over it—flashed in the sunlight as the aeroplane somehow dove even lower. Its wheels nearly skimmed the top of the bunker as it dropped two of its bombs on the bunker.

The bombs exploded even as the aeroplane roared back into the sky. As dirt and bits of concrete sprayed outward, Adry pressed her face against the ground and gritted her teeth at the pain searing through her magic, waiting for relief.