Page 315 of Blade of the Nightking

"We won't get another chance! The Bone Women, they—" I couldn't say it. They'd died for us today. We couldn't walk away, not after everything they'd given. We’d come so far, we couldn’t fail now.

He didn't waste another second arguing. His fingers closed around my wrist, pulling me away from the well and toward the settlement wall.

"Rìan—"

"Move."

He dragged me toward a narrow staircase built into the palisade. We climbed it at a run, emerging onto the battlements where the last defenders of Midland still lay where they’d fallen.

Plague-Hunters.

Months of sun and rain had drawn their flesh tight against their bones, their leather armor faded and stiff. One remained propped against the parapet with an arrow nocked in his bow, as though he were still watching the forest. Another lay sprawled across the walkway, half his face missing.

We sprinted past them.

Ahead, Saskia's haunting call rose once more, followed almost immediately by a shriek from the forest. Ice swept through me at the sound. Rìan kept his eyes on the treeline, scanning for the first sign of movement.

Mine drifted over the village below. The last look I'd ever get of my home.

Another shriek. Closer.

My eyes swept over the rooftops, across the dilapidated buildings, over the secluded yards…

I stopped dead, wrenching suddenly out of Rìan's grasp. He spun around immediately.

"Eidra!" He reached for my arm. "We have to⁠—"

"Look."

He followed my gaze.

Directly below us lay a courtyard veiled in green, a part of town people had mostly avoided because it bordered the Dead Shed, where we'd stored those who'd frozen to death or starved during the depths of winter. It was clear the Infected didn't roam this way either. Moss and weeds blanketed the square, so completely the ground beneath was all but lost.

Yet through the heart of all that growth stretched an emptiness so precise it punched the air from my lungs.

The moss grew to its edge... and stopped.

The grasses bowed around it... but never crossed.

Weeds crowded against invisible lines, as though held back by unseen hands.

Bare stone spread outward in long, impossibly straight lines, meeting at perfect angles, drawing an unmistakable shape through the sea of green, as though nothing dared grow there.

Rìan drew a sharp breath beside me.

Below us, nature had reclaimed every inch of the forgotten courtyard⁠—

—except for an enormous eight-pointed star.

CHAPTER 65

Sweat trickled down my back as we searched the yard.

But there was no well.

Another shriek erupted somewhere in the distance.

"It has to be here…" Rìan stalked the perimeter once more before driving his boot into the crumbling wall. Stone cracked, rubble tumbling to the ground. "Damn it!"