“You almost did.”
“And yet”—she beamed—“here I stand.” She opened up her arms playfully.
I didn’t smile, but she grinned anyway, causing my heart to forget how to beat for only a second.
I watched as she floated away. My mouth forgetting to speak. I watched as she returned to Jasira and curled up beneath a cloak of clover-dyed wool.
Before sleep took me, I caught her whispering something to her friend.
“I think he does have a heart,” she said. “It’s buried under thirty layers of steel.”
She didn’t know the half of it.
Chapter Six
Wynessa
It crept in slow and soundless, veiled in mist thick enough to choke on.
Emberwood felt like it was holding its breath.
The air was colder than yesterday, the damp clinging to skin and bone. Even the horses were restless, hooves shifting, heads tossing at shadows that hadn’t moved. Bran let out a low growl and stared into the trees, fur raised along his back.
Something was out there. Not moving, not approaching. Just…watching.
I ran my fingers along the spine of my journal, but didn’t open it. Not this morning.
Jasira moved with deliberate care, her hands steady but her eyes scanning everything.
Tyren rubbed his thumb over the hilt of his sword, again and again, like it might vanish if he stopped.
“I don’t like this,” he muttered as he fastened the last strap on his pack. His voicecut through the dense fog, unnervingly clear, almostjarringin the muffled silence. “Good,” Gideon said, slinging his cloak over one shoulder. “Fear means you’re alive. Or smart. Or both.”
He paused, sniffing the air. “If I drop dead fromghost mold spores, avenge me with poetry.”
We were nearly ready to move when a raw, desperate scream tore through the silent trees. High-pitched. Panicked. A boy’s voice, too young to belong to anyone in our group. It was a sound that instantly froze my blood. Everyone moved at once. Steel hissed from sheaths. Hooves pounded through the fog. I chased the noise without thinking.
A small caravan had taken shelter ahead in a grove of cypress. There were tipped wagons, canvas half-collapsed, and smoke that still rose from a dying cookfire. A boy no older than thirteen limped backward in the clearing, a red gash seeping down his leg. His eyes were wide with terror.
Three raiders surrounded him. Mountain-born, by the look of them. They were broad-shouldered and weather-beaten, their cloaks sewn from patchwork fur and bark fiber, teeth stained from root rot. One bore the sigil of a Caerthaine trade house, burned into a stolen pauldron. Another wore a child’s ribbon tied around his wrist like a trophy.
The moment their eyes locked with ours, aclatter of steelfilled the air as theysnatchedtheir weapons free. Behind them, my eyes were wide with horror at the shattered remnants of the caravan, which told their own story. An overturned and burnt wagon; a child’s doll blackened in the mud beside a broken wheel. A woman lay half-covered by a torn canopy, throat cut, her hand still curled around a wooden spoon. Another figure, perhaps the boy’s father, slumped unmoving beside the fire pit. Something jagged and cruel had opened his chest.
The boy hadn’t run from danger. He had run from death.
“Down!” Erindor’s voice cut through the morning like a blade.
And then he was a blade.
He lunged forward, low and fast, slicing one raider cleanly across the gut. The man staggered, clutching his belly as crimson soaked his tunic, but Erindor was already moving.Another raider roared and charged at him with a rusted axe. Erindor ducked under the swing, rolled through the slick earth, and came up behind him. His blade cut clean across the back of the man’s knees, sending him down with a cry. Without pausing, Erindor plunged his sword through the man’s ribs and yanked it free with a grim twist, blood spraying in an arc that vanished into the mist.
Alaric and Tyren were not far behind, steel flashing in the half-light. Bran leaped into action and bit into the nearest raider’s leg, mangling it. Lark took a hit to the shoulder and stumbled, but recovered when Corren came to his defense. A daggerstreaked toward him, but Gideon's shieldswung up,shuntingit aside. Without pause, helashed backwith a stone. It hit the raider square in the nose.
“You picked the wrong fog to lurk in, you tree-moss bastard!” he yelled.
My muscles locked, a sudden, primal clench that bolted me to the spot. My legs trembled, the tremor a silent scream before my mind could even process the danger before me.
But the boy. Gods, the boy.
