But it wasn’t thunder. It was hooves.
Horses.
Dozens of them, charging straight through the village.
Then screams, loud and sharp.
People running past the bakery windows, their faces twisted in panic. One tripped and was cut down before she even hit the ground.
Mrs. Holt screamed and dove behind the counter, knocking over the tray of apple tarts.
“Lock the door!” she shrieked. “Lock the damn door!”
I’d let myself believe we were safe. That we could breathe again. How stupid had I been? To think that some village boys in borrowed armor could stop the Vultures. Theyalwayswon.
And their horses were heading toward the outskirts. Toward my home. My parents.
I had to do something. Maybe it was reckless. Maybe I should’ve stayed.
Boarded the bakery and cowered behind the counter with Mrs. Holt.
But I didn’t.
I pushed through the door and ran straight into the chaos. Into smoke and screams and steel on stone. A soldier drove his sword into someone right there in the street, and blood sprayed like ink across the cobblestones. Another man was on fire.
I ran faster than I ever had, my feet barely touching the ground. I didn’t care who I passed or who fell. I just ran. All I could think about was getting home. Reaching my family.
The thunder of hooves came too close. I swerved, barely avoiding the stampede.
The neighbor’s farm was already burning. Flames snapping at the sky.
Then I saw it. My house.
And I knew that I was too late.
Horses stood at the fence. Riderless.
The soldiers were already inside. With my parents.
For a second, I thought about running. About disappearing into the woods, climbing a tree, hiding in a broken boat, an old sauna, anywhere they wouldn’t think to look.
But I couldn’t.
Icouldn’tleave.
Novil was an insignificant, small town in the north of Vestance, but it was my home. Maybe that’s why my feet wouldn’t move.
Maybe that’s why, even with the smoke rising and the horses waiting, I stayed.
I knew what awaited. I knew it before I sawhis vile grin. Iknew, and I went in there anyway.
Arche was standing in my home with a knife pressed to my mother’s throat. Her eyes found mine and didn’t look away.
"Run!" my father shouted from behind her. His voice was hoarse, raw with panic, as two soldiers held his arms behind his back. His face was bruised, one eye swollen shut beneath a line of blood across his brow.
“Welcome home, Kera,” Arche said with a sickly sweet smile. ”Did you miss me?”
His voice slithered beneath my skin. My heart pounded so loud it drowned out everything else. I couldn’t move.
