Bitter understanding sinks its claws deep.
If I clash weapons with them, we’ll be ambushed by a flood of angry Moltenmaws desperate to flush us free of their precious forest. But if I don’t meet them on this boggy battlefield, we’ll be captured. Likely passed off to the Tri-Council, then executed for my recent misdeeds against the Citadel.
The options are dire.
I edge back a step—
The ground shifts beneath me, and I’m snatched skyward so fast I almost lose my guts, cradled by a muddy net now dangled amidst the dense mist.
Sword gone.
Bloodraging.
Through gaps between the webbing, I glimpse Pyrok wrestling his confines. He meets my gaze, green eyes flashing with disbelief when he sees me in the same predicament.
“Fuck,” he mouths.
I’m inclined to agree.
I push out a hand and point up, shaping the word “climb.”
He nods, getting his dagger against the crisscross of thick rope as I fan Rygun’s gifted ember, intending to burn through these fucking ropes. But then the sound of slitting fibers comes to me, twinged with the grate of metal on metal.
Pyrok pauses, meets my stare. “Laced with iron fibers,” he mouths, and I repress a snarl.
If I burn through it, the liquid iron will drip all over me.
I’ll probably never be free of it.
I resort to pulling a blade from the hidden sheath in my jacket sleeve—
The hairs on my arms lift, the air becoming still, plagued by a deeper silence than before.
A cold,hungrysilence.
My heart drops.
Líri slices past with silent precision, moving so fast she’s like a pale streak through the milky haze, the robed rider on her back too small to be Raeve.
I notice the strange way Líri’s holding her claws, like she’s hugging her chest. Or perhaps holding something close to it.
No.
Someone.
The mist clears as the air suctions, like I’m caught in a lung that just pushed out all its breath. In the same instance, the closest ring of advancing soldiers falls to their knees, eyes bulging while they claw at their jerking chests and taut, constricting necks, mouths agape, faces flushed.
Gasping for breath they can’t seem to grab.
Líri’s gone like a blast of wind, leaving Raeve crouched in the mud beneath our dangling nets, wearing a sneer, wild blue eyes, and so much blood that it looks like Fade armor.
My gut knots.
She slashes me with a glance almost sharp enough to cut me free.“Stop trying to die on me!”
Her words are blunted, like they’re banging against walls I can’t see.
She’s catching our sound, preventing it from spreading …
