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The log pulled ashore with little sound, and we trudged onto the sand. Zoei ducked low behind a tree, and I followed closely.
“Can’t see anything.” Her voice was barely audible. I was forced to read her lips to understand what she was saying.
She turned abruptly, placing both palms out in front of her. She stacked them one on top of the other and made an upward motion.
“You don’t mean—” I began, only for her to shoot me a look of warning to shut up.
I acquiesced with much forbearance, placing one foot on her upturned palms. She hoisted me in the air like I weighed absolutely nothing, and I grasped the nearest branch, pulling myself up into the tree with considerable effort.
Although impeded by numerous leaves, the view from above proved illuminating.
“What do you see?”Zoei mimed in hand gestures that would have been comical in other circumstances.
The boundaries of the clearing were more prominent in the light. We’d crashed near the edge of it, the hovercraft still lying in the shallow pit.
The land opened up in front of us, curving downward almost like a basin. The clearing was also bald in spots, as though rain and sunshine had forgotten to bless those places.
Other fallen hovercrafts lay where they had met their untimely ends, crumpled like pieces of paper in the soil.
But that wasn’t the most jarring sight.
I craned my neck above a cluster of leaves, trying to decipher what I was truly witnessing.
Approximately fifty feet away, a mountain of bodies lay piled on the trodden ground, their red and gold uniform catching the last rays of light. I counted more than twenty people slumped over in that pile, a river of red gushing downhill toward the waters.
Even from afar, I imagined the putrid smell of clotting blood and shivered in revulsion.
“Well?” Zoei hissed from below, impatience swirling around her like a cloak.
I shook my head, mouthingnot good.
If this was the defense that Zoei had promised, we were in desperate danger.
My fingers began a perilous tremble as I shifted positions on the branch, climbing across to get a different view. This time, I thought I saw the tip of Almanera’s pointed hat.
As I placed one foot on an opposite branch, testing its strength, I heard an ominous crack beneath me.
I cursed under my breath, stepping back onto the safer perch.
“What is it?” Zoei said in a stage whisper.
“I think I see Almanera,” I replied. “Next to a pile of bodies.”
Zoei’s next words were indecipherable, but I had no doubt they were curses.
I breathed deeply, placing a hand on the weak branch to buoy it with my powers. As gently as I could, I pressed my weight onto it, feeling it hold still. With my belly to the branch, I slid forward, peering in the direction of Almanera.
He wasn’t alone.
As suspected, his armed Alphas gathered around him, their weapons dirty with dried blood. They stood almost idly in a fan shape, with Almanera taking up the middle. Some practiced their swordsmanship, turning their blades around in practice swings. Others tapped their toes on the ground, waiting impatiently for… What, exactly?
Almanera himself stood with two hands planted on his hip, scouring the edges of the clearing around him. Perhaps it was an unkind thought, but the optics were not in his favor. His army of Alphas—who looked more like overdressed thugs than trained soldiers—towered over him. Each one of them was broader in the shoulders and thicker in the arms than Almanera, making their supposed leader look small and mouse-ish in comparison.
The ridiculous pointed hat fooled no one—he was very much lacking in the height department.
Every few seconds, he glanced down at his wrist as though checking the time, then tilted his head to the sky.
I’d assume his behavior was quite odd, if the other Alphas around him weren’t doing the same thing.
