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Fleeing.
Our entire army was fleeing.
Which didn’t make sense. The wall and the gate into Solarys were more than fifty miles away, a two-day journey on horseback, impossible on foot given none of these men carried food or water.
I dodged a charging horse, its wild-eyed rider hunched down, kicking the beast as hard as he could, as if demons were on his tail. They pounded by, knocking soldiers out of the way, catching my shoulder with a blow that sent me nearly to my knees.
Over the sea of heads, I strained to see why they were running, but there was nothing on the now-empty battlefield except dead bodies and wounded, the Citadelle rising above the flat plain, heavy smoke pouring from the upper floors. More smoke now, thicker, as if the entire top floor was ablaze.
Good. I hoped the fucker burned to the ground.
Fighting the oncoming tide took too long, and every soldier I tried to question just pointed frantically over their shoulder and kept running. The ground was littered with weapons, swords and knives and spears, as if defending themselves no longer mattered.
As if the battle no longer mattered.
Finally, I heard Zor shouting orders and raced in that direction, shoving against the frightened males. The air was sour with their fear, not that I understood why. These were hardened fighters, most of them had been fighting in this army for a century, and nothing frightened them except the prospect of peace.
“Toss everything out of the wagons and load them up with as many men as they’ll carry,” Zor ordered the few commanders left, though everyone’s eyes kept straying up to the Citadelle. “Saddle the horses, two to a horse. Get as many out of here as you can. Anyone who can walk, head east.”
“What the fuck is going on?”
Zor pointed to the burning Citadelle and I shook my head.
“Yes, the fucker’s on fire. So what?”
“Look again, Raz.” Zor was paler than I’d ever seen him and this time, when I really looked, I realized the smoke pouring from the top floors was not only from the fire.
The dark cloud was something else entirely.
Dark wisps broke off from the billowing cloud as if they had a life of their own, whirling down and down and down…straight into the body of a limping soldier dragging his leg.
The male dropped to the ground, then flopped onto his back, his boots drumming on the ground as the shadowy mist sank into him and disappeared.
My chest began to heave.
If this was what I thought it was…
My blood turned to ice as I surveyed the enormity of that dark cloud, the shadowy wisps veering off and swooping down on the emptying battlefield like a swarm of carrion eaters. Across the vast flatland, bodies were reanimating, Solarys and Caladrian soldiers alike, some already climbing to their feet.
“Soul Reapers,” Zor murmured. “Thousands of them. Enough for all of us, I would think, if we don’t get out of here in the next few minutes.”
“But don’t they need an…”Injury to get in, I was going to say, but then I realized…Nearly everyone here was injured after the battle. Zor had a gash on his forehead, and I swallowed as the full weight of our impossible situation hit me.
“We have to get Anaria clear of this.”
After everything she’d already endured—after Ember—this was the worst fate I could imagine for her.
For any of us.
“Already done.” Zor cocked his head. “Tristan and Tavion are headed for the healer’s tent; didn’t you see them?”
I lost my breath as a cloud of Reapers broke away from the smoke and swooped down on a group of fleeing soldiers not twenty lengths away. A minute later they were all down, bodies convulsing as they were taken over.
A thunderous boom echoed across the wide-open space, and blackness spewed from the top windows of the palace, but this didn’t roil mindlessly like smoke. This cloud was sentient. This cloud had purpose, breaking off and hurtling toward the escaping army with focused intent.
We were caught right in between.
“Get the wagons unloaded and get out of here any way you can. Save whomever you can find and ride hard for the border,” Zorander told his commanders harshly. “Good luck.”
