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Before my baffled eyes, every single person around us stops moving, immediately immobilized. It doesn't last long, a few seconds at most, and then they're back to either running or killing.
Useless. I am useless.
"Pace yourself." Doryn's voice is kind, patient. "You also have limits and you don't know them. You can't afford to use up all your strength either."
"What can I do?" I almost beg.
He glances at me for one second, his sweeping gaze assessing me, calculating what use I can possibly have when I have no clue what I can do, and very little experience to do it right.
If I could make theridersstop, and no one else, it'd be another story.
"We need everyone out of this death trap as soon as possible."
I remember the last time people had been lined up by those dark riders before my eyes. I remember what came after. This is an impossibly larger pool of innocents, but if they don't get out of here—
A powerful wave of fear hits me right in the chest, along with so much guilt.
Doryn was right. He wasn't lying. These people are his, his soldiers, his villagers, and those riders don't answer to him. They never did. He isn't the one behind the massacre of my village, or anywhere else. I was wrong. Manipulated. Stupid. Everything Doryn accused me of being, and more. And for three years, instead of serving a cause, I was used by the very ones who'd destroyed everything I knew in the first place.
He takes my hand and squeezes it, bringing me back to the present. "The people at the other end of the valley—they haven't seen us or noticed anything yet. Make them all pay attention to you. Make themcome to you."
I can feel my lower lip trembling and it has little to do with the cold. I nod once. I can do it. Iwill.
I've always been able to make people notice me when I wanted them to. I never questioned why or how, believing it was simply because I was beautiful. It seems stupid, in retrospect. How could beauty have helped when they weren't staring at me in the first place?
I lift my chin and stare at the entire crowd assembled.
You will look.
You will want me.
You. Will. Notice. Me.
A strange awareness that was always there needles me at the back of my mind, something that was always there, under the surface. I used to take it for granted. Confidence, self-assurance, the absolute certainty that I could have my way in exchange for a smile, a look, a kind word.
Instead of just acknowledging it, I press on it. I demand more of it.
You. Will. Obey.
"Come to me." That syrupy sweet voice again. Coaxing, cajoling, promising the entire world for the taking. I'm half singing, chanting the words over and over again.
And they come.
But then a blast of darkness erupts from far on the other side of the valley, followed by blinding tendrils of lights traveling to the crowd with the speed of whips. Everyone touched by it screams, trembles and falls, their flesh and bones sucked dry within instants.
Bright as ever in the darkness, Doryn erects a visible barrier of shade—a shield against which the foul spell hits and bounces back, powerless.
The few who have made it out to our side of the hills are safe. A few hundred, maybe, out of thousands.
I fall to my knees as I watch the exact same horror I've lived through three years ago.
We were too late.
41
CALDORYN
I don't let myself show weakness, staying upright.
