Page 122

Maybe, just maybe, once again I can pull my friends out of another tight spot. Maybe we’ll survive this. Maybe we’ll all be happy. Temra and I together. She with Petrik and I with Kellyn. Maybe everything will be as it’s supposed to be.

But after a time, I realize that we’re separating. Petrik is far to my right. Kellyn, far to my left. And Temra—Temra is behind me, far out of range, but handling things well enough on her own.

“Charge the smithy.”

The order comes from Kymora, and I don’t know how any of her soldiers can rally together in all the bedlam, but a group of them run at me straight on, smashing into my raised magicked hammer.

I go down from the force of so many, but so do my attackers. The magic of the shield sends them crashing to the ground, but I’m the first one to catch my feet. I swing my hammer at the firstguard, catch his shoulder, feel the crunch as the reverberation shoots up my own arm.

But there are so many of them. They fan out, and some get behind me. My shield doesn’t reach there, and someone slams into me from behind. I stumble, and several more guards charge my right side, the one holding the plain hammer. They wrest it from me before I can raise my shield.

With naught but my left hammer, I charge into the men ahead of me. They fall from the power of the shield, hitting the ground one after another.

A sharp jab hits my back—the pommel of a sword, I think. I try to catch my feet, but I land painfully on the ground. This time, someone else helps me back up.

By my hair.

More men grab on to me, and then my magicked hammer is gone, too.

Someone slings a fist into my stomach, taking the breath from me, forcing all my limbs limp. A rope materializes, binds my wrists behind my back.

And then that voice is right next to me. “Take her. I’ll be along once I deal with the sister.”

My breath slams back into me in time to watch Kymora drift toward Temra at a leisurely pace. My sister is too focused on the soldier in front of her to notice.

And then I lose my feet as I’m lifted into the air, being carried away.

“Kellyn!” I scream at the top of my lungs.

He turns at my voice, having just killed the last of the soldiers surrounding him.

“Save Temra!” I shout, even as the men pull me toward the nearest horse. “Get her out of here!”

An elbow connects with my cheekbone, knocking my head to the side. It throbs painfully. I don’t stop the words, but they come out quietly now, almost like a prayer. “Save Temra. Save Temra. Save Temra.”

I’m raised higher into the air, angled toward the saddle, kicking anything my legs come into contact with. I catch a glimpse of the sky, the clouds gray and full, almost ready to let down rain.

And then I’m falling.

I hit the dirt, the air expelling from my lungs once more. I hear a scuffle, but most of my attention is on breathing.

Come on, lungs. Remember how to work.

When air finally rushes back in, it hurts so much to breathe. I can barely think. Barely make sense of what’s happening.

Kellyn is there, bent down, helping me to my feet, cutting my binds. All the guards around us lie like rag dolls on the ground.

But if Kellyn is here, then that means—

I shove him aside and run for my sister. She’s just broken another soldier’s weapon. The man leaps away, trying to grab one of his fallen friend’s still intact weapons, but she stabs the pitchfork straight into the ground. One of the tines runs through his wrist.

But she still twists, and the bone snaps, the magic compelled to break whatever catches between the tines.

Then Kymora is there, and while Temra’s distracted by the soldier she’s just rendered useless, the warlord swings.

“No!”

Temra notices her just in time, dodging the strike, but Kymora doesn’t let up. She sends out slashes in rapid succession, careful not to let her broadsword catch in between the prongs of Temra’s pitchfork.