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Ava looked up the path and wondered where Luc and the others were.

A sudden scream from above had Farr jerking his gaze in the direction of the hill.

“One of yours?” Rangar asked. He lifted the knife from Ava’s throat and tightened his hold on her neck.

Ava gasped and began to claw at his arm. He was choking her.

“What—?” Farr turned back to face them, and as he did, Rangar threw the knife that he’d been using on Ava. It cut Farr’s question short as it entered his throat, and just before she lost all her air and the world went black, Ava saw the bloom of blood.

Chapter 36

Luc didn’t question the sudden urgency he felt to get back to Ava.

He had killed two of the soldiers who had come up the hill looking for flares, and he was confident Oscar and Deni could deal with the other three.

This need to get to her, though, was more than just general worry that she was being held by two men who were his enemies.

It felt like a warning from the protections she had sewn into his shirt and tunic. As if her safety was part of his own protection.

He didn’t disagree.

He would . . . not do well if anything happened to her.

He raced back down the path, trying to hold on to the fact that Rangar seemed to need Ava.

The Queen’s Herald would do anything to keep Ava under his control, and the fact that he was actively looking for her was a bad sign.

Desperate men did desperate things.

Rangar obviously thought his problems would disappear if he produced her.

He was probably right.

And she had made the choice to bargain herself for their lives and safety, betting on the same calculation.

He heard muttering up ahead, like Rangar talking to himself, and he crept the last stretch of path to hide the sound of his steps.

He reared back at the change in scene from only a few minutes ago.

Farr was dead, lying in an expanding pool of blood from his throat.

Ava was slung over Farr’s mount and Rangar was looping her bound hands through the shortened stirrup on one side.

“The only way,” Rangar was saying. “Just have to chance it.” When he turned, he had the flare canister in his hand, the lid off.

He tilted the canister and swung his arm, and a thin spray of luminous blue liquid flew through the air.

Some of it hit Luc in the chest, and there seemed to be a thunderclap, a lightning strike of cold, white light, that threw him backward.

He landed hard and scrambled to his feet to find a thin line of fire blocking his way to Ava.

It was spreading so fast, running like water just as the general had said.

But he wasn’t burning, he suddenly realized. The flare had hit him, thrown him back, but he wasn’t even scorched.

Ava had sewn protection against flare fire into his shirt.

She hadn’t been confident about it, but once again, she proved she had no reason to doubt herself.