Page 26 of A Court of Truth and Thorns (Royal Scout #2)

KALI

I let a small red bit of light illuminate Rune’s hands as he slides the guard’s key into the door.

The small click and creak of hinges takes my breath.

We file inside, Rune taking the vanguard post again and Luca falling back to rear guard.

The girls’ ragged breaths sound behind me. They’re terrified, but they follow.

Holding my throwing knives at the ready, I visualize the maps that Calvin and the girls put together. This corridor runs west to east, heading toward the guard barracks and workrooms. The whisperer dormitories are one level up.

“Kali,” Rune whispers from the darkness, his voice carrying bare inches. “Release the shadow and save your strength.”

“I’m fine.”

The next breath I take is cut short by a male body pinning me against the stone. Rune’s scent fills my nose as he leans so close to me that his breath tickles my cheek.

“Orders,” he breathes, almost beyond hearing. “A scout works alone, but a soldier does not. This succeeds only if you follow orders. Understand?”

I glare toward where I know his eyes must be, my pride coursing like fire through my veins. Rune’s heart beats hard enough that I feel it ram his ribs. His lips brush my ear, his voice as unforgiving as the warrior himself. “If something has happened, if you cannot do this, I need to know now .”

Not a threat, not really. A commander reassessing his forces.

Deciding which he can do without. Which he must do without.

The back of my head stings where it scraped stone.

As do my eyes. I hate him for being right, but I release my magic.

The natural darkness is thinner than my shadow but dark enough.

“Get in the back of the line,” he orders, the tension in his muscles daring me to protest the punishment.

I turn my back to move down and feel the feather-soft touch of Rune’s fingers between my shoulder blades.

A tiny ember of comfort to dull the blow.

I don’t want it. Finding Luca, I murmur a few words that have him moving up to take the number-two slot in the stack while I fall in behind Wil and the girls.

The stack moves forward. A silent single file, each person running one hand along the stone wall.

Our steps and light breathing are the only sounds.

The line stops sooner than my step count tells me we should. A signal of squeezes from the front has us flattening against the wall. Closing my eyes, I try to discard the noise of the others’ rapid breaths and locate the source of whatever has caught Rune’s attention.

There. A distant scraping of boots. A voice calling to another. Someone is awake but not moving toward us. Not yet.

We start out again.

Another hesitation. Another signal. The step count puts us near the first of the barracks doors, but where there should be only the silence of sleeping guardsmen, there is cursing coming from down the hall instead.

Two voices. A pair of guards heading to their beds.

A signal from Rune is passed back to me, and I pull a shadow over us.

My sword whispers from its sheath as we push back to clear the way to the barracks door.

Alexa trips, gasping softly as I catch her arm.

One of the guards hesitates, the sound of his boots deafeningly close.

I feel the group’s collective resolve, ready to kill if the guards decide to explore the noise.

A pair of lives to be forfeited because a young girl tripped in the darkness.

It would be their own fault, I insist, arguing with my conscience.

Sloppy security. No one dared raise a hand against Bahir’s sacred grounds when Firehorn held the throne, and now, with Bahir holding the whole city, the guards are bloody confident that their job ends at keeping frightened and unarmed whisperers from escaping.

If the guards die, it will be their own fault.

After a moment, the guards choose their beds over their duty and walk into their sleeping quarters. Relief floods me. Rune signals and I release the shadow, sheathing my sword.

When we reach their quarters, Rune jams a small wedge of wood under the doorframe. Our first claim to control of the abbey’s passages. Three more doors get the same treatment. I hope to the stars that none of the guards inside will decide to leave their cots.

With the corridor secured, we turn to finding someone with keys to the acolyte rooms upstairs.

Rune motions me up beside him, and I pull the veil of darkness around us again as we creep toward the enclosed courtyard.

The walkway running along the yard’s perimeter is empty, yellow lanterns casting long shadows onto pale stone, but the distant sounds of a living abbey trickle down its spine.

Someone will walk by. Soon. Alexa and Jasmine come up to join us, trembling.

It’s up to them to recognize a key bearer.

“No one can see us,” I whisper into their ears. “We are darkness.”

Despite the sounds of life, it’s ages before the first person walks by.

The girls shake their heads. We wait again.

Then again. Again. Again. I hold the shadow, our cloak of invisibility.

I feel the others shift their feet, hear their unspoken questions.

Are you sure? Take another look. Maybe this one has keys?

It’s all taking too long. Any heartbeat now, the soldiers will discover their doors jammed closed and raise a fuss.

“Her.” Alexa clenches my hand so hard, I feel her nails break my skin. “Blond hair, walking across the courtyard now.”

Rune stands as still as my shadow. My stomach tightens. The mark approaching us is but a girl herself. Sixteen, if that. Skinny. Unarmed. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” says Jasmine in a voice so cold it sends shivers through me. “Her name is Zalia. She has keys. Kill her for them.”

Ice coats my blood, my face jerking to Rune. A young girl. Zalia is just a naive young girl. Whatever she’s done to earn Jasmine’s hatred, she couldn’t have understood the full impact of it. She’s a pawn of Bahir’s, like so many others.

As if feeling my stare, Rune shifts toward me.

“It’s my call,” he says quietly. A commander on a battlefield, in charge and responsible—for both the mission’s success and the costs that will haunt future nightmares.

The cost of getting to give the orders. My hands tremble as I count the steps until Zalia reaches the juncture where we stand. Fifteen paces left. Ten. Five.

Zalia turns down a side passage just before reaching our snare. I release a breath, my body sagging in on itself in relief. What in the stars’ name will we do for the sake of the greater good before the night ends? How many innocents will our crusade to save Dansil sacrifice?

“Zalia!” Jasmine rips away from the wall and sprints into the light of the courtyard. I curse. Rune snorts. Jasmine spins around herself, studying the walls as if she’s never laid eyes on the stone before. Her small body, lithe as a dancer’s, spins around a pillar.

“Jasmine?” the girl’s voice calls warily. Zalia. The girl’s name is Zalia. And she has no idea what’s happening. “What in the name of the Goddess are you doing here?”

Jasmine shrugs. Spins around again. Waits. A predator playing prey. Zalia moves toward her. Another girl follows in Zalia’s wake. As the two step into the lantern light, I catch the other girl’s swayed back and swollen belly, not yet heavy but clearly there. A child. The girl is with child.

No. No. NO.

“Not your call,” Rune says softly into my ear, his hand squeezing my shoulder. As much comfort as he can offer just now.

“Stay with me,” the pregnant girl begs of Zalia. “Please.”

“Stop it, Dasha,” Zalia chides. “I need to see to this acolyte. The Messenger’s work takes priority in our hearts. You know that.”

Go back, I yell silently to Zalia’s companion.

Go back. Hide. Run. My hands tremble at my sides and I know it’s a good thing indeed that I’m not in charge of this mission.

Jasmine takes a step toward us, leading Zalia and her friend right toward our blades.

I feel Luca move up to stand beside Rune and hear him take a sharp breath as he gets a full view of the girls.

“Stars,” Luca breathes. “Is she—”

“Quiet,” Rune orders. Cold. Unyielding. Nothing like the mess I am. “Prepare the shadow, Kal. Now. ”

I do it. Obeying Rune’s order, I throw the shadow wide enough to cover the girls, flinching at their sudden muffled screams as Luca and Rune clamp their hands over the girls’ faces. I press myself against the wall, drinking in the coolness to calm my nerves.

“Stairs,” Rune says, his order coming as smooth and calm as ever. “Move.”

I let the shadow dissolve enough to keep us from breaking our necks and nearly sob with relief when I find the captives gagged, not silenced forever.

It could have gone either way, I know. I saw the resolve in Rune’s face to do what had to be done to save all the others.

Wil’s eyes are wide, his gaze pinned on the pregnant Dasha as we move up the stairs and slide the key into the first of the acolyte dormitory doors.

Waiting for no one, Jasmine slips inside.

The answering commotion is instantaneous and deafening.

Screams, questions, yelps, as body after body floods out of the room and into the corridor.

Pushing. Tripping. Falling. Grabbing for clothes or friends or shoes.

Rune’s orders of silence, given with enough cold command to still any warrior in his tracks, fall on deaf ears among these panicked young women.

So many of them. Stars. Dozens in this one room alone.

All making enough racket that the abbey will turn into a tomb for us all.

My magic stirs inside me. Without daring a heartbeat more thought, I throw myself into the noise, pretending it’s light that I can absorb and bend, substituting with power what I lack in skill.

The world quiets. Sways.

“Kal,” Rune’s lips scream without sound. I blink at him. The magic pounds my insides. I drop to one knee. Rune drops beside me, his sword out and ready. Luca and Wil move down the corridor, opening door after door. More people come, girls and boys, young men and women. And more still.

The noise I’m absorbing booms inside my head, threatening to split my skull. I grab my temples with my palms, rocking myself. My eyes shut. The yelling, the scraping of feet on stone, the echoes of sound along stone walls, all assault me like vipers.

I feel a wet warmth inside my ear and realize it’s blood. I open my eyes to a shaking world. Except the world isn’t the one shaking—I am. Rune pries my hands from my head. Stop , his lips command. Stop. You did enough.

My magic’s dam crashes. The hysterical sobs of the pregnant girl as she is herded along with the liberated whisperers is the first sound I hear. Crying for her baby’s life.

“Is it my imagination, or does the girl with child look familiar?” Luca asks, falling back to where Rune and I cover the rear of the escaping whisperers. “I’m certain I’ve never seen her before, but her face...”

“Her brother was a guardsman trainee,” Rune answers curtly. “Novan.”

My breath catches. “You told me—”

“I told you the Holy Guard killed him over a girl,” Rune says. “I never specified the circumstances.”

“We’ll need to tell Wil,” says Luca, frowning down the corridor.

The sleeping guards inside the barracks have awoken and now bang on their jammed doors like crazed apes. A few more minutes and they’ll break through. Four more roses, who must have been on duty at another part of the compound, now rush at us, their swords drawn.

“Luca, go on with the whisperers,” Rune says, readying his blade. “Kali and I will hold these guards off until you have everyone out. ”

Luca nods and pushes past us, leaving Rune and me shoulder to shoulder against the coming patrol.

My heart quickens then slows as the first of the men reaches us and Rune cuts him down with a mighty slash.

I raise my sword in time to block a blow aimed for my head, the force of the attack slipping down my angled blade.

The rose swings again, this time a slice across my abdomen that I narrowly avoid by leaping back.

My feet land on the stone, springing right back into the fight while the rose’s own momentum makes him spin off balance.

I watch his body. His hips. His eyes suddenly widening in bewildered recognition as he gets a good look at me and blanches.

“Kal is dead!” he screams.

“No, that would be you.” I lunge, my blade piercing flesh deep enough to make my words true.

Rune shoots me a smile. Of course, he dispatched three men to my one, but we can count that up later.

Or not. The energy of the fight still pumping through me fades as I follow Rune out the door and bar it from the outside.

Fresh night wind kisses my face, ruffling my hair and clothes.

Led by Luca, Wil, and the girls, the whisperers are moving away from the abbey and toward the North Wood already, many picking up sticks and rocks to use as weapons as they go.

“That went better than expected,” Rune says, letting out a long breath.

I don’t answer. Rune’s mission did go better than we could have hoped, but mine has yet to start.

Rune looks at me and frowns, his eyes growing increasingly wary. “It’s time to leave.”

“I know,” I say softly. “But I can’t go with you.” Turning my back to Rune, I sprint into the darkness.