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Because this battle … Hybern had been ready. And the appearance they’d given, of a tired army ready to rest for the night … It had been a ruse, as our own had been.
Keir’s soldiers started going down first, shadows sputtering out. Their front lines buckling.
Mor watched it, stone-faced. I had no doubt she was half hoping her father joined the dead now piling up. Even as Keir managed to rally the Darkbringers, reassembled that front line—only after Cassian had roared at him to fix it. And on the other side of the field …
Rhys and Tarquin were drained enough that they were actually battling sword to sword against soldiers. And again, no sign of the king or Jurian or Tamlin.
Mor was hopping from one foot to another, glancing at me every now and then. The bloodshed, the brutality—it sang to some part of her. Being up here with me … It was not where she wished to be.
But this … this running after armies, scrambling to stay ahead …
It would not provide a solution. Not for long.
The skies opened up, and the battle turned into outright muddy slaughter. Siphons flared, soldiers died. Hybern wielded its own magic upon our forces, arrows tipped in faebane finally making an appearance, along with clouds of it, that mercifully didn’t last long in the rain. And did not impact us—not one bit—with Nuan’s antidote in our systems. Only those arrows, which were skillfully avoided with shields or outright destruction to their shafts, leaving the stone to fall harmlessly from the sky.
Still Cassian, Azriel, and Rhys kept fighting, kept killing. Tarquin and Varian held their own—spreading out their soldiers to aid Keir’s once-again foundering line.
Too late.
From the distance, through the rain, we could see perfectly as the dark line of Keir’s soldiers caved to an onslaught of Hybern cavalry.
“Shit,” Mor breathed, gripping my arm tight enough to bruise, warm summer rain soaking our clothes, our hair. “Shit.”
Like a burst dam, Hybern’s soldiers poured through, cleaving Keir’s force in half. Cassian’s bellowing was audible even from the hilltop—then he was soaring, dodging arrows and spears, his Siphons so dim they barely guarded him against it. I could have sworn Rhys roared some order to him—that Cassian disregarded as he landed in the middle, the middle of those enemy forces sundering our lines, and unleashed himself.
Nesta inhaled in a sharp, high gasp.
More and more—Hybern spread us farther and farther apart. Rhys’s power slammed into the flank of them, trying to shove them back. But his power was drained, exhausted from last night. Dozens fell to those snapping shadows, rather than hundreds.
“Re-form the lines,” Mor was muttering, releasing me to pace, rain sluicing down her face. “Re-form the damned lines!”
Cassian was trying. Azriel had lunged into the fray, nothing more than shadows edged in blue light, battling his way toward where Cassian fought, utterly surrounded.
“Mother above,” Nesta said softly. Not in awe. No—no, that was dread in her voice.
And within my own as I said, “They can fix this.” Or I prayed they could.
Even if this battle … this was not all that Hybern had to offer against us.
This was not all they had to offer, and yet we were being pushed back, back, back—
Red flared in the heart of that battle like an exploding ember. A circle of soldiers died.
But more of Hybern’s soldiers pushed in around Cassian. Even Azriel could not get to his side. My stomach turned, over and over.
Hybern had hidden the majority of its force somewhere. Our scouts could not find it. Azriel could not find it. And Elain … She could not see that mighty army, she’d said. In her dreams awake and asleep.
I knew little of war, of battle. But this … it felt like patching up holes in a boat while it sank.
As the rain drenched us, as Mor paced and swore at the slaughter, the bodies starting to pile up on our side, the foundering lines … I realized what I had to do, if I could not be down there, fighting.
Who I had to hunt down—and ask about the location of Hybern’s true army.
The Suriel.
CHAPTER
“Absolutely not,” Mor said when I pulled her a few feet away from Nesta, the din of battle and rain drowning out our voices. “Absolutely not.”
I jerked my head toward the valley below. “Go join them. You’re wasted here. They need you.” It was true. “Cassian and Az need you to push back the front lines.” For Cassian’s Siphons were beginning to sputter.
“Rhys will kill me if I leave you here.”
“Rhys will do no such thing, and you know it. He’s got wards around this camp, and I’m not entirely defenseless, you know.”
I wasn’t lying, exactly, but … The Suriel might very well not appear if Mor was there. And if I told her where I was going … I had no doubt she would insist on coming with me.
We didn’t have the luxury of waiting for Jurian to give us information. About many things. I needed to leave—now.
“Go fight. Make those Hybern pricks scream a bit.”
Nesta drew her attention away from the slaughter enough to add, “Help them.”
For that was Cassian, making another charge toward a Hybern commander. Hoping to spook the soldiers again.
Mor frowned deeply, bounced once on her toes. “Just—be on your guard. Both of you.”
I gave her a wry look—right before she rushed for her tent. I waited until she’d emerged again, buckling on weapons, and saluted me before she winnowed away. To the battlefield.
Right to Azriel’s side—just as a soldier nearly landed a blow to his back.
Mor punched her sword through the soldier’s throat before he could land that strike.
And then Mor began cutting a path toward Cassian, toward the broken front line beyond him, her damp golden hair a ray of sunshine amid the mud and dark armor.
Soldiers began screaming. Screamed some more when Azriel, blue Siphons flaring, fell into place beside her. Together, they plowed a path to Cassian—or tried to.
They made it perhaps ten feet before they were swarmed again. Before the press of bodies made even Mor’s hair vanish in mud and rain.
Nesta laid a hand against her bare, rain-slick throat. Cassian began another assault on a Hybern captain—slower this time than he’d been.