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They crept until they were certain they could run, plunging through the woods to the clear-cut and sprinting to the trench that circled the outer edge of the camp.

It was dug a full six feet deep, the excavated dirt piled high on its inward side to form an additional protective barrier, which handily shielded Kat and Emory as they slid down to its base and then took off, staggering through the loose dirt as fast as their feet could carry them.

Kat spent the entire sprint cursing Adrien Augustine and his entire rotten bloodline.

Surely with all his Aurean might, he could have concocted a strategy that didn’t hinge on throwing powerless infantry against the Lesser Lords.

But the prince wanted his throne and his people’s praise, and now innocent soldiers were going to face a nightmare for which, by his own design, they were horrifically unprepared.

Worse, there’d been no time to break the Third Century from the rest of the legions. The temptation to raise the alarm was blistering. If they threw the whole camp into chaos, there was a chance they could secure the prince, even if it would shatter the peace.

But there was also a chance—a slim chance, but a chance nonetheless—that they could react just as Adrien intended.

Could take this Lesser Lord out quietly, with no Aurean flash at all.

If Adrien was at the scribes’ camp, he’d be escorted by at least two decades of the Third Century.

Two of them were assigned to him at all times.

Two didn’t sound like nearly enough to stop a Lesser Lord in its tracks, but Kat knew they were past the point of picking their battles. Two would have todo.

The scribes’ camp was an ember of light, three large administrative tents flanked by a set of smaller sleepers that laid like darkened logs around a campfire.

In desperate times, they would be working at all hours of the night, ensuring communications flowed smoothly among the legions, the capital, their suppliers, and anything else necessary to keep thousands of soldiers in fighting shape.

They should have been enjoying a much-needed reprieve from all that, but as Kat and Emory approached, she saw they were just as busy as ever.

Part of that impression was formed by the decades standing guard around the central tent.

When Adrien had demanded earlier today that at least twenty of the Third Century’s soldiers would need to escort him at all times, it had sounded like overkill—especially to the poor bastards abruptly thrown onto the first night shifts.

Now Kat couldn’t be anything but cheered at the sight of her comrades.

She and Emory clambered out of the trench, their sprint dulled to a jog as they approached.

She snuck a glance at the tree line, but in the light that spilled from the camp, it was impossible to tell what might lurk in the shadows.

No one was screaming yet. They had to take the wins where they could get them.

“Kat?” one of the soldiers called as she approached. It was Paola, the seventh’s hinge spear, a sturdy older soldier who held their line together with raw grit every time they hit the front of the formation. “Actually this is great timing. I’ve been meaning to ask if you could put a word in with—”

“Nope,” Kat snapped firmly, glancing up and down the decade lined up outside the central tent.

All of them were armed for century combat, the spearbearers with their usual weapons and the shieldbearers with a shortsword sheathed at their hips.

It was an arrangement that worked well against thralls, but in unorganized combat, it would be a different story—especially given none of them were kitted out in their usual armor, only a light leather chestpiece and cap.

She caught Emory’s eye and knew he’d reached the same sobering conclusion. It would take more than numbers to win this. It would take a leader’s hand.

“What are you thinking?” she asked him.

“What are you thinking?” he countered.

“You rallied the troops at dinner—”

“Which means now it’s your turn—”

“What’s going on?” Paola interjected, looking wary.

“It’s the seventh and eighth here, right?” Kat asked, picking out more familiar faces among the soldiers arranged across the camp. “We need everyone to form up. Get in close, before—”

A sudden shout of alarm echoed across the clear-cut, severed just as quickly by a gargled choke that was all too familiar. On the edge of the tent’s light, a soldier swayed, then crumpled into the arms of the demon that had just cut his throat with nothing but a razor-edged nail.

The remaining four underlings were rushing from the trees, the rest of the soldiers lining the outer edge of the camp caught off guard as they struggled to bring their weapons around in time to meet them.

Kat had nothing. There were no spares for her or Emory, and they’d be hard-pressed to find suitable weapons among the scholars’ bedrolls.

Unless—

“The tents!” she shouted, sprinting to the closest of the sleepers as the rest of the posted soldiers rushed past. She kicked up the stakes and grabbed the canvas in a fistful, wading into the crumpled mess she’d made of it until she found the central pole holding the whole thing up—and an incredibly dismayed scholar rudely awakened by her boot, who could only watch in horror and confusion as she tore their shelter away and stripped the sturdy wooden beam of its rigging.

She glanced back over her shoulder to find Emory doing the same. It was a shorter weapon than the one she was used to wielding, and a longer one than he normally had to manage, but they’d have todo.

Ahead of them, the soldiers were meeting the demon underlings head-on, spears and swords struggling to keep their snapping jaws at bay.

Each of the legionnaires had paired off against an enemy, trying to distribute their strength against the five demons they faced, but their true strength—and their only hope—couldn’t surface in this disorganized brawl.

“Fall back to me!” Kat shouted, hoisting her makeshift staff.

If she’d had a smidge of Mira’s authority or a token like Adrien’s to make her voice too loud to ignore, maybe she could have pulled it off. But the seventh had just lost a man, and Kat’s command wasn’t nearly enough to override the instinct that had taken over.

It was one of the first things drilled into you on your first day on the lines—never let a demon have a corpse.

Not unless you wanted to see that person again, puppeted by demon flesh and screaming in mindless pain as they clawed their way through your line.

Do whatever necessary—beheading, burning, smashing their spine to bits—but never, never let a demon have a corpse.

“There’s no Demon Lord left to raise him,” Kat hollered, grabbing one of the seventh by the collar of his shirt as he tried to rush to his comrades’ aid.

“Davis deserves better than to be left in the dirt,” the man protested, wild-eyed. Three of his decade had forced the underling back from the man’s corpse, walling up as another slammed the base of her shield into poor Davis’s neck with a meaty crunch.

One of the underlings darted for an opening in their cluster, slavering jaw hung wide.

Kat’s shout of warning was swallowed by the scream the demon let out as Paola’s spear found its target, plunging deep into the underling’s shoulder and leaving a fountain of black blood in its wake as it tore free and staggered into a retreat.

Kat gritted her teeth and repeated, “Back to me! If we stay spread out, it’s going to have us.”

“What is?” Paola called over her shoulder.

A low, guttural noise rumbled from shadows of the tree line.

Kat didn’t need to say it a third time. The decades scrambled back like there were a thousand thralls on their heels. “Seventh to my right, eighth to my left,” Kat called, grasping for a bit of Mira’s unshakable certainty. “Mark your target. No advance beyond five feet. Clear?”

“Clear!” the decades replied in staggered shouts, lurching into formation.

She couldn’t blame them—she wasn’t their hinge or their centurion, and they’d all gone soft in the past week.

Everyone had dreamed that this might be over and they might never have to face a demon on the field again.

Worse, there was no century at their backs, no ranks to rotate through if they flagged, and no chance of calling for reinforcements.

They’d have to use every last drop of strength wisely. There’d be no recovering.

And the demons knew it. Their eyes glimmered with predatory hunger as they probed the new formation, all but daring the soldiers to lunge after them and waste precious energy. They’d wear them down first, then move in for the kill.

So their ranks had to move instead. “On my count, march,” Kat declared, pounding the butt of her staff into the ground to mark out the rhythm.

Four beats, and on the fourth, they stepped as one.

Kat could feel the reluctance of it, the way the line dragged with fear—and one notable exception, as Emory matched her without an ounce of hesitation.

Her thoughts flickered to the Battle of the Mouth. To the way he’d broken rank and thrown himself in front of her. To the way she was certain he hadn’t learned his lesson fromit.

Her own steps started to flag.

“Leftmost, striking!” one of the spearbearers on her left called out, and his decade contracted around him as he and his shield lunged forward.

The demon tried to skirt back a heartbeat too late, and the spear caught the meat of its thigh.

It let out a shrieking rasp, then another ear-shattering squeal as a second spear plunged into its abdomen, giving the first a chance to withdraw.

The air flushed with the acidic, smoke-edged tang of demonic blood.