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The other princes hurl their gifts into the fray.

Raul digs into the shadows that still cloak the landscape, and the front line of marching soldiers topples as if felled by a trip wire.

As their colleagues halt to yank them back to their feet, Neven heaves a specially rigged catapult with his enhanced strength to send a whole volley of granite blocks down on their heads.

More of the enemy soldiers stumble and collapse, and flickering lights spark around them. Illusions I know are Lorenzo’s whip between the skeletal uniforms and whirl around them, distracting and disorienting them.

Thunder rumbles overhead, the most welcome sound I’ve ever heard. Marc dashes to the jug and hefts it up to wait for Bastien’s signal.

At the beckoning gesture of the prince’s hand, the former emperor splashes the liquid out into the air. Rather than falling to the ground at his feet, a gust of wind whisks the potion up toward the clouds.

Grinning at the initial success, Marc tosses the rest of the contents out for Bastien’s summoned wind to catch. My concoction streams up to meet the incoming rain.

Bastien managed to keep the clouds only over Valerisse’s army, still a couple hundred paces distant from our first ranks. The atmosphere is hardly overflowing with moisture, but the heavy drizzle patters down tinged with purple. A bitter scent reaches my nose.

I brewed the potion as concentrated as I could make it so that it could reach as many as possible when combined with the water of the rain and still sink quickly into the soldiers’ skin.

The sedative is a sister to the one I brewed to “kill” the rebel in my confirmation rite for Sabrelle, although that one needed blood drawn to fully knock out a man.

The mingled drops hit armor and uniforms. They must be trickling through the gaps in helms and mail, soaking through fabric to flesh.

All at once, shouts go up through Valerisse’s army. Someone must have recognized the potential threat. An invisible force smacks through the falling rain and sends it flying toward us instead.

We were ready for that response. Gifted soldiers on our side form barriers of their own. The drops splatter across the conjured walls and dribble to the grass to soak into the earth instead.

Bastien grimaces, his shoulders relaxing only slightly. “I already blew it all across the field. I don’t think they deflected much.”

But how much of the diluted potion soaked in far enough to have an effect on our targets?

Raul swings his arms again, tripping more rows of soldiers with his ropes of solidified shadow. Beyond them, a few others are staggering, hands pressed to their heads as if trying to steady themselves.

Here and there throughout the mass of uniformed figures, more and more start to sway. A few dozen outright collapse. Others slump against their colleagues.

My spirits lift with the rising dawn. The strategies we planned are wearing the enemy down. Maybe we can overcome Valerisse’s army before our blades even clash, without needing to fling bodies into battle or risk unexpected sacrifices after all.

Another volley of our arrows shrieks through the air, with Bastien joining in now. This time, the enemy soldiers aren’t quite as sharp about jerking up their shields.

As forms crumple through the front ranks, Raul whips out rippling lashes of shadow all through the mass of bodies. In the midst of their stumbles and yelps of alarm, Lorenzo casts another wave of dizzying illusions.

The catapults groan with more flung boulders. Their dust showers the enemy army, but a few of the massive rocks hit their marks unshattered.

Supernatural energy warbles through the air from the gifts various other soldiers on our side are bringing to bear—lurching the ground beneath our opponents’ feet, speeding the arrows faster, cracking the joints of armor and the buckles of belts.

There’s still so many of our attackers, surging over the far-off slopes to fill the fields between with their mass of black and white. Have we felled a third of their number?

We’re closing the gap. As long as we keep going—as long as we don’t falter?—

I glance at my other jug, that one of a potion meant to confuse the mind, but I’m not sure there’s any point in attempting to rain it down on the enemy when they’re aware of that trick now. Maybe later, after they’ve been distracted by other gambits.

Bastien follows my gaze. I make a quick gesture to indicate he should focus on using his talents in other ways.

He smiles tightly. With the launch of his next arrow, a sudden wave of wind roars across the fields.

The soldiers who were already wavering crash into one another.

Several of the formations have fallen into total chaos.

I catch sight of officers riding amongst them, hollering orders I can’t make out—of a figure that must be Valerisse with a plume in her helm so richly purple it might very well be illegal for anyone not of the imperial line to wear it.

She raises her arm, the bronze band gleaming around her bicep.

A flash of ruddy light washes over her army. The soldiers gather themselves with renewed determination.

Raul grasps at the thinning shadows, and Lorenzo hurls out a deluge of illusionary images. Arrows rain down through the fading drizzle.

From somewhere in the enemy ranks, a barrage of magic-driven energy hurtles toward us.

The brutal wave sweeps across a vast span of terrain like a lightning storm brought to earth, sparks crackling. It surges up the hill so fast it shrieks through the air.

Soldiers farther down the hillside cry out in pain. My guards leap in closer around me, whipping out their own gifts to shield me in their various ways.

Even so, the impact wallops me hard enough to send me staggering backward. My ears ring. I stumble onto my ass.

For a few moments, my head reels. I gulp for breath.

Grunts and groans carry from all sides. Still dazed, I shove myself upright on shaking legs.

As far as I can tell, I’m unharmed other than the pained stutter of my heart and the ache that’s woken up in my recently broken arm, but all around me…

Hundreds of our soldiers lie limp across the hillside. Even Axius has crumpled to the ground nearby, blinking blearily as blood trickles from a cut on his forehead.

Just beyond him, Cleric Pierus sprawls face down in the dirt next to his toppled shrine. The blast has seared his robes red and black.

The back of his head has been smashed right off.

Dear gods… Of all the people …

He’ll never come back home to his wife.

I wrench my gaze to Raul, who sways where he’s fallen to a crouch. His bulging arms hang slack at his sides despite the straining of his jaw as if he’s willing them to move.

Are they paralyzed? Completely ruined?

Next to him, Lorenzo has toppled to his hands and knees. His eyes rove wildly, focusing for only an instant before they flick onward. His head bobs as if he’s lost all sense of balance.

In front of me, one of my guards cries out. “Kassun!”

The chill that was swelling inside me pierces right through my heart.

The skeptical man who once muttered derisive remarks about me, the guard I won over through combat and confidence who’s since defended me with every shred of his courage, has crumpled where the surge of magic hit him while he shielded me.

Blood gushes from a gouge in Kassun’s chest too massive for anyone to hope to survive. His eyes have already clouded over.

For me. He died so that I wouldn’t.

He’ll never again laugh as he spars with his fellow soldiers—or with me—in the training room. Never again make a pretty maid giggle in the halls.

Tears sear my eyes. It’s too much.

“What’s happening?” Bastien demands in a hard voice that can’t quite disguise its edge of panic. “Aurelia? Fuck!”

He swipes at his own eyes where he’s braced by the jugs—both of which are now shattered, the contents of the second spilling across the ground. The prince’s bow lies snapped amid the shards.

The skin of Bastien’s face is reddened, his gaze vague as if he can’t see anything at all. What did that deluge of hostile magic do to him ?

Valerisse lets out a whoop of victory, and her army rushes toward us. The bottom of my stomach drops as if I’ve been hollowed out from the inside.

We’re bleeding now, all across this hill. So many have died for me… and in a matter of minutes, I might very well follow them.