Page 34 of Power of Draken (Fated to the Draken Riders #1)
Chapter 34
Rowan
“ U p and armed!”
“Perimeter breach! Everyone on guard!”
I wake with a start, my head pounding right along with the world around me. Shouts come from every direction. Warnings. Orders. Shocked cries. Cadets scramble, the chains of their manacles clanging as they dart about to figure out what’s going on, or at least avoid getting skewered in the melee.
A shadow moves at the edge of my vision, cutting through the disarray and rising panic.
“Ainsley.” Kai looks wild, dangerous, and—gods—totally free. His shackles are broken. He’s got a sword in one hand, his other gripping my shoulder. “On your feet.”
“What’s happening?”
"Eryndor soldiers,” he says curtly, his attention already back on the unfurling battle. “Seems the commandant has decided she does care about what happens to her cadets after all.”
The commandant? I shoot to my feet and peer through the fray, unable to help myself despite knowing that I should be making myself a smaller target rather than a larger one. It takes only moments to find my mother in the chaos and clashing of swords, her auburn hair whipping in the wind as she moves with a deadly grace I’ve heard about but never seen in truth.
No wonder I’m a disappointment to her.
My mother’s sword flashes in the firelight as she parries blow after blow, forging her way toward the mercenary leader, a hulking brute of a man named Hak who is moving toward her with the same brutal efficiency.
“What is the meaning of this, Phillys?” Hak demands, shouting to be heard over the battle cries as they near each other. Apparently the two are on a first name basis.
“You’ve kidnapped Spire cadets.” She guts a man on her right without pausing the conversation. “I’d like them back, please.”
“Kidnapped?” Hak opens his arms, shaking his head in a show of bewilderment. “Not at all. We are simply participating in your field exercise. Are you not honor bound to follow your own rules?”
She laughs without mirth. “A mercenary talking about honor?” her voice hardens to the one I know all too well. “Enough. You are no part of this, Hak. You know it. You will return my people.”
My people. Am I her people too? Or was she thinking about the stronger cadets when she said that.
Kai’s arm wraps around my waist and he yanks me down. Hard. “Are you trying to get your head taken off?” he hisses.
Behind us, there is a familiar creak of the prison wagon being opened and gruffly passed orders between the mercs to corral us into it.
Kai’s gaze swings toward the wagon, then the darkened treeline. “Listen to me carefully,” he instructs. “We are not going back to the wagon. Stay with me and be ready to move. Did you succeed in weakening your shackles the way you did mine?”
And here I thought I’d been discreet about it.
"Yes, but it’s not enough to break through.” I test the chain with my legs again. Iron rusted on the inside may be more fragile, but it’s still tough. I couldn’t get Collin’s or Ellie’s chains to break apart either.
Kai braces his foot on my shackle chain, then brings the blade he’s acqui red down on the chain’s center, shattering it beneath the force of the blow. Holy gods. No one should be that strong.
“Ready?” he asks.
“We need Ellie.” I grab his arm as I look for her. My friend is on the ground, huddled in on herself. I rush to her, pulling a cursing Kai in my wake. Gods, but it’s nice to be able to move my ankles more than eighteen inches again.
“Ellie.” I drop beside her. She trembles uncontrollably, her face pale with a terror I’ve never seen in her before. “What’s happened?”
"She’s come for me, Ro,” Ellie whimpers. “The commandant. She knows I broke. She will torture me. Kill me. She knows.”
“No. Listen, the game is over. She is here to get us back. This is a rescue.”
Ellie shakes her head in apathetic, blind disbelief.
I look at Kai for help, but his face is sober. Right. I know my mother. She might be willing to fight to get her people back, but there will be an example made. Of someone. And I can’t promise Ellie it won’t be her.
"We have to move, now," Kai urges, his voice barely audible over the din of battle. His icy eyes dart around, assessing threats closing in around us. Soldiers clash violently mere yards away, swords clanging and flashing in the flickering light of the fires. The scent of blood and death is already rising into the air.
I grip Ellie's arm and try to haul her to her feet but she is bigger than me and little better than dead weight. Behind us, I hear the all too familiar sound of prisoners being loaded into the wagon. The mercenaries are rounding up cadets left and right. Any second now they'll reach us too.
"Come on Ellie, please!” I beg her. “We can't stay here."
Ellie flinches as someone cries out in pain. “They’re going to drag me back and?—"
Sheathing his sword in one fluid motion, Kai scoops Ellie up into his arms. "This way," he commands, jerking his head towards the shadowy treeline.
I nod and scramble after him, my heart pounding in my ears as we weave thr ough the chaotic fray of clashing swords and grunting soldiers. As we near the edge of the fighting, a long-legged mercenary with a patch over one eye lunges at us from the shadows. A cry catches in my throat.
Still holding Ellie, Kai pivots and sinks his booted foot square into the man's chest. I swear I can hear ribs crack as the merc crumples to the ground in a groaning heap.
"Keep moving," Kai orders, shifting Ellie in his arms. He isn’t even breathing hard as he plunges us into the treeline.
I follow close on his heels, branches whipping at my face and snagging on my filthy tunic as we race headfirst into the darkness, slowing only when the half blind trek makes me trip over roots with every other step.
“Are you alright?” Kai demands, the third time I fall.
“I’m—”
“Appear to be deserting,” Collin’s voice announces a moment before the man himself steps out from behind a wide oak. His shackles are broken, same as mine and Kai’s, but whereas Kai’s arms are full of a shocked Ellie, Collin is holding a crossbow with an auric steel arrow already notched and pointed at my chest.