Page 61 of Swords of Soul and Shadow (Gate Chronicles #3)

She looked at her hands. She had power over time—could she do something to reset the city to the time before it was attacked? It would kill her, surely. But if it spared so many others—

“You shouldn’t play with time,” Fely said, as if reading her mind. “It’s tempting, but the repercussions could be catastrophic.”

Hallie opened her mouth to reply when something roared overhead, and the trio ducked, peeking up at the sky. Through the branches in the trees, a hover whizzed above their heads. Its passing whipped the branches and budding leaves into a whirlwind. Hallie’s hair lashed her face.

Niels swore again.

The hover was flying so low it barely cleared the tree canopy, and it was going entirely too fast—inhumanly fast.

Holy blasting stars.

Three more hovers zoomed behind it. Hallie dropped to the ground, barely avoiding a large tree root, the sooty scent of grass filling her senses once more.

The trees’ protests were lost in the firefight as the hovers passed.

Loud explosions echoed off the city walls, making it almost impossible to hear her own scream.

She untangled herself from her satchel and crawled to the edge of the trees. As terrifying as it sounded, the morbid fascination of it all took over. She needed to see what was happening.

The first hover she’d seen swooped in and out around the others, firing its blasters whenever another was in range. One hover screeched as it was hit square-on and crashed miles in the distance, an echoing boom and fiery cloud following.

That explained the other fires she’d seen earlier.

Hallie bit her lip to keep her terror from spilling out. She didn’t understand. Those weren’t Jaydian hovers. They were blue-tinged for one, but the one firing on them looked identical. Infighting? A traitor?

Fear froze her limbs as she watched the rogue hover take out the last two, rolling and weaving like a master of the air.

Hallie couldn’t help but gasp even as the rogue took out the final one after looping above and shooting it from behind.

The whole maneuver happened so quickly Hallie was dizzy just watching.

“Now that’s a pilot.” Niels’ voice shook with awe.

“I’ll say,” Fely breathed.

The admiration in her voice was surprising. She had been betrothed to King Filip. Those were his men.

While Hallie still had no idea what was going on, she couldn’t help the trickle of comradery she felt toward the other woman. She wasn’t nearly as bad as Hallie had assumed.

Shouts and cheers erupted from her right, but she barely heard it over the explosion following the crash of the final hover into the city wall’s remnants. They weren’t alone.

Maybe they would find Cerl soldiers. Maybe they would find refugees.

No wonder the grass tasted like soot. The capital had been burning for days. She wondered if anyone had survived. She pushed herself to her knees.

The rogue hover pilot whipped his hover around and zoomed back toward Hallie, Fely, and Niels, flying just above the trees.

She screamed, but it was lost in the wind tearing through her and blowing her sideways.

She caught herself on a nearby trunk, the bark scraping her palms. With her pack and satchel on her shoulders, she followed the cheers punctuating the crackling of fire in the distance.

There was something familiar about the way the pilot flew, the loop at the end in particular.

Could it be Kase?

Her heart squeezed at the thought. She wanted it to be him so badly it hurt, but he could never have made it to the capital from the Nardens in such a short amount of time. Besides, how would he have gotten a hold of a Cerl hover?

But she couldn’t help hoping for the impossible.

Just on the other side of the trees, the hover touched down in a small clearing encircling a gaping hole in the ground. It was as if someone had grabbed a chunk of earth and tossed it aside. Hallie tugged Fely behind a large oak. Niels followed suit.

People poured out of the hole and into the open, jostling one another for the best view of the pilot, who had yet to leave the hover. Their clothes were dusty, torn, looking as if they’d seen better days.

Jaydian refugees. They had to be.

Where had the hole come from, though? It wasn’t natural. She’d been out here before, and she didn’t remember it. Maybe bombs. Maybe…maybe…she didn’t know what else, really.

When she saw a few soldiers with the Jaydian emblem on their breasts join the group, Hallie led Fely and Niels out from behind the trees.

“Just let me do the talking,” Hallie whispered out the side of her mouth as they walked.

“Sure, Hal.” Niels held his injured arm to his chest. He was being too nice. She guessed that was the best-case scenario after everything. Maybe she could figure out what else to say to him after a medic saw to his wrist. The makeshift bandage wasn’t going to hold up much longer.

“I am perfectly capable of speaking for myself,” Fely said firmly.

Hallie nodded. “Fine, if anyone asks, you’re a Rubikan refugee.” Her thick Rubikan accent wouldn’t leave that to guesswork, anyway. “They’ve been pouring into the capital since the civil war. Just be smart about it.”

“So I should not mention that my grandfather was the one who started that war?”

With everything that had happened in the last few days, Hallie shouldn’t have been caught off guard—but there she was, gasping as they joined the group. She was about to whisper something back when she caught the sly grin on Fely’s face. “Is that the truth?”

She just waved delicately. “No matter. Let us figure out who this skilled pilot is and scold them for scaring us half to death, shall we?”

No one glanced their way or questioned where they had come from.

They were busy shouting about the pilot, who had finally popped open the windshield.

While Hallie was tall, she still had to stand on her tiptoes to see anything at all.

A soldier or two tried to herd people back into the hole, but more kept climbing out of it.

Hiding underground? That would explain the empty streets of the capital, evident even from a mile or two away. Was it like the Stoneset caverns, hollowed out after the massacre at Ravenhelm?

Out in the open, they were sitting ducks for any other Cerl hovers that decided to fly over, but Hallie didn’t think they cared.

The smell of sweaty, unwashed bodies was nearly overwhelming.

Fely’s nose scrunched against the barrage.

Niels didn’t seem to care, just looked at the ground.

Probably trying to keep his pain in check.

“Hey, that’s my jacket.”

Hallie jumped and turned to find someone standing at her other side, a man in his early twenties with jet-black hair and narrow obsidian eyes, like Petra’s. She didn’t know him.

When he grabbed her shoulder, Fely snatched his hand and shoved it away. “I’d suggest backing away.”

A flawless Jaydian mountain accent poured out of Fely’s mouth that time. Hallie’s mouth dropped open, but she quickly shut it.

“I’ve been missing the jacket for a while,” the man explained, flushing as he took his hand back. He pointed to Hallie’s shoulder.

Hallie looked down at the name embroidered there. Private Yolen .

Oh, right. Kase had filched this one before they’d left Kyvena.

“Listen—” Hallie began, removing the jacket.

She didn’t take off her satchel, which made the entire action awkward in the enclosed space in the crowd.

Finally extracting her other arm from the sleeve, she held it out to him.

A nice breeze skittered across the back of her neck, now exposed without the jacket. “It’s a long story, and I’m so sorry.”

The man shook his head, pushing the jacket back to her. “No, it’s fine. You probably saved my life.” He held up a hand and gave her a quick smile. “Thanks for stealing it.”

Huh?

Then he walked off, joining the rest of the crowd.

Fely gave the man a thoughtful look before turning back to her. “Jaydians are odd.”

She huffed. “Just how many different accents can you do?”

“A good amount,” Fely said with a smile. “When you grow up in the home I did, you find ways to entertain yourself.”

“I helped my parents run the inn. I’ve met dozens upon dozens of people from all parts of the planet, but I can’t seem to replicate any of them so accurately.”

“Didn’t stop you from trying,” Niels said, a small smile poking out.

Hallie raised her eyebrows. He must’ve been feeling better if he was bringing up old memories again. She remembered many a night entertaining the inn’s guests with one of their plays. Those were some of her favorite memories with her brother and Niels. They were also some of the more painful.

She gave him a tentative smile back. If they could simply return to that friendship, everything would be all right, she thought.

But the emotion on his face disappeared as quickly as it had come about.

Enough of that, then.

“Well, it’s only useful in the most ridiculous situations,” Fely said, noticing Hallie’s face and Niels' demeanor. “Good for party tricks. Estate dinners are quite a bore.”

Hallie laughed a little at that, breaking the earlier tension. It was nice. The heaviness in her soul hesitantly lifted a little with it. This side of Fely, she found she liked. In a different world, they might have even been friends.

However, after everything they’d gone through in the last hour, from the fight with Loffler and her betrothed dying to the tumultuous trip to Kyvena, the woman looked…remarkably relaxed.

When she thought about it that way, it seemed clear something was off. She just couldn’t pinpoint what, exactly. She glanced at Niels, but he hadn’t seemed to notice. He was glaring toward the rogue hover.

She folded the jacket over her arms. It was getting warm anyway. She turned back toward the hover, where the pilot had finally stood and waved to the cheering crowd.