Page 94 of The Crown of Moonlight

I feel both Lorcan and Daire focus their attention on her more sharply.

“Only the sentries,” I say.“We’re going to have to leave the camp alone and sneak past the other sentries.Can you come and dispose of the dead so no one finds them?”

She gives me a slow appraisal, checking for injuries first, then studying my expression.With a sigh, she pushes to her feet.

I’m not looking at Ronan—I haven’t dared look closely at him yet.Instead, I watch as the Shadehounds peel themselves away from the hillside above Flora and stalk towards Lorcan, their grey fur bristling and dipped in shadow.They tilt their heads when they reach him, and their lips curl until their teeth gleam.Then they vanish.

Daire waves a hand through the air where they were standing, and a low growl makes him jump back.

“That’s a message for you, Lorcan,” Ronan says.

“What?They’re watching, and I won’t see them coming?”Lorcan doesn’t sound amused.

Ronan shrugs.“Seems you’re smarter than you look.”

The wind has shredded the clouds, and the moon casts a pale glow that ripples across the black water beside the track.We all stare grim-faced at the Grey’s crumpled body and severed head.Facing the corpse is like staring down into the Pit, a mirror of what any of us could too easily become.

“Don’t break oaths, is the moral of that story,” Ronan says, echoing my own thoughts.

Daire picks up the Grey’s sword from where it lies in the moss and prepares to fling it out into the bog.

Flora catches his arm.“Don’t.”

“It’s celestial steel,” Daire hisses.

“Yes, and we’ll need every scrap of that to arm our warriors if we want to have a chance of defeating Vheara.”

Lorcan’s eyes narrow.He studies her, then stoops to retrieve the Grey’s head by the hair.“It’s not a bad idea, but there are laws about giving out celestial steel.”

“Do any prohibit me from giving it out?”

“Well, no—”

“Good.”Flora slides the sword through the straps of her pack behind Eira’s saddle.

Lorcan watches her a moment longer, then draws his arm back to throw the head.“Any objection if I throw this?Thought I’d better ask permission.”

“Lorcan, don’t be an ass,” I snap.

“As it happens, we should leave the Grey,” Flora says.

Daire cocks his head, thinking it through.A moment later, he gives her a slow, admiring smile that makes me want to cuff the back of his head.“You want to make it look as though the soldiers killed the Grey and ran away.Then all we have to do is sneak past the camp and the picket of sentries on the other side.”

He cuts me a look I can’t quite read, and it occurs to me that Daire hasn’t stoked Lorcan’s anger a single time since we left the cavern.The impulse to turn emotion into chaos is embedded so deep within Daire that it’s a reflex, which makes me wonder what he’s thinking.

Flora moves to the edge of the bog.The rest of us pick up the red-coated bodies, then follow as Flora picks her way through, searching out the solid ground and creating it where none exists.

“You can drop them here,” she says.“It’s deep enough.”

“Strictly for the sake of curiosity, why aren’t we throwing them in the lake?”Lorcan asks when he comes back with a second soldier.

Flora doesn’t so much as glance at him.“The loch is shallow a long way out, and the water may be stained with peat, but it is clear.”

She leaves him to reason the rest out for himself, and I can’t help noticing that Ronan grins.Daire doesn’t bother to hide a smirk.When the last of the bodies has been dropped, Flora watches the scarlet coats sink into the moss, peat, and tar-dark water.I move back towards the shore, but a strange prickle of magic raises the hair on the back of my neck, and I turn back.

The crown burns brighter across Flora’s brow, red and orange flames mirrored on the water below.Power spills outward, and the loch shivers—ripples skimming the surface—while the charged air blows her hair back and billows her shawl.

Ronan cuts a look back at the camp, and Daire hastily taps a rune along his throat.I can only pray that none of the Greys nearby have enough magic-sense to feel Flora’s power across the distance.But then I realise that what I sense doesn’t feel like magic, not in any way more than the magic in the wind or the sunlight or the spring leaves unfurling in the birches.