55

To the Trees

“I have to warn Bina what’s happening.” Reven aims a look at me that’s pure royal command, the king in him showing through.

The king in him. If Eidolon is killed, Reven will be the King of Tyndra. And if anything happens to Tabra before I can get to her, that makes me the Queen of Aryd. Hells. Eidolon might get what he wants after all.

“Don’t move from this spot until I get back.” Another order.

Before I can point out that staying in one spot in the middle of an invasion might not be the safest move, he’s gone.

“Where do you need us?” Cain asks Vos. The first to react.

“You’re a fighter.” Vos isn’t asking. Warriors recognize their like.

Cain nods anyway.

“Imperium?” Vos asks.

“I can pull water out of the ground.” Cain looks at his hands, making a fist around the bandages still wrapped around them. “I’ve never used my power in a fight, but I’ll come up with something.”

“Good,” Vos says. “Position yourself on the north side of the village. I’ll be on the east side—I control ice. Reven to the south—he’s shadow. Just so you don’t accidentally try to kill either of us.” He turns to Horus. “You—”

“I will stay with the villagers.” Horus beats him to it. Vos nods, and Horus runs off.

“Anyone to the west?” Cain asks.

“A last-ditch escape if it goes bad,” Vos says over his shoulder as he moves to the base of the nearest tree. He pulls on a rope, raising a large crate into the air. Supplies, maybe? Weapons? “There’s a secret path to the west and then north. From there, try to get to that ladder to Wildernyss.”

It strikes me in that moment that Reven and his people, who obviously are the ones who must have put those ladders there, have done more in their time here than I, or my grandmother, or my sister, or my ancestors, have done in centuries. And if I get out of this alive, I’m damn well making some changes.

Vos is done issuing instructions. He finishes whatever he’s doing with the crate and takes off into the night, shouting, “Stay in the trees.”

The villagers take up the cry.

But they can’t be safe up there, not with those easy-access stairways. Granted, it’ll slow the soldiers down, but by how much?

Cain makes to run, too, but pulls up when I stay where I am beside Tziah. “Come on, Meren.”

I shake my head. “I have to stay here.”

“Because he said so?” Something like shock coated in a thick layer of what might be betrayal ripples over him and breaks my heart. Because until not that long ago, I would have followed Cain to the ends of the dominions. He wouldn’t have even had to ask.

I shake my head. “I’ll stay with the people here in case you can’t hold them back.”

Not much of a defense. While I have knives, I’ve only trained to deal with one or two attackers. Not an army. My powers… Those are unpredictable at best. Hit-and-miss. Just look at my failures trying to make a simple glass wall. But I have to try.

So I stay.

Tziah is tugging on my arm by now, pointing to the trees, and given Vos’s shouted instructions, I know where she wants me to be.

“Go,” I tell Cain. “And no dying on me.”

This isn’t his fight. I dragged him into this. But I know my friend, and honor is important with him. Even through a face still frozen with disappointment in me, his crooked, cocky smile heals a small part of my heart.

“Don’t forget what I taught you about fighting.” Then he turns and sprints away. I watch him go.

Tziah makes a hissing sound, like she opened her mouth and closed it right away. But Reven said to stay here, so I hesitate.

I kneel down and, using my power, pull sand up from the ground, its pale color stark against the darker soil and blanket of pine needles. I use it to draw an arrow in the dirt, pointing at the tree Tziah has been tugging me toward. I have no idea if Reven will see it. With feet heavy, at odds with the rushing blood and fear thrumming through my veins, I follow her up a set of winding stairs I haven’t used before. For once, height isn’t the scariest thing about this. In fact, I hardly notice.

As soon as we reach the first platform, she stops.

“Should we go higher?” I ask. At least two more platforms are above us.

Without looking at me, she shakes her head and points at the tree bark. I understood the first part, but… “Um. Is there something the tree is going to do?”

Does Reven have some sort of tree Hylorae in his ranks I didn’t know about?

Tziah shakes her head again and holds a palm up flat. I figure that means wait. So I wait a few steps back from where she stands at the rail, sticking closer to the wide, immovable trunk. She’s peering into the forest below us and around us, and so am I. More than that, I’m listening.

I know this silence. I’ve heard it before the muffled rumble of an arriving zariphate, or among courtiers when my grandmother was in a rage. It’s the silence of those trying to make themselves small and unnoticeable. It’s the sound of the Vanished trying to wish away or pray away what they know is coming next.

Tension twists my insides, building with each silent moment. Where are the soldiers? Invasion should be loud, right?

Given the number of tents we saw, we’re looking at at least five or six hundred. Maybe more. A thousand? When they come, it won’t be subtle or soft. It will be with a roar.

I do the only thing I can think of—get ready. I ignite my power and start pulling sand up from the ground all around us as fast as I can. What I have in mind, if I can even do it, requires a lot of sand. After a few minutes of tugging it out of the ground but not going fast enough, I switch tactics and draw it from the piles already heaped in the clearing where I spent an entire day practicing.

Part of me wonders what anyone witnessing streams of sand creeping along the forest floor is thinking. The glass spikes I made before are my best bet. They worked on those boats, so maybe I can make a moat of them around us now. A deadly hedge.

At Tziah’s frowning glance at my hands, I drop to a crouch, using the bulk of the tree and the rails to hide the radiance shining out of my palms. Not difficult. The glow is dimmer now than even when I was in Aryd making my flowers. Hardly a pinprick.

I put a hand to my amulet.

A whistle pierces the eerie quiet of the night. A sound I’ve heard before. Recently. I grab Tziah’s arm and drag her into a crouch behind the wood paneling of the rail. The arrows striking around us hit all at once.

She stares at me wide-eyed, and I stare back.

Somewhere along the line, I think maybe I’ve stopped feeling the fear. It’s there. I know it is, or my heart wouldn’t be tripping over itself. But even days ago I would have felt like I was swimming through it, like haze or a sand trap.

But right now my mind is crystal clear.

Maybe because I don’t see a way out of this. I’ll fight. For me, for these people. But I’m going to die here. We all are. I see the same certainty in Tziah’s frosted eyes.

That she doesn’t even appear shaken tells me that she’s faced death before. Maybe too often.

She flattens her palm toward the ground, then lowers it, and I nod. As long as we stay down, we should be safe enough from the arrows. But they know we’re in the trees, and they’re already near enough to shoot at us. I still don’t know from where, exactly. How’d they get so close without us hearing? Or, for that matter, without running into—

Tziah points down at the ground, and in the guttering of the lantern light below I can make out frost creeping slowly across the forest floor. Vos.

Black shadow churns in the sky, blocking out the moons. From another direction, a boom blasts through the night so hard it rocks the trees enough to make leaves flutter from the branches.

That sound unleashes hell.

A howl of soldiers, hundreds strong, sends a lance of dread down my spine, and yet my mind remains clear. The shouts get louder, a wave of sound crashing toward us. With the pounding of boots on the ground, like ants crawling out of a crushed anthill, warriors burst into view below us from every direction. But not the white-armored ones from the temple I’m expecting. These are something else.

Something even more terrifying.