60

I had not known stone could burn. Chunks of it smoldered all over the courtyard.

Fire and brimstone and blood in the air and bodies on the ground. It felt like the end of the world.

Gray uniforms everywhere were stained with red. Knives and swords and guns sang violently in the smoke. Wash and I clung to each other, panting, unsure what to do.

The little pestykk were everywhere.

No, not little pestykk. They were children. Innocents, caught in the claws of a tyrant. Someone had to get them out.

I turned, searching for someone to tell, someone who could save them, there had to be someone—and nearly ran into her. The Sidhe girl with dark hair and a pocket full of yellow flowers.

“The children!” I shouted. I could hardly hear my own voice above the din.

She seized my shoulders and turned me toward a pack of women—the Rusalki, fighting for their children’s lives. Their hair flew and their knives sliced through the air and they wept as they fought.

“The mothers are taking them!” she shouted to Wash and me, her voice straining, English accent just barely detectible above the furor. “The Rusalki are taking the children to the Leshii camp in the forest!”

The mothers pushed the children toward the edge of town, hurrying them toward the gates and beyond, and away they ran on little legs. Go, I saw one Rusalka woman say to another. She sheathed her knife, swung a small girl over one shoulder, hitched her pack onto the other, and sprinted for the wild beyond the wall.

Fur die Freiheit.

Fur die Wildnis.

I’d never seen such fierceness. I’d never seen warriors like them.

Not far behind, I saw Vasylysa—or, rather, the girl I’d known as Vasylysa. I didn’t know her real name. She and a few other maids were running. Wash chewed her cuticle, staring after the backs of the women she’d protected.

I didn’t know if they were headed to the Leshii camp or somewhere else. I bid the girl Godspeed in my heart and hoped she’d be safe, wherever she ran.

“Come on.” The English girl took me by the elbow, dragging me away from the tower. I wanted to follow her—we had to get Wash out. But I twisted against her grip. “My friends,” I shouted. “I need to find them!”

“Who are your friends?” she asked. “Who are you looking for?”

“Cobie!” I shouted. “Anya! Aleksei!”

Another explosion rang out, and I wheeled. Baba Yaga’s spindly house was in flames, its dozens of eyes clouded with smoke.

But suddenly, I could see my friends all around me.

Torden and his drengs fought to one side of the courtyard. Bear and his knights—Veery and Kay and the rest—were nearby, swords humming and words flying between them.

Torden struck again and again, finally able to use Mjolnir in the open, the hammer like lightning in his grip. Sweat poured down his forehead as he fought, dealing out by hand the violence he took such pains to avoid.

The Rusalki were half gone, but others clad in green and gold and blue and white fought the soldiers in gray. And the Beholder’s crew were all around me. Still no sign of Lang, but—Yu and Homer. Skop. Vishnu. Basile. And Cobie and Anya.

The girls raced to my side, Anya clinging to Skop. “Wash needs care!” I shouted. Blood was still flowing freely from the cut on her head.

“Yu!” Skop bellowed into the mob, and the doctor raced over. He and Cobie helped Wash out of the courtyard, toward the gates. I cast a desperate glance at the battle, not wanting to join it but fearing for those I left behind. I saw more faces I knew every moment.

“Selah.” Anya took me by the arm, turned me to face her. “You’re bleeding. You aren’t a soldier. There’s nothing you can do.” She cupped my face. “Let’s go home.”

Home.

I began to shake.

I followed Anya past the ditch the rebels had dug as a firebreak at the edge of the city. Past Stupka-Zamok’s walls. Past the empty-eyed skulls watching from the gates, their backs turned on the witch queen whose castle burned behind them.

I was going home.