by S. M. Boyce
Fenner began his way down the steps, apparently done examining the view, and Twin followed.
“Why aren’t you in the war?” she asked.
“Beg your pardon?”
“You said you couldn’t ‘join the action.’ Why?”
“Ah. Blood Gavin wanted someone he could trust guarding his home. He and I have been sparring together since we were in diapers. I can’t say we’re friends, since he’s significantly more important than me, but he knows I would die to protect my home.”
“Then shouldn’t you be in the Stele with him?”
Fenner smiled. “I am admittedly better at defensive planning than offense. It just makes more sense to my mind. But yes, I admit I’m still a bit ruffled I couldn’t go.”
Twin nodded, not sure what else to say. They meandered through the main road, walking slowly in the afternoon sunlight. She wondered if it was dark yet in the Stele, far away as it was.
A scream rang through the air. It ended with a gurgle.
Fenner snapped to attention and reached for his sword hilt.
Twin clutched her grimoire a bit tighter. “What was that?”
Fenner shushed her. He narrowed his eyes and tensed, scanning the empty streets. His gaze focused on the lichgate in the distance, and his body stilled to the point where Twin wasn’t sure the man was breathing.
Bells rang through the city. Twin flinched. Her grimoire slipped, about to fall, but she held on and pulled it to her chest.
The warning bells of an impending attack. Twin had only ever heard them in drills.
Fenner drew his sword and yelled something to the guards on the stairs. They ran forward. Twin couldn’t quite focus on his words—everything whizzed by her as she tried to process that they were being attacked.
A Hillsidian soldier raced toward her—or, more likely, Fenner. The guard ran faster than any Twin had ever seen. Fenner ran for him as well, closing the distance between them. Twin chased after him, doing her best to keep up.
They met each other before she could reach them, and she caught the tail end of the soldier’s report.
“…before Hillsidian assassins dropped from the canopy and began taking out sentries. We suspect more will follow, maybe an army. No word from sentries farther out. Some of the attackers have already infiltrated the kingdom, likely by stealing another soldier’s key to the city. I managed to grab a fallen comrade’s key before an assassin could get it.”
“Those aren’t Hillsidians,” Fenner answered.
“But sir—”
“No Hillsidians would attack their own capital. The Blood would simply order them to surrender upon his return. These aren’t Hillsidians we’re dealing with.”
Twin nodded. But that meant they’d changed form, and only two yakona kingdoms had that ability—the Stele and Ayavel.
A second bell rang at a higher pitch. Twin covered her ear with one hand, the other still holding her grimoire. She wished the book away, blue dust swirling about her as she hunched at the shrill sound. She wanted to write an update in her grimoire, but this wasn’t the place. She wouldn’t get two words out before a stampede raced toward the castle. She needed to help evacuate citizens to safe areas.
A woman opened a nearby door and looked out with wide eyes. Her lips moved, but Twin couldn’t hear the question.
The city flared to life. Doors opened. People screamed. The second bell was the warning to get to the vault—a system of tunnels below the castle that led to a safe room with food and water for the whole city. Tunnels ran under most of the homes, connecting almost everyone to a safe path to the vault. It would be cramped, but many would survive.
Guards raced by, running for the front gates. Twin hesitated by Fenner, who still shouted orders over the bells. Soldiers ran toward him, standing at his side with their swords drawn. Twin was a decent fighter, but she doubted she would be a match for trained soldiers. She didn’t want to get in the way. Instead, she would act as a healer.
She tapped Fenner’s shoulder to tell him her plan. He turned to her, his once-calm face now wrinkled with concentration. His sharp eyes focused on her with a ferocity that froze her in place. His brow twisted, back arched as he waited for her to speak. Her words stumbled in her mouth, and she fought to remember what she was going to say.
The front gates unraveled, the vines writhing as they opened. Stelian soldiers in black uniforms pushed against the vines to help the process along. Their charcoal skin contrasted with the gold glint of the metal gate. Their black eyes had no whites to them. Smoke hovered around them like a fog. They towered over the few unlucky Hillsidians on the near side of the fence.
Twin’s breath slipped from her body in a huff.
They couldn’t possibly be here unless they knew about the entire war—Braeden’s plan, the final attack, everything. They attacked Hillside at its weakest, when its Blood and most of its army was the farthest away. Somewhere amid the leaders and generals, there was a rat. Someone told Carden everything.
A hand grabbed Twin’s shoulder and spun her around. Fenner’s intense face once more filled her vision.
“Go to the vault!” he commanded.
“You need healers! Let me stay.”
“Get to the vault, vagabond! You’re my only voice to the outside, remember? I need you alive! Now go!”
She gritted her teeth but raced toward the castle. A mother and three children ran with her, their home apparently not connected to the vault system. She took the castle stairs two at a time and led her small group inside. They followed her as she scrambled through the halls. Men in green uniforms with the Hillsidian coat of arms pushed past, likely to join the fight.
A wolf statue came into view around a corner. Twin skidded to a halt, the family almost crashing into her. The marble wolf sat on its hind legs, claws outstretched as it snarled. She pulled on its left paw, grunting as the stubborn stone fought her. The mother jumped in to help, her feet dangling off the floor as she set her weight into the task. Between them, the paw lowered.
The statue creaked and swung on its hinges like a door. Twin ushered everyone backward to let it open. Stairs stretched below into utter darkness, only the first few steps illuminated with the hallway’s sunlight. Twin sent the group down the stairs. They filed in, one by one. After the last child slipped past, Twin hopped in and grabbed a handle on the back of the statue. She pulled, and the hidden door swung shut. It latched, and she imagined the paw springing back into place.
Her rescued citizens pooled at the bottom of the stairs. The mother sobbed. Her children mumbled in hushed tones, but they needed to be quiet. Twin shushed them, but no one seemed to hear her.
She beckoned to a girl, maybe thirteen. The girl raced back up the stairs.
“I need to give you a very important job,” Twin said.
The girl’s eyes grew wider. “Anything, vagabond.”
“Do you know the way to the vault?”
The girl nodded.
“Good. Take this group there and lead anyone else you find along the way. Everyone must be silent or the invaders will hear us. Can you do that?”
The girl nodded again and sped down the stairs.
Twin pressed her ear against the door and listened. Nothing. Only her racing heart thrummed, the pulse enough to question the spell of calm she’d employed to get them into the stairwell. A small metal plate the width of her hand covered a section of the door, its edges illuminated with a thin square of light. She dug her fingernails into one end and slid the plate aside, uncovering a small peephole. She leaned in, studying what she could see of the hallway. No one ran by.
She slid the metal plate back over the peephole and sat on the top step. Her knees shook. She buried her head in her hands and allowed her mind to finally process what was going on.
Stelians. Invaders. Betrayal. Somewhere in their lines, a traitor fought among them. She summoned her grimoire and set it in her lap, blue flares of light casting a cool glow on the stone at her feet. She lit a small
fire in her left palm, which shed enough light for reading. She opened the book, but the pages jumped ahead. There must have been another message entered into the grimoires while Twin was running.
The pages landed on the war updates. Rieve had added two entries. One, a rushed alert that Ayavel would move in, though Reive worried they were too far away to be useful. The second, a heartbreaking tirade littered with smudges and tear stains. Twin covered her mouth and sobbed. Zimmermann, likely dead. Rieve on the run. Evelyn on a murderous rampage, killing her own people.
It clicked.
Evelyn betrayed them. For whatever reason, she must have told Carden everything. The queen had no other reason for waiting to attack Rieve until after she told the rest of the vagabonds the Ayavelian army had headed in to help. She wanted the warriors to think a second wave of healers and soldiers would arrive soon, even though it never would. She would have known Hillside and the other kingdoms would be vulnerable. Between that and the blatant murder of an Ayavelian vagabond, Evelyn had switched sides.
Twin scribbled her thoughts as fast as she could beneath Rieve’s note, warning the others of the attack on Hillside and the possible connection to Evelyn. A flicker of doubt burned with every word she wrote. This could be heresy. She doubted she had any right to accuse a Blood of betraying the vagabonds, but she didn’t care. This made sense, and in the off-chance Kara or any other vagabond read her words in time, Twin had to let them know her theory.
A man shouted in the hall. Twin flinched. Her ink smeared. She cursed under her breath and continued writing.
Other men answered the first. She didn’t understand what they were saying. Their voices growled over the words, sometimes humming or grunting in answer. She swallowed hard, her throat suddenly dry, but she finished putting her fears onto paper. The cover snapped shut, and she wished it away in a puff of blue dust. She shook her hand to put out the fire.
Once more, she slid the peephole cover aside with all the care she could muster. Hands shaking, she exposed only half of it to reduce the chances of them noticing. A soldier’s gray arm blocked most of her view. She all but yelped in surprise. She bit her cheek and squeezed her eyes shut, holding her breath until she could close the peephole cover.
She cursed again under her breath as a knot formed in her throat. She couldn’t sit here and do nothing. She should be out there helping the Hillsidian soldiers who were obviously being overrun. If Hillside were winning, the Stelians wouldn’t be in the castle.
But she needed to be Fenner’s voice to the outside world.
She trotted down the stairs and summoned the fire in her palm to light the way. She needed to get to the vault. That, at least, would always be safe. The Hillsidian tunnels were a labyrinth known only to the natives. In fact, Twin found a skeleton once when she was little and explored some of the more remote areas. If any Stelian did find his way into the tunnels, he would get lost without a guide. Even some Hillsidians died down here if they didn’t have guides, though most learned the paths at a young age. Twin knew the tunnels better than most.
She hoped Fenner was still alive, but she would stay in the vault for at least today and wait for him. If she didn’t hear from him soon, she would monitor the war from the hundreds of secret entrances and peepholes throughout the tunnel system. Though she wished for reinforcements to show up, it wouldn’t happen. The armies were at least a day away. It would take Flick to get anyone here sooner, and he could only manage a few people at a time. No one could fight an invading army four soldiers at a time. Three, really, since Kara would need to command her pet’s skill.
Saving Hillside was in Fenner’s hands, and Twin couldn’t be sure he survived this long. She tried to shake the fears from her head and focused her attention to navigating the tunnels. Somehow, someway, they would all survive this. They had to.
Chapter 20
Infiltrated
Kara’s fingers wound around her grimoire, the leather binding tugging on her fingertips. From her damp seat on the forest floor, she took one last deep breath. Cool air stung her throat, chilling her lungs as she inhaled. A flurry of nerves rippled through her gut. The book in her hand closed with a muffled thud, and she wished it away in a flurry of blue sparks.
Time to go.
Richard, Elana, Roj, and Rieve—every vagabond had checked in. Though Roj’s second entry sent a murmur of worry through her group as she read it aloud, no one could back down now. Potential trap or no, every soldier had engaged. All vagabonds wouldn’t keep their grimoires open during the fighting, so she couldn’t send a collective cease-fire. It was too late; this final battle began the moment Garrett shifted into that… thing. And with the whole of the alliance’s forces converging on the Stele at once, Kara’s team needed to slip in while the Stelian army was most distracted.
The sun sank below the mountain peaks ten minutes ago, and the final moments of dusk settled over the dim forest like a blanket. Garrett screamed as he hovered above the Stele, his scales a shade darker than the sky. Kara shuddered and grimaced, his shriek setting her nerves on fire. Wood splintered in the distance, cracking with a rumble that shook the ground. Men hollered from their posts on the wall, though Kara couldn’t see them in the thickening night. Only the occasional fires from beyond and above the wall illuminated the night with their flickering dances. A Kirelm zipped past a gap in the trees, orange flames in one hand as he aimed for something within the stone enclosure. Seconds later, an echo boomed through the forest. Flames spiraled into the air behind the wall. The canopy shivered overhead.
Kara wondered if she should open her grimoire again and check for another note from Roj. There may have been an update. So far, she’d only seen the one note from Rieve, which came shortly after Roj’s rushed entry. If he had another update, Kara might feel better about diving into the fray.
She rubbed her face. Of course he wouldn’t—he was in the middle of a battle. He didn’t have time to write an entry. They’d all known that going in. She and Braeden couldn’t stall or wait any longer.
Beside her, Braeden studied the onslaught, arms crossed and shoulders hunched. Their team stood as well, all eyes on the Stele as the four armies converged. A fire billowed beyond the stacked stones, its orange glow casting a momentary flicker across her vagabonds’ faces. Most scowled. One Kirelm’s brow twitched, hinting at the doubt nagging Kara’s stomach. A wave of heat blasted through their patch of woods, singing Kara’s cheeks.
Her eyes drifted back to Braeden, and she sank back against her tree. Carden would kill him the first chance he got, but this was their one and only opportunity to take the Stele. They would make it in, and they would not only survive—they would win.
Braeden’s ear twitched, and his upper body shifted toward her as if he could feel her eyes on him. He examined her for a moment exactly as he’d studied the battle a second ago—eyes narrowed, arms crossed, mouth a thin line. But the wrinkles in his forehead relaxed, and he knelt beside her. With a forced smile, he set his hands on either side of her face.
“I need your head in the game,” he said.
She nodded. “Let’s go.”
“It’s time?”
“Rieve gave the go-ahead.”
“All right, then.”
Kara pushed herself to her feet and returned to the front line with him. Her vagabonds crowded around, all eyes on Braeden as he ducked through the low-hanging branches and trotted toward the wall.
So it began.
Kara hunched and crept toward the wall, feet shuffling along as fast as they would move. The boots of those around her barely made a whisper compared to the ruckus swallowing the night. She pressed herself against the wall, back straight and chest already heaving—though admittedly more from fear than their short run. Slivers of ice swam through the veins in her wrist, threatening whatever threads of sanity kept her calm in such chaos.
Braeden hunched and studied the wall. Kara followed suit. No sentries ran by, at least none she could see from this angle. Braed
en gestured to Remy, who grunted and spread his black wings. The feathers disappeared into the night even before the Kirelm soared upward, his feet running up the wall as he scaled it. He slipped over the edge in seconds.
The team waited on the ground for his signal to join him. Kara bit her cheek as she lingered, already imagining her vagabond with a knife to his throat. She shook her head to clear the thought.
Remy stuck his silver head over the edge and waved his arm, signaling them up.
Braeden and the two Ayavelians shifted into Kirelm forms. Their bodies hummed, skin softening to the familiar silver of the Kirelm people. Wings sprouted from their backs like vines, twitching as each new feather grew. And though Kara admired the shifting process, a flush of panic swelled within her. She tapped her foot. They needed to move.
An arm slipped under her knees and hoisted her off balance while she studied one of the Ayavelians. She bit her tongue to stifle a yelp. Braeden scooped her in his arms, crouched, and jumped into the air, the tip of his black wings brushing the stones as he hurled them into the sky. Her stomach flipped. She grabbed his shoulder. In her periphery, she caught a smile before they reached the top of the wall.
Boots tapped along the stone as the vagabonds landed beside them, though Braeden didn’t let her back on her feet. Demnug, last over the wall and dangling in a Kirelm’s arms, jumped out of the man’s grip before they landed. He tugged on his shirt and rubbed his neck. His Kirelm guide shook his head and wiped his hands on his pants, apparently just as disturbed by the experience. She would have laughed under different circumstances, but they had a job to do.
At this new vantage point, the destruction at the front gate became suddenly clear. The dozen spires of the Stele formed a silhouette against the wall of crackling red in the city beyond. A massive shadow rushed past the flames, bending them in its wake—Garrett. A clamor hovered in the distance, a cacophony of screaming, war cries, and clanging metal. Kara’s mouth fell open. Her nails dug into the hem of Braeden’s shirt.
