Wading through the kids with careful steps, I reached him and crouched in front of him, trying to get him to look at me.

  But wherever he was, he couldn’t see me from there. Not really.

  “Killed us?” I asked, my voice a hushed croak.

  “His brother is hurt,” another little voice offered.

  Swallowing, I looked around me and wanted to run away.

  These were children. Babies. Not only had they all lost their parents, but war came to their door. Again.

  I needed someone to show me where the injured and killed were so I could check them and get them to help. But it would be monstrous to ask them to go back to those spaces.

  What the fuck was I supposed to do?

  All of them needed to get somewhere safe, but where was that? How in the world was I supposed to lead them through the streets when we might get attacked again, and they would see carnage all the way to the training grounds?

  Pounding footsteps rang against the cobblestones of the street outside, and I jumped up, motioning for all the kids to get behind me.

  They did it so fast and with so little sound they reminded me of me. The hairs on my arms stood on end as I lifted my blades again.

  Seconds later, Tristan and a line of guards filed in the front door.

  “Cinder,” he said, his face going from panic to exhaustion in a second, and his whole body slumped.

  “Some of the kids are hurt in other rooms of the house,” I said, focusing on what was the most important thing for right now.

  “The rest of the attackers have been driven off,” he said, touching my arm, but directing his words to the kids as they hugged him, too. “But no one should go anywhere yet. When we get carriages here for you, I’m going to have them take you to the palace, and someone will come get your things.”

  “But…” one of them mumbled and others hung their heads.

  “King Tristan, this is our home.”

  Most of the others chimed in with agreement, and a crack formed in my heart so sharp I had to close my eyes.

  We couldn’t take this place from them, too, but what about the ones who looked at this place and saw ghosts now?

  I looked to the little boy who still stared into the middle distance and swallowed, tapping Tristan’s arm before I went to the little boy again, trying to get him to look at me.

  “Do you want to stay here?” I asked, “Or would you rather go to the palace?”

  “This was the place he was alive,” he said.

  Pressure built behind my eyes and my stomach flipped over.

  I nodded and stood up on shaking legs, not capable of saying goodbye as I walked out the front door, and stumbled down the steps toward the road.

  Before I got very far, Tristan grabbed my shoulder and pulled me into his arms.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “Stay here. I’ll take you back soon.”

  “They killed his twin. This is the last place his twin was alive next to him. He never wants to leave. And they took Layton and Angeline.”

  I rambled on while I clung to him, a litany of offenses, and proof our attackers didn’t have souls anymore. How could they do this to children on purpose?

  But…was Brix with them? Why was Brix in the city? And if Brix was with them, did that mean Ash was?

  That didn’t make any sense.

  Ash wouldn’t join the Corvids.

  Right?

  “Come inside with me,” Tristan said, pulling back and looking toward the house.

  “No, I can’t. I can’t be in there when…” I couldn’t even say it.

  “Okay. Keep your eyes up, and I’ll get someone to take you back.” He held me tight, his skin colder than he had ever been, and went back inside.

  Part of me wanted to snatch him back and kiss him, to hold as tight to him as I could, but he wouldn’t want the guards all around us to see. And I had other things to worry about.

  I looked up at the deep black of the sky, the color indistinguishable from the sleek feathers of the crows.

  A chill ran over my body, and I dropped my gaze back to the street.

  Everyone was too busy.

  Waiting here for Tristan to finish, for the guards to help the kids, and do everything else that needed to be done, wasn’t going to help.

  Grabbing a passing guard by the shoulder and turning him toward me, the weight of what I was about to do settled into my bones.

  “Please tell the King that I have returned to the training grounds,” I said, my voice as hard as the steel that was flowing through my veins.

  “Yes, Fighter Cinder,” he said, and I released him and took off, running down the street toward the end where the first person I saw get lifted off the ground had been.

  The street where Brix was taken, and where the first person was grabbed, didn’t yield anything to help me tell which direction the airborne attackers came from.

  But it was clear the ones who remained on the ground turned at the end of Riverun Lane.

  All I had to do was follow the blood and bodies.

  First, though, I had a stop to make.

  Chapter 50

  Face of Death

  Making my way back to the training grounds took almost no time, but navigating my way through the mad scramble under the dome to my tent was much more difficult.

  Guards streamed in all directions.

  Some carried people to lines forming in the middle of the flying space where medics and physicks tended to the wounds.

  Others moved more slowly and more somberly, carrying their charges to the long-distance range where they laid the bodies of the dead out in rows.

  And still more ran with papers or weapons in hand, doing some other business that we all needed to be done on our behalf.

  Because we did.

  Every Onyxian—especially the citizens of Bridgeton—needed us all to do what we did best and handle this.

  Which was exactly my plan.

  I finally flung back the tent door to find Jacquetta curled up on the floor, sobbing silent tears, and clutching a torn chunk of green fabric.

  “Jacquetta?” I asked, my voice weak while all the strength that flowed through me only moments before turned into the puddle she was crying.

  “Cinder,” she yelled, flinging herself over to me and wrapping her arms around me, her sobs not even slowing down.

  “Where’s—” I couldn’t do it. My throat closed, and I choked on the question. I licked my lips and took in a shaking breath before I tried again, holding her tight, “Where’s Gus?”

  “No one knows,” she wailed, the sound of her voice like the fall of a mountain as it rang through my body.

  I squeezed her tighter and gritted my teeth before I shoved her away from me, holding her by the shoulders, staring into her eyes while the vision of her swam in my held-back tears.

  “Help me,” I said, “I’m getting her back.”

  She held the scrap of fabric to her face, covering her mouth, and nodded.

  Nodding back to her, I let her go, and peeled off my blood-smeared clothes.

  Jacquetta handed me a washcloth and the basin for washing our hands.

  I scrubbed off some of the blood that had soaked through, printing itself onto my skin.

  Training clothes were better than a dress.

  Black training clothes were better yet.

  But I didn’t know how long I was going to be gone, or for how long I needed to be the hunter.

  My only option now was to change into the right attire for a long trip, and going after them, ripping the heart out of every person who got in my way.

  With Jacquetta’s help, I was in the only set of new, all black training clothes Madam sent for me.

  And I finally had my spikes.

  “You should have someone get your mother. You and Madam could be helpful for the wounded,” I said, and she finally focused on my face before she nodded.

  I hugged Jacquetta and darted to the tent door, but a commotion on the other side of it made me peek out of the flap before I flung it back.

  Shit.

  “Tristan’s coming,” I said, turning around and running for the back wall of the tent behind Gus’ bed. “Tell him I left a while ago to find them all and bring them back, but don’t tell him where I left from.”

  Talking as fast as I could, making quick work of slicing a knife along the bottom edge of the tent, and squeezing myself between it and Gus’ bed, I rolled out from under the wall of the tent mere seconds before Tristan’s voice carried through from inside.

  “Where are Lady Cinder and Augustina?” he asked.

  I squeezed my eyes shut on the tears that threatened, and shoved myself up from the ground, darting through the shadows to the stone wall of the arena.

  Scaling it was as easy as it had been before, but I almost lost my grip when I looked back and spotted Tristan sprinting from my tent toward the main gates of the training grounds.

  Once I reached the top of the wall, I took a moment to spot where the guards were along the ramparts.

  But there weren’t any.

  I shook my head as I pulled myself onto the top, and darted across to begin descending the other side.

  Everyone must have been called off the watch on the walls to respond to the city. Which made sense, except that Gus and whoever else became targets inside the training grounds when they were gone were left unprotected.

  There was nothing I could do about that right now. I had to focus.

  Fixing what went wrong during the attack was General Pace and Tristan’s job.

  Mine was to kill.

  And as I made my way through the dark shadows between lights shining on the blood-splattered streets of Bridgeton, I reminded myself of what that meant.

  It meant that even the guards passing me while they collected the bodies, got living victims medical aid, and patrolled for continued threats, didn’t see me. And if they did, they didn’t recognize me.

  Perfect.

  Death didn’t dance with kings unless it was their time to die.

  No matter how well someone knew death, no one knew the face of it.

  What death looked like always surprised people when it came for them.

  That’s what I needed to be again.

  The shocking face of death.

  I smiled.

  Just hold on, Gus.

  Stay alive, Angeline.

  Keep fighting, Layton.

  Death was on the way.

  I sped up, knowing that there were two kinds of death heading in the same direction. And I had to be the one who got there first.

  Chapter 51

  Maybe

  They weren’t even trying to hide it.

  I couldn’t think of another explanation.

  Just past the edge of town, another home was eerily quiet, and another body was half blocking the threshold into a house.

  But I couldn’t stop.

  There wasn’t time to stop and find out if there were any survivors I could help.

  Wherever the attackers on foot went, they were my best chance to find the ones the fucking birds took.

  And so far, they didn’t seem to be trying to hide their movements.

  I ran down the road as it narrowed outside of the city, the trees along the side growing thicker, bigger, and closer together, blocking out some of the light of the moon.

  Did they really travel down the middle of the most common road from the south into the capitol city?

  Even if they were being careless, or even deliberate, by continuing to kill the people they came across, they were giving me clues.

  Fools.

  Oh, to have been them.

  People with mediocre sense were always the ones who thought their ideas were perfect and that they were invincible. The kind of people who thought that they should be in charge, because of course they should. Never mind that they were stupid enough to lead me right to them.

  But further along the road and deeper in the tree cover, with the filtered light of the moon showing me the way, I realized that they made at least a small attempt at covering their tracks.

  The undergrowth along the edge of the forest, where the road gave way to bracken and tree debris, showed a wide swath trampled flat and ground churned under many heavy feet.

  I shook my head and followed their path through the forest, using the edge of what they already tamped down to skirt between the trees, blending into the shadows.

  Even with my detour to change and see Jacquetta, I had to be getting closer to them.

  I hoped to come upon them when it was still dark.

  But whether the sun shone down on us and made my presence impossible to hide in the middle of a field, or they tried to hide in some building somewhere, I would make them all pay.

  My black cloak was lined with two dozen throwing knives, two short swords were strapped across my back under my cloak, daggers were in sheaths at my hips, and my spikes were both strapped to my thighs.

  Hopefully all my blades would be fed fresh blood soon.

  I picked up my pace.

  The only thing I worried about was what their captives were put through before I got to them.

  But if they kept moving, maybe I could spare them the worst of the possible pain that could be inflicted on them.

  Curling my hands into fists, I went even faster, straining to hear any sound in the woods around me.

  Animals, most of them small and four-legged, moved through the darkened world around me, not caring about the human drama going on in Onyx.

  Even feathered creatures, probably owls, occasionally took off from one tree to fly to another or to some deeper place in the forest.

  Maybe I should have been more on edge every time I heard wings, like I had been when I was in the training grounds. But there wasn’t room for the giant crows to fly in here.

  Not that I needed it, but it offered more proof to me that I wasn’t dealing with the best tactical minds on this little trip.

  The Corvids managed to accomplish feats of tactics, like their simultaneous attacks, or the way they arrayed themselves among the funeral to do maximum damage.

  But this particular retreat seemed…lacking all of the intelligent design of their other attacks.

  It also didn’t seem to be carried out by slaves of the Corvids.

  With all the unnecessary dead left in their wake, it seemed like the people I followed enjoyed this.

  Like cruelty was the point. The war was just an excuse to engage in their favorite pastime.

  Part of me understood it.

  I was good at killing. And I did enjoy sending people like Lord Fall or the Corvids to whatever Gods and Goddesses would mete out justice on the other side.

  And I was damn sure going to enjoy sending all these human-shaped pieces of shit to the cold embrace of death.

  But that wasn’t what they were doing.

  The regular people in the streets in Bridgeton, the children at the Shield House, and the random citizens that they left to rot along their path out of town had nothing to do with causing pain.

  When I finally caught up to them, they needed to learn the difference.

  They should have picked on someone their own size.

  Someone like me.

  Laughter seemed to ripple through the air, and I paused next to a tree trunk, crouching down and straining to hear it again.

  It seemed to take forever, a time I hated holding still and risking falling further behind, but it finally came again.

  There.

  No question, they were laughing.

  Fucking assholes thought this was funny?

  Setting off from the tree trunk, I knew where they were now.

  After following their tracks so long through the trampled vegetation, I ran into the trees, far enough from their path that there was no way they would see me. And any small sound I made would be chalked up to the same animals I heard earlier.

  That assumed they could hear anything over their own stupidity.

  Big assumption.

  Making my way through the underbrush and between the trees, their voices growing closer and louder, I made note of how many I thought there were.

  It was a smaller group than I thought.

  And I didn’t hear anything that made me think they had any captives with them.

  Shit.

  Putting on some speed, shaking my head again that they were moving so slow, I got ahead of them and crouched down behind a tree trunk just off the stretch I thought they would walk through.

  Jumping up and taking hold of the branch not far above my hands when I was standing up, I pulled myself into the tree and climbed up onto another branch that extended out toward where they would be walking.

  There were only twelve or so, all loosely grouped and lazy in their gait.

  But in the middle, not tied, but chewing on his bottom lip and looking at the people around him in a wary watch, was Layton.

  He had a black eye and one shoulder seemed to bother him, probably from his forced ride via talon.

  One of the party trailed behind the others at the back, yawning and rubbing their eyes.

  While the others passed below me, I crouched on the branch and waited…

  Now.

  I dropped down and slit the straggler’s throat before they even realized what was happening.

  The only warning the rest of the group had was a low gurgling noise as I lowered my kill to the forest floor slowly with a hand over their mouth.

  A few seconds later, no longer at risk of them making another sound, I made my way just behind the next one back, and replaced the dagger in my hand with my spike.

  Slipping into their shadow, close enough to smell the sweat on their body, I covered their mouth, and drove my spike between their ribs to tear apart their heart in one move.

  Now I had two down, only ten to go.

  I was leaving my own trail of bodies. Although these deserved worse, I thought as I lowered them down to the forest floor.

  The next in the group was in line with one of their comrades, talking back and forth of beer and food when they reached their destination.

  Looking behind us, the corpses of their friends weren’t immediately obvious in the dark among the trampled detritus along the ground.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26