Every sense pulled taut as she searched for some sign of him. Corien, here, no longer a dream. The very idea seemed impossible.
And yet—
She straightened, her skin tingling. A sharp twinge of satisfaction that was not her own plucked a song across her ribs.
Come find me, Rielle.
“Protect the king!” shouted a familiar voice. She whirled, saw her father and a company of soldiers herding King Bastien away to safety. Others, led by her father’s first lieutenant, hurried Queen Genoveve away in the opposite direction.
Audric. Ludivine. But she saw no trace of them.
She moved to join her father, then heard a furious shout.
A uniformed soldier—not one of her father’s—raced along a ridge, nocked his arrow, let it fly into the belly of the queen’s horse. It screamed and fell; the others nearby panicked, rearing up wild-eyed.
“Get her to safety!” bellowed the first lieutenant, shoving the queen behind one of his soldiers.
The uniformed archer shot another arrow, just before Sloane, long black coat flying, jumped down from a collapsed viewing stand. She knocked the arrow out of the sky with her twin obsidian daggers, then thrust them at the archer. A pair of shadowed wolves burst from her blades and tackled the man, jaws open wide. One latched onto his throat, the other his belly.
Rielle ran to him, joining Sloane in time to see the man’s clouded eyes flicker, as if a shadow had passed through his mind. The wolves flinched away and dissolved. The archer’s body jerked once; his neck snapped. His gray eyes cleared to an ordinary brown.
“What was that?” Sloane muttered, wiping the sweat from her face. “Did you see that?”
“I did,” said Rielle, a slow understanding creeping through her. Corien?
Hmm? He sounded entirely satisfied. What is it, my dear?
“These are Sauvillier colors.” She touched the man’s collar. “Why would Lord Dervin’s men attack like this?”
Something slammed into the ground, shaking the hills.
“I don’t understand,” Sloane snapped, a thread of desperate fear in her voice. “We’re their own people!”
What a tragedy it all is, Corien mused. If only there was a way to stop it.
“He’s doing it,” Rielle whispered. “He’s controlling them.”
Sloane stared at her. “What? Who is?”
If you want to stop this, you will come to me. Now.
A chill shook her. Where are you?
Come find me, my marvelous girl. Or I will kill them all where they stand.
Sizzling booms of magic and the agonized cries of soldiers ripped the air of the foothills to shreds. Rielle started to run.
Sloane grabbed her arm. “No, wait! Tell me what’s happening!”
Rielle knocked the flat of her palm against Sloane’s chest and sent her flying back twenty yards into a clump of grass.
She turned and ran, tears smarting her eyes, but there was no time for guilt. She tore up the hill’s rocky slope, along a series of cliffs overlooking the still-burning maze.
The earth bucked beneath her feet, sending her flying. She landed hard, turned to see an armored Sauvillier woman wrench her ax from the ground. An earthshaker.
The woman stared at Rielle with a face made of stone. Her eyes were an unseeing gray. The woman’s mouth twitched; Rielle recognized that smile.
“Come find me, Rielle,” the woman croaked, raising her ax once more.
Rielle flicked her wrist. The earth rose up like a cresting wave, then opened up and swallowed the woman. A terrified scream rang out, then fell silent.
Getting closer, Corien whispered.
She turned, following the trail of his voice along the cliffs. She ran past dueling soldiers, gathered churning knots of wind in her hands and knocked them all aside. An arrow shot past her, barely a miss.
Then she heard a familiar voice cry out, “Lady Rielle!”
She whirled, saw a group of people huddled against a rocky outcropping, young Simon Randell and his father among them. Fifty yards away, a dozen Sauvillier metalmasters advanced on them, palms outstretched, flinging an endless cyclone of blades.
And Audric stood between them and his people, Illumenor casting a brilliant shield of light around them.
But the metalmasters were fast, and their weapons faster. The blades tore themselves into smaller pieces as they flew, spinning so fast between their casters’ hands and Audric’s wall of sunlight that they became a storm of sparks and steel. They bore down on him, relentless, ricocheting off his blazing shield again and again.
Audric’s heels sank into the ground beneath the pressure. He lowered his head and let out a furious roar of pain. Light scattered across the ground like fallen stars.