“Yes,” Simon agreed, “or it could be adatrox or my own soldiers who didn’t get out in time.”
Eliana lifted herself up by the roots of a watchtower tree. “We should try to help them.”
Simon pulled her back down. He began reloading his revolver. “No. We ride north.”
“Did you not hear me?” She flung out her arm in the direction of the outpost. “There were children in that prison. They had them in cages—”
“Yes, and if Red Crown had carried out their raid tomorrow as planned, they would have gotten them out. But you ruined that when you ran away. We couldn’t risk letting anyone who’d seen you, or heard whatever intelligence you delivered, leave here alive.”
Eliana stared at him in horror. “What?”
A shot rang out near the outpost, followed by another. Simon pointed one gloved finger. “Hear that? My soldiers, disposing of the survivors. Listen.”
Eliana did, hearing a third shot, then a fourth, a fifth. She reached for the tree roots once more, but Simon pulled her back down and held her close, arms pinned at her sides.
“Listen to them die,” he hissed, his mouth hot at her ear behind the cold, hard mesh of his mask. “Their blood is on your hands.”
Eliana half-heartedly fought to free herself, but as the shots continued, and the horrible screams abruptly stopped one by one, she subsided.
It will consume you, her mother had warned her.
She breathed past the foul knot of shame burning the back of her tongue.
“We’ll add them to your tally, hmm?” Simon’s voice was furious. “Do you even remember how many people you’ve killed, Eliana?”
Eliana nodded, her eyes and mouth dry. She felt shriveled, undone. She closed her eyes. Yes. Yes, she remembered. Including Harkan? He’d be alive now, were it not for trying to protect her.
What had she told Remy?
We can’t know for certain.
He could still be alive.
She closed her eyes, clung to the foolish hope to keep from screaming.
“Eighty-seven,” she whispered as the gunshots continued. “Eighty-eight. Eighty-nine.”
“What did you ask him for?” Simon lowered his hood and pushed back his mask so that it rested in a mess of dirty-blond hair. “Safe passage home for you and Remy? Amnesty? Your mother returned to you, safe and sound?”
Eliana nodded. She felt as though, slowly, all the life inside her were being funneled out.
“And was it worth it? Were their lives worth it?” He jerked his head up at the outpost. “Did you get what you asked for?”
Eliana didn’t have the chance to answer, interrupted by galloping hoofbeats. She glanced up, and the sight of a mud-spattered brown horse emerging from the nearby woodlands, Remy sitting on its back behind Navi, knocked the breath out of her.
She met his worried blue gaze and gave him half a smile.
“Simon!” Navi called down to them, a terrible fear on her face. “Crown’s Hollow is under attack!”
Simon pushed Eliana ahead of him. “Climb,” he snapped. She did, Simon following nimbly. Remy was already dismounting, Navi right after him. Remy stumbled across the mucky ground to bury his face in Eliana’s bloodstained shirt. She held on to him automatically, half her mind still back at the outpost with the gunshots.
They’d stopped. So had the screams.
Remy whispered, “Did they hurt you?”
She shook her head, made herself look at him. “No. I’m all right.”
Simon grabbed the horse’s reins. “What’s happened?”
“A squadron of adatrox attacked,” Navi explained, “shortly after you’d gone. Patrik got me and Remy out, but just in time. We were the only ones. Simon, they’ve taken all the exits.” Her hood fell back, her eyes haunted. “No one can get out.”
Eliana stepped away, detaching herself from Remy. The refugees. Patrik. Hob and his notebook. And tiny Linnet…
Three hundred and sixty-seven, give or take, if no one else had made it out. Plus the ninety-three she’d reached before the guns stopped.
Four hundred and sixty bodies’ worth of blood coating her hands a bright, blazing red.
A numb feeling spread out from her chest down her limbs, scouring her veins clean of all reason.
“El, what is it?” Remy asked. “Are you sick?”
But she ignored him. A movement at the corner of her eye grabbed her attention: two Red Crown soldiers, thirty yards away, near the smoking perimeter fence. They were picking through the uniforms of fallen adatrox, pulling out flasks, papers, weapons.
Nearby, grazing among the debris, were two horses. Bridled and saddled, patiently waiting.
Eliana squeezed Remy’s shoulders, murmured, “Stay here, quietly,” and backed slowly away as Simon and Navi continued their hushed, urgent conversation. Then she turned and ran, ignoring first Navi’s cry and then Simon’s roar of fury. Mounted the nearest horse, snapped the reins, and bolted.
Two miles southwest of here. She turned the horse that direction. Wet branches snagged her clothes and the horse’s legs, carved thin red tracks across her cheeks.
Hoofbeats chased her. When her horse cleared a stretch of trees and broke out onto open ground, she dared to turn around and saw Simon, bearing down hard on his horse as he pursued her. Mask on, cloak flying out behind him like a pair of dark wings.
She leaned lower over her horse and urged him on. “Faster, you stupid beast!”
Then, up ahead—plumes of black smoke churning up to the cloudy sky.
Eliana squinted through the approaching woods, pulling her horse abruptly to a stop. She dismounted, tied the horse to a nearby branch, and crept closer into a cluster of moss-laden gemma trees.
There, perhaps two hundred yards before her, was the stretch of land that covered Crown’s Hollow. Smoke churned from five distinct points, flames licking up out of hidden openings carved into the ground. Eliana recognized the one she’d snuck out of with Remy. Had it been only hours before?
Three adatrox stood at every fire, weapons trained on the flames. A larger group—including a lieutenant with a thick gray band around his left bicep—stood some yards away from the compound, waiting.
They were smoking the rebels out.
They’ve taken all the exits, Navi had said. No one can get out.
Eliana leaned hard on the gemma tree as she realized what must have happened. Somehow, Lord Morbrae had communicated to his soldiers everything Eliana had told him about Crown’s Hollow, even though he hadn’t left her sight after their conversation at the dining table.
But then, Eliana thought, I didn’t need to be in Celdaria to stand on a terrace with the Emperor, did I?
Nausea coiled coldly in her belly. Could it be that the Emperor—and his generals, his lieutenants, maybe even all the adatrox—could send messages and visions to and from each other’s minds?
How was such a thing possible?
Simon arrived, pulled up his horse at Eliana’s side and jumped off.
He grabbed her arm. “Are you mad, Dread?”
“I’m sorry, I thought I could help them, I didn’t… I wasn’t thinking…”
“Indeed you weren’t. There’s nothing we can do for them now.” His voice was flat. “We’ll return to Navi and ride north as fast as we can. There’s a solid rebel presence in Rinthos. They’ll shelter us for a bit.”
Eliana grabbed two of the spiked bombardiers strapped to his belt and ran. Simon reached for her; she twisted out of his grip and raced for the gathered adatrox standing patiently behind their lieutenant. Waiting, as the black smoke thickened, for desperate rebels and refugees to come tumbling out, gasping for air.
Her hands tightened around the bombardiers. Her mind was a wreck of noise and blood-soaked images, fanning the flames of rage in her breast until she could feel nothing else, not even a prick of fear as she pulled the bombardiers’ caps and burst out of the trees.