And I was good at outrunning soldiers. All I had to do was finish the race, and Four had enough skills to take care of himself. I didn’t need him slowing me down or finding some clever way to kill me without arousing suspicion.
But Amethyst was long gone. She had to be heading west or we’d be too close to Willowknot proper. I’d only been running for a little while, and I could already hear the far-off sounds of the town behind the grunts of the fights. I sprinted west through the trees.
“Found you!” A leg shot out from the underbrush and ripped me from my feet. The soldier who’d led me to auditions, who I’d been so willing to kill, rose up from the forest floor. He grinned. “Nothing personal.”
He loomed over me. I crawled backward, putting as much distance as I could between us. I couldn’t kill him, and he’d not drawn any weapons either. I stood.
“It wasn’t personal.” I slid my right foot back and raised my fists, balance shifting to the balls of my feet.
He laughed. “I know, but that didn’t make it hurt less.”
Fair enough.
I darted forward, slapping my palms over his ears. He hooked a foot behind my ankle and shoved me. I grabbed his collar, falling back and bracing myself, and jammed my foot into his stomach as I hit the ground. I kicked up, and he went tumbling over my shoulder.
“That’s not personal either,” I said.
He pulled himself to his knees and opened his mouth.
The blunt end of a spear rammed into the side of his head. He fell with a sickening crack. I drew my knives.
That wasn’t a disarming hit.
“Do you know how much time I wasted dealing with Eight?” Five tossed the spear aside and drew his short sword. He moved perfectly into the guard position Ruby had been trying to teach me. “Come on then.”
Five waited. I shifted back and forth, flipping one of my knives down. I could dodge a sword, block a few weak hits, but he’d planned this. He must’ve run nonstop to catch up with me.
I lunged, faking left. He slid his feet aside and drew the sword across his right. I twisted away from him and dove for the soldier, ripping his sword from his belt. Five stared at me, eyes drooping and bored, and straightened his mask. I tightened my grip on the hilt.
Five huffed. “Easy.”
He swung at my left. I blocked, the hit shaking my arm, and faster than I could follow, his blade cut across my chest and slipped into my right side. Pain, white-hot and blinding, burrowed into my chest, and the slick pull of his sword leaving my skin shivered down my spine. Blood seeped down my ribs, and he flicked his blade against mine. The sword flew out of my hand.
“Amateur,” he muttered, pulling back for a final strike.
He had the noblest, northernest accent I’d ever heard. Panic and rage washed over me, fluttering in my veins till my fingers shook against my side and sharpened my thoughts. I curled my fingers into the dirt. He leaned closer.
He wasn’t better than me.
I flung dust in his eyes. He stumbled, sword arm falling. I thrust my knife through his shoulder, twisting the blade till he screamed, and ripped it out. He smacked my side, fingers digging into the cut.
I couldn’t beat him in a fair fight, but life wasn’t fair—and neither was I.
I kicked his sword aside. My wound was agony with each twist of my torso, and the soldier—my soldier who Five could’ve killed—was stumbling to his feet. I punched Five in the nose. It snapped.
“Amateur,” I said.
He could be better than me at all the noble things he pleased, but I would be Opal, and he would be dead eventually. Even better if he panicked and dug his own grave. Let him tremble.
“Every night when you’re holed away in your little nest”—I stepped on his hands and grabbed his collar, pulling him up so I could stare into his eyes—“think about how the only reason you’re still breathing is because that guard woke up, how the only thing keeping me from climbing up there and putting a knife in your neck is how little I care about your face, and dream of me. Dream of me coming for you.”
I shoved him back into the dirt. He twisted and coughed up a glob of spit and blood. The soldier blinked up at me.
I took off. Again. At this rate, Amethyst would be seventy by the time I finished the race.
Blood oozed between my fingers, making my grip on my knives slick and impossible. I’d need stitches.
Tomorrow would be the worst.
I kept quiet and low. I couldn’t afford any more fights unless I struck first, fast, and hard. Screams and hurried footfalls echoed through the woods. Maybe I should’ve stayed with Four—he couldn’t kill me without being blamed, and Five wouldn’t have taken on both of us. I needed soldiers and all the helpful supplies they carried with them.
And they were easy to find, breathing too hard and alone. I snuck up behind one, creeping onto a stump so I could match his gangly height, and trapped him in a choke hold. He fought and flailed, right arm getting a few good hits before he passed out.
“Thank you.” He’d bandages in his pocket. I washed off my cut and wrapped it, shuddering with each brush of cloth against my torn skin. It wasn’t too deep, not too deep at all.
Heavy footsteps pounded up the path. I picked up the soldier’s bow and slid behind a tree. Memories of Emerald’s hands ghosted over my skin—back straight, stomach in, and arm bent back till the string brushed my cheek. I sucked in a thin breath.
Seven stopped in front of me, dodging an arrow from the other side of the path. He was worse for wear with a new black eye and shackle-shaped bruises around his wrists. He leapt to disarm the other archer as I fired, and he didn’t notice my too-wide, wobbly shot. I practiced a few shots into the trees next to me. My aim was spotty at best, but Seven was broad. A body fell across the path.
Seven emerged from the bushes, nose bloodied.
I fired. My arrow tore through his shoulder, taking a strip of his shirt. He clapped a hand to his arm, and I drew back for another shot. It flew over his head.
Shit. I tossed the bow aside and grabbed a spear, clawing my way up into the branches of a needle-heavy pine. Seven crashed through the curtain of thick leaves and toed the soldier. I hooked my knees around a branch.
Nothing personal.
He spun, wits catching up too late, and I swung out of the tree. The spear ripped through his chest, pinning him to the trunk, and he took a bubbling breath. His last breath burst from his lips in a spray of pink.
“Sorry.” I gripped the branch and unfurled myself from around it, dropping unsteadily to the forest floor. “That probably hurt.”
I couldn’t work the spear from the tree. Staring at him itched at me, a prickling at the back of my neck that wouldn’t let up. If I’d been a little slower, a little weaker, he’d have killed me as easily and left me out here to rot. If his death at my hands was justice, what would that have been?
I walked away, the imaginary weight of his dangling arms heavy on my shoulders.