I barrel upward with Sander’s dagger clenched tightly at my side. Every single breath hurts. I wince and wrap my arm around my ribs, and my hand comes away slick with blood. Vaguely, I realize Jaspar must have sliced me, and perhaps I am just propelled by magic and will. If so, I’ll collapse when I’m done. But not until then. I am strong enough for this.
My love for Thyra and my faith in her vision beats relentlessly inside me, as strong as any fire or ice. I don’t know exactly what she wants for our tribe, but I know what she believes in. I know she loves her warriors. And I know she loves me, enough to let me figure out my path.
I am nearly to the level that holds Nisse’s chamber when a pair of hands shoots out from the floor below and yanks me off the stairs. I stagger and start to bring my dagger up, but wide brown eyes and a wild spray of black hair stops me cold. “You’re alive,” I say stupidly.
“Thanks to Sander,” Halina says sadly. Then her brows draw together. “You’re bleeding bad, little red.” She comes forward, pulling her apron up to press it to my side.
I gasp at the pressure and agony of it. “Where’s Thyra?”
“Old Nisse has her up at the very top,” she says. “Don’t know what he’s going to do.”
“Is she hurt?” I saw her go down, hard.
“Don’t really know,” she says. “After Sander shoved me inside, I hid behind a tapestry until Nisse and the guard were gone. But they’re waiting at the top of the stairs. You can’t go that way.”
“I have to try. Sander told me the foreign fighters and the resistance will spare the warriors if Thyra is established as chieftain.”
She gives a quick, curt nod. “Efren was waiting for the riders on the other side of the stake-wall. He escaped through a tunnel as Nisse’s guard tried to arrest him. But our people can’t be easily appeased, little red. So many hungry for blood.”
“Does Thyra know all of this?”
“She negotiated the agreement. Got a promise of cooperation from her warriors, that they wouldn’t get in our fighters’ way.”
“The whole story about them emerging through a tunnel—that was a lie, wasn’t it? You made sure I overheard it, hoping I would take the information to Nisse.”
Her mouth twists in apology and she takes a few steps away from me, as if she’s afraid I’ll strike at her. “Had to make him believe it, little red. And if it came from you as well as—”
“I know. It’s all right. You knew I would try to protect my tribe.”
“That I did.” She smiles. “Always clawing your way to the light. All any of us can do.” She rubs at her round cheeks, and I see the tearstains there. “But it went all wrong on the parapet. Sander and Thyra thought they could best Nisse and Jaspar, but those two . . .”
I swallow back the cost of their victory. “Now Nisse holds captive the one person we need to survive the day.”
Tentatively, she squeezes my arm. “I’ll help you get to Thyra. You’re the only one who might be able to do it.” She touches the cuff around my wrist. “That crazy boy said he would get this for you.”
“He’s downstairs.”
“Dead?”
I shake my head. “Hurt, though.”
She frowns. “So many will die today.”
My cheeks burn—she is not saying as much as she could. All these weeks, she’s held back, maybe out of kindness, perhaps out of hope that I would come to it on my own.
This is the price of their freedom, won back from those who took it from them—my people.
“I’ll do whatever I can, Halina.”
“Then so will I.”
My brain shifts through my memories of the top levels of the tower. “How high can we get?”
“There are windows maybe two lengths of a man below the top. And the guards are just beneath that trapdoor.”
“How many?”
“Six. And they have nothing to lose.”
But maybe I could save them, too. Not by confronting them, though. “Can you distract them?”
She bites her lip. “I can try.”
“That’s all any of us can do. Come on.” I re-enter the staircase with her behind me, my dagger drawn. Below us, I imagine I can hear the shouts of warriors, but it may just be the roaring in my ears or the rush of magic in my veins. I need it now. I can’t go without it anymore. But that means I have to trust the foreign thing inside me. I have to accept it as mine. I have to accept it as me. And suddenly, Sig’s instruction makes sense. My heart races as I consider what I’m about to do, and I barely breathe as we creep our way to the level just beneath the guard. Halina is utterly silent behind me, a ghost tracing my steps. She grips my wrist as we huddle in the corridor outside the staircase.