Aria
Aria drove the head of her arrow through the note she’d written onto a piece of white shirt. They’d torn the shirt into sections of rags. It was the best they could do as all of Daniel’s sketchpads were in the palace and paper wasn’t exactly the easiest thing to come across in the forest unless they made it themselves. Since she had no idea how to do that, they’d sacrificed a shirt.
She’d carefully folded the clothing into something resembling an envelope and written Melinda’s name on it with some coal dust they’d scrounged from one of the nearby caves. She was counting on Ashby and Melinda having made it safely back to the palace. On the cloth, she’d written a simple message: Attack coming to you soon from confirmed Sab. Help comes end of week, A.
She would have said less in the note, in case someone got ahold of it, read it, and later turned to Sabine’s side. However, she had to give Melinda and the others some hope that, if they held their ground, they would have help. If they didn’t have hope, they may fall to Sabine before Aria could ever do anything to help them. She also had to let them know exactly who they would be dealing with.
Beside her, William stabbed an arrow through another piece of cloth. They’d written three identical messages, one each to Melinda, Ashby, and Gideon. Hopefully at least one of the messages would be taken to the rightful addressee, and not taken as a sign of war and destroyed immediately.
Lifting a rock, she filed down the lethal point of the arrowhead. It would not fly as true, but it wouldn’t accidentally kill a bystander on the other side of the wall either. Beside her, William did the same as she prepped the note meant for Gideon.
Aria slipped from the shadows of the home they’d been hiding behind. It was situated about a hundred feet outside of the palace walls. She’d never seen the town so calm before; the stillness unnerved her almost as much as the hundreds of troops spread out across the top of the wall. However, the sight of all those men and women standing guard also heartened her. If the town was empty and the guards were more than tripled on the wall, Ashby and Melinda had definitely made it back with word of what had happened to all of them.
Aria steadied her hand as she aimed her arrow over the wall. With a twang, she released her bowstring and let it fly.
Shouts rose from the wall as the arrow cleared over the top of it. Bows spun in their direction, but she and William had already released the next two arrows and were fading into the shadows when arrows from the wall thudded into the ground where they’d been standing.
Aria pushed back the hood on her cloak and listened as more shouts echoed from the wall, but the drawbridge did not come down and the gates didn’t open. Good. She needed those within the palace to be overly cautious right now, and not looking to charge into a war when they didn’t know what awaited them.
Xavier and Tempest slipped from the shadows to join her and Willian as they gathered their things and left the town.
***
Melinda
“Milady.”
Melinda lifted her head to stare at the young king’s man hovering in the doorway of the meeting room she sat in with the members of The Council. They hadn’t told The Council about Braith, but they all knew an attack was most likely imminent and from whom. There had been no point in trying to hide it. If The Council members ever saw that woman, they would know of her power and be enraged over not being informed about the force of the threat. They may mutiny, and she couldn’t risk that happening.
The look on the man’s face had Melinda rising from her chair. “What is it?” she demanded.
“Someone fired three arrows over the wall,” the man replied.
Ashby rose beside her, his fingers resting on the table as he leaned forward. “Only three?”
“Yes and that is not the weirdest part.”
“What is?” Melinda asked.
The man approached the table with an arrow in hand. He extended it to her. Melinda took the arrow, turning it over in her hands as she studied the blunted end and the piece of cloth stuck to it with her name written on it. Aria. It had to be.
She tugged the cloth free and read the simple note scrawled on it before passing it to Ashby. She stood for a minute, digesting the words on the note. Aria had confirmed it was Sabine who would be coming after them, which meant there really was a chance Braith could rise again. Hope leapt in her chest, but she shoved it back. There was too much to do now to count on Braith rising again in time, or at all.
“You said there were three. Where are the other two arrows?” she asked the man.
“We believed it was an attack. The other two were trampled before we could get to them.”
“Were there notes attached to them too?”
“I believe so, milady.”