Caspar reached down, holding out a hand to help me up. I was still shaking, still half-convinced I’d been shot. The kids behind him were all carrying high-tech, military grade weapons that rivaled any I’d seen Elena’s soldiers wielding. I supposed I should’ve been glad it was his forces who’d found me and not my own. Caspar’s seemed to pack a heavier punch. “We can’t talk now. We were told you’d be here. Been tracking you, in fact.” He drew me along, his underage militia surrounding us, ready to fight. “I’ll explain later. But for now, we gotta get you someplace safe.”
A new set of rounds started firing at the other end of the encampment, in the direction I’d been heading when Elena’s soldiers had cut me off. I raised my hands to cover my ears as blast after blast tore at the air. The ground quaked beneath our feet.
Caspar looked to the black-haired girl beside him, whom I recognized, even without her crow. “What the— Who was that?” he asked.
I looked to each of their faces as they frowned over this new turn of events, but I already knew the answer.
I was about to tell them that this time it was my forces, that these were the Ludanian soldiers I’d been waiting for, when the ground right in front of us exploded, splitting apart.
The impact threw me, and everyone else, wide and far.
And then everything went black.
The first thing I was aware of was the taste of dirt and the smell of sulfur. Or maybe I was tasting the sulfur and smelling dirt. There was the ringing, too. It was high pitched and constant, and muffled every other sound around me, if there even were any.
All I knew was the ringing.
I tried to sit up, but the world tipped crazily. Up felt like down, and the other way around. I was so disoriented, I barely noticed the way my elbow was bent at a strange angle beneath me.
I blinked, and blinked again, but my eyes stung. The sulfur that filled my nose seemed to be burning them as well. Breathing was hard too, although not in the same way it had been immediately after Eden had died. This was more tangible, and I found myself panting just to ease the throbbing in my ribs.
White smoke and tears clouded my vision. Between the columns of burning debris, I could see people rushing here and there, and from behind the ringing, I could make out the muffled, faraway shouts of voices, which were probably not so muffled or faraway at all. But I couldn’t distinguish a single face among the throng, or make out a single word amid the buzz.
It was like being both blind and deaf, and entirely helpless.
I shook my head, trying to clear my senses, and then I tried to stand.
The world swayed, tipping first this way and then that. But my legs, by the grace of all that was good, held me in place. I kept my arms outstretched, lest I’d stumble. I wanted to at least attempt to cushion my fall.
But I didn’t. Fall, that is.
I stood. Wobbly and unsure, but somehow I stood.
Slowly, ever so slowly, my hearing returned. The ringing remained, continuous and annoying—much in the way Sabara was—but eventually I could make out other sounds too. More gunfire. More cannon blasts. More voices—shouts and commands.
And, along with my hearing, my vision returned. The smoke eventually subsided as well, until I found myself standing near the edge of a crater so massive, I could hardly imagine what could have done so much damage.
Inside the crater, and all around it, were bodies. Bodies of the raven-faced warriors who belonged to Elena’s army. Bodies of Caspar’s followers, the mud stripped and peeled from their youthful faces. And bodies that could be identified as neither because they were too mutilated from the blast.
I saw the body of the black-haired girl. I knew even without going closer to inspect her that she was dead, because her sapphire eyes remained wide and unblinking, and her neck was distorted gruesomely.
I was fortunate that I’d been thrown so far from the blast. That I hadn’t been standing in the place where the bomb had struck. And at the same time, my heart ached for all those who had been.
The smell of sulfur made me gag, as did a thousand thoughts of children who no longer needed homes, and children who were newly orphaned, and brothers who’d just lost sisters, and lovers whose beds would now be empty.
War benefited no one. We were all losers on this day.
I vomited until my stomach was emptied, and when I was done, I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand. My chest and my elbow continued to throb, and I wondered if my ribs might have been cracked.
I tried to think, to decide what I should do next. I didn’t see Caspar, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t among the bodies that had been flung about the cavernous basin in the earth. It just meant I couldn’t identify his remains.
And it meant I was on my own now.
I still needed to escape, to find a way out, so I started back in the direction I’d been headed when Caspar had saved me.
It was the voice that stopped me, cutting through my regret, and the ringing in my ears.
“Not so fast, Your Majesty.”
I would have spun to face him, willing my reflexes to match the beating of my heart. But I was too injured to react so hastily, and I likely would have fallen if I’d tried. Instead I turned sluggishly, deliberately.
Inside, Sabara gloated triumphantly, I knew he’d stop you. I knew he wouldn’t let you get away, you insolent brat.
“Niko,” was all I said, keeping my bad arm braced to my stomach as I glanced suspiciously at the gun he held, and the three masked soldiers at his back.
He grinned then, and I suddenly wished I still had my gun, that I hadn’t lost it in the chaos of the blast. “You might want to come with me. We have a surprise for you.”