Clenching his jaw, Sev closed his eyes and cast his awareness wide, searching. . . .
Finally, he had it—a cluster of bats perched on a branch nearby. Perfect. While he sent the creatures right, distracting Heller, Sev would slip left.
Once he got away, no one would think to look for him until morning. By then Sev would have several hours’ head start. He’d continue south, into the Foothills, and ask around until he found his way to his parents’ old farm—or what was left of it.
It had been a beautiful place to live once. Sev’s family had been sheepherders, and to this day, when he closed his eyes at night, he saw rolling green fields and wide-open skies.
When the war broke out, the Pyraean border became the front lines, and animages had fled to the mountains in droves. People like Sev’s parents were recruited, given secondhand weapons and phoenix eggs, and expected to fight to keep the empire foot soldiers back.
They never complained, never lamented their fates. It was an honor to serve a Rider queen, they’d said, and Avalkyra Ashfire had the rightful claim to the throne. Her mother was queen at the time of Avalkyra’s birth, which made her the trueborn heir, while her sister was made legitimate after the fact.
Sev’s parents were proud to don their armor, and with every victorious battle, they braided pieces of obsidian into their hair. The sight of his mother and father flying out to meet empire soldiers had filled Sev with blistering, blinding pride.
Foolish pride.
He’d thought his parents were invincible, but of course they weren’t. Nobody was.
Sometimes Sev hated them for dying and leaving him behind, but it had taught him a valuable lesson about survival. He wouldn’t make the same mistakes as them.
As soon as he got away from camp tonight, he’d disappear. No more Jotham and Ott, no more scowling bondservants and vengeful girls with sharp knives and extinct phoenixes. He wanted none of it, had chosen none of it. It was time he took his life into his own hands.
With a forceful, somewhat clumsy command, Sev directed the bats away from Heller.
They resisted. Sev was a passable animage at best—too many years of hiding his abilities had left them weak and unimpressive—and the creatures merely chittered and shifted in agitation.
Heller glanced up at the tree, and a cold sweat broke out over Sev’s neck. With a desperate surge of his magic, Sev pushed hard, and the bats took flight, darting through the leaves in a burst of shifting, flapping shadows.
Heller cursed and lurched to his feet, squinting into the darkness toward the sound of the chattering bats.
This is it.
“I’d be more careful if I were you,” said a voice just behind him. Sev’s heart leapt into his throat. He whipped around to see a small figure standing mere inches behind him.
It was a withered old bondservant whose pale, wrinkled face was topped with a cap of wispy white hair, which caught the barest gleam of the moonlight above like a tuft of cotton on the end of a stalk. He’d noticed her before, laughing darkly all by herself and muttering constantly in her sleep. The links of her chain gleamed, casting reflected light onto her face.
“Careful?” Sev asked, turning back around, seeking Heller through the shadows. “Get out of here, old woman,” he whispered angrily, preparing to make a run for it, noise be damned.
“You know,” she said loudly—too loudly—leaning comfortably against the tree. “If you were smart, you’d do exactly as I tell you, before it’s too late.”
Sev wanted to wring her spindly neck. He’d completely lost track of Heller, the bats were still putting up a racket, and even as he resolved to throw caution to the wind and make a break for it, a voice called out through the darkness.
“Heller, you there?”
It was Rian, wandering over from his position farther south. Had the noise from the bats been that loud, or did they often visit each other during lookout shifts?
Sev was still hidden from view, but he wouldn’t be for long. He looked desperately at the old woman.
“Up, in the tree,” she said, pointing to the heavy, low-hanging boughs. It was definitely climbable. Not pausing to think about why she was helping him—or how she would explain her own presence at the edges of camp in the middle of the night—Sev took hold of the nearest branch and hoisted himself up.
He was just crouching into position on a wide branch when