Turning his attention back to the fighting, Sev saw his mother and father flying high above, circling, signaling to each other. The bridge was on fire now, but the coming soldiers had wagons loaded with war machines, ladders, and catapults. The river wouldn’t stop them. Nothing would.
Somehow, deep down inside, Sev knew what his parents intended to do. Maybe that was why he stayed there, watching. Maybe he knew it would be the last time he ever saw them.
Slowly his parents’ phoenixes burned hotter, brighter . . . blistering, like the sun hanging low in the sky. Soon he couldn’t even see his parents, or the phoenixes they rode through the air—all he could see was fire and light.
With a crackle and a cry that would sear itself into Sev’s memory forever, his parents dropped, hurtling toward the enemy soldiers like blazing arrows. They landed in a fiery explosion, the heat waves rippling across the ground and knocking Sev, hundreds of yards away, off his feet. When he got up again, there was nothing but fire—soldiers running, screaming, while all around him, the crops began to burn.
Sev ran, just like his father had told him. He knew the fire would spread, would swallow their farmhouse, the stables, and the blackberry bushes. Everything Sev had ever known. He followed the road, trying to catch up with the villagers . . . but it wasn’t until nightfall, when he still hadn’t reached the safe house or seen the back of their wagons, that he realized he’d gone the wrong way at the fork.
He wound up at a small village farther down the river, one that was already in the empire’s possession. He was deemed a war orphan, loaded into a wagon with a handful of others, and carted off to Aura Nova. He’d learned quickly that being an animage in the empire was a very bad thing, and so he’d hidden his true identity. He’d learned other things too . . . how to go unnoticed—whether it was from the larger boys at the orphanage, looking for sport, or from the soldiers on the street, looking to meet their quota—how to beg, borrow, and steal. He’d also learned how to look the other way when the old Sev would have stood up and fought.
He learned how to be a coward.
In some ways, he’d been running ever since that last day on the farm—following his parents’ instructions at last. Run and hide. Stay safe.
Eventually it was hunger that got him captured, not his magic. He’d been caught stealing from a baker’s cart, and as he ran from the proprietor’s outstretched hand, he’d collided with a loaded merchant’s wagon. The carthorses startled, and the entire wagon tipped over—onto an empire soldier. Looking back, Sev often wondered if he could’ve stopped it if he’d used his magic to calm the horses. But he hadn’t, and someone had lost their life because of it.
Sev had been charged for the soldier’s murder and hauled to the Aura Nova prison that night. The next morning he was given a choice: be forgiven his crimes and serve for life in the military or work himself to death as a laborer. Sev had heard horror stories about the criminal labor camps, but joining the ranks of the people who’d killed his parents? He had thought it was the hardest decision of his life, choosing to join his enemies in order to survive.
Now he wasn’t so sure. Maybe Kade was right. Maybe he’d made a much worse choice long before in rejecting a part of himself.
Sev shook his head. It was too late to go back. All he could do now was move forward. He’d had enough of the guilt and the taunts and Trix’s mad plans. Let her tell them what he was; he’d be long gone before any of it mattered. Trix expected him to run at night—it was the logical thing to do—but Sev didn’t much feel like being logical.
The decision banked the fire burning inside him, and Sev’s mind cleared.
In the cover of the trees, he watched as the campsite came to life, as the llamas were fed and watered and reloaded with their burdens. Tents were packed up, meals eaten, and soon their party began to move out.
More than once Kade glanced over his shoulder in the general direction of the trees where Sev had disappeared. He whispered questions to Tilla and Corem—asking after him, Sev guessed—but they only shrugged and shook their heads.