yelled, “Go!” before pulling Brianna down the north passage. Suddenly, Emily and I were running in the opposite direction. The passage was narrow, my shoulders brushed the wall as I ran. I could hear Emily behind me, feet padding lightly on the bare floor. There were stairs, and then a hard right turn, a low corridor, and then a left, and we were standing in a small alcove beneath a single overhead hatch door.
I looked back at Emily to be certain she was ready. She was bending over, strapping something to her leg. When she straightened, I saw what Brianna had given her, as the last of a set remained at the ready in her hand.
Knives. Brianna’s gift had been, from what I gathered, at least three handcrafted fighting knives. I winced when the realization came, when Brianna’s words registered with her warning. Her prophecy.
Emily nodded, as if she’d missed my reaction and was merely answering my inquiry on whether she was ready. But before either of us could start the climb, the hatch shifted, and we ducked away, though there was no place to hide in the tiny recess. Fortunately, it was Wesley’s copper hair that popped into view.
“Finally,” he gasped. “What took you guys so long?”
“Are you clear?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yeah, but the grounds are crawling with Morgan’s men, you’ve got to hurry.”
He reached an arm down and I lifted Emily by the waist to him, my hand grazing the strap for the third knife that rested behind her back. She kicked off the top rung of the ladder and disappeared through the opening. It only took a moment before I was climbing out behind her.
“We’ve got to go now,” Wesley explained as we all crouched beneath one of the shed’s windows. “Brianna said it would only get worse the longer we waited.”
My eyes narrowed on him.
He shook his head. “It’s not like that, Aern. She has a gift.”
Emily stiffened beside me.
“She helped me,” Wesley said, “because she needed me to help you.”
“What can you do?” Emily asked. “Because if Brianna said run, and we’re not running, then you’d better have something damned fancy hiding up your sleeves.”
I was taken aback by her response, but Wesley only reacted. “Right.” He shoved a crate aside on the back wall. “There’s an opening here, run due south, I’ll cover you until you reach the trees.”
I stared at him.
“Go,” he said. “For the chosen. For all of us.”
Emily spared me a brief glance before shoving through the door at a full run.
The lawn was crowded with running, fighting, screaming men. Commonblood, Council, Division. Everywhere. We were less than two yards from the shed when the report from Wesley’s rifle echoed off the woods. He would pick off any who targeted us, and in the mayhem, that seemed to be all of them.
Emily flinched at each crack of rifle, each boom of .45, but she didn’t slow. We were six yards from the trees now. Five. A large man in black got too close before I could decipher which side he was on and I shouldered into him low and hard, and then spun away before I lost sight of Emily. He fell to the grass behind us as a bullet ripped through his shoulder. Three yards. Two. Emily ducked aside as bark splintered off the tree she headed toward, and gunfire erupted again, peppering both our escape and our attacker. Metal ricocheted off the trees, landing a sharp fragment into the meat of my shoulder, and I threw an arm over her as we adjusted course. But they weren’t targeting her.
A round clipped my thigh, but adrenaline kept me going. They were trying to slow me down, incapacitate me. Morgan must have given the order I wasn’t to be killed. Not yet. I pushed Emily forward as I struggled to overcome the hitch in my stride. They were gaining ground. There were too many of them.
Emily grabbed my shirt and yanked me into the trees with her, and I realized I’d been lagging. She dodged left around a tall oak and then right to pass another. My shoulder brushed the second tree and I stumbled before we reached the underbrush.
“Aern,” she hissed, grabbing at me again. Shots fired from in front of us now, and she hunched forward as she pulled me right and through a patch of saplings.
The trees were crawling with men. Morgan’s men. There was no question this time who was winning, who was after us.
“There,” I