Then Sev understood. This was still about the Phoenix Riders. Sure, attacking Pyra—the place where the Rider order had begun and the place that sheltered their second coming—made sense, but attacking animages, their own kind, struck that much closer to home.
“We have to keep the villagers away from the perimeter. If they stay in the trees, the soldiers won’t pursue. It would never occur to them that animages can see as well in the dark as any owl or other nocturnal animal. They’ll expect them to run away from the fire and into their arms. We can’t let them do that. So we’ll—”
Kade stopped abruptly, whirling around as a sound reached them from behind the house.
There were three children there—an older boy holding an infant in one arm and the hand of a smaller girl in the other. His eyes widened when he saw Sev and Kade.
“Into the trees,” Kade ordered, hands out to show he was unarmed. He’d left his spear on the ground. “Quickly.”
When they didn’t move, he lifted his pendant—stamped with the terms of his bondage—from underneath his tunic, to prove he was no soldier. The children still wavered, uncertain, but the sounds from the battle were loud and near, and the trees—while dark and wild and farther up the sloping ground—were a quiet sheltering mass.
They started to move away in slow, uneasy steps backward.
“Come on,” Kade said, his voice gentle despite the urgency concealed underneath. “Hurry. There’s—”
Kade stopped short as a man rounded the side of the house. He was dressed in a long white nightshirt, its hem ripped and spattered with something dark… mud, or was it blood? He was bearded and gray, his hair wild and unkempt, but he was broad-shouldered and steady on his feet.
First he saw the children. Then he saw Sev and Kade.
“Get out of here!” he bellowed at the youngsters, his voice loud and sudden, causing the baby to cry. He didn’t seem to notice. He shoved the children behind him and raised a spear he must have stolen from one of the soldiers, hefting it, point aimed at Sev and Kade. The tip glinted, reflecting the distant light of the fires.
Kade did what he’d done with the children, holding his hands palm out, showing he was unarmed. Sev remained slightly behind Kade, afraid to make any sudden movements. His own spear was gone—he must have dropped it when he’d retched into the bushes.
Also as he had before, Kade reached toward the neck of his tunic, meaning to unearth his bondservant pendant—but the movement drew his hand dangerously close to the handle of the crossbow still strapped to his back.
The man’s eyes alighted on the weapon, and he reacted with a sudden, violent lunge.
Sev watched, frozen with shock, as the tip of the spear plunged into Kade’s abdomen… and then out the other side.
Kade’s arm dropped. Then he fell onto his knees.
It was like before, when the world stuttered and blinked in and out of time: Kade was standing there, alive and well; then he was on his knees, a spear protruding from his midsection. Kade’s stolen armor wasn’t fitted for him and was too narrow for his wide frame. It left gaps. It left vulnerabilities.
Now it was Sev’s turn to react with sudden, desperate violence. He knelt, picked up Kade’s abandoned spear, and whipped it around.
The man’s weapon was still embedded in Kade, and before he could draw it out, Sev had run him through. He didn’t aim left or right to avoid ill-fitting armor—he didn’t need to. The man wore none. Sev’s shot was straight and true.
Blood bloomed across the white nightshirt, and Sev watched as the light died in the man’s eyes. Then he wrenched the spear free. He turned before the man’s body hit the ground.
The children had long since fled, but Sev didn’t care anymore. He tossed his spear away and turned.
Kade was lying on his face in the dirt. Sev’s chest tightened, his insides contracting as if cowering from a blow. From the truth.
The spear had become dislodged—whether by the man’s efforts or Kade’s fall, Sev didn’t know, but when he fell to his knees, he felt hot blood soak into his pants.
So much blood.
I should have told him, Sev thought wildly, though his mind wouldn’t let him follow that train of thought to the very end.
Sev tore the crossbow from Kade’s back and threw it aside, out of the way, before carefully turning Kade over. He didn’t bother trying to stanch the flow