her throat, the gladness turned to ashes in Veronyka’s mouth.
She whipped up her bow, planting an arrow between the soldier’s eyes before he had a chance to make a demand or call out a threat, and Veronyka realized this was something she could relish instead. They dared to use innocent animage children as bait? They dared to lure her here? She would make sure they regretted it for the rest of their very short lives.
The next three guards dropped before the others even realized the first had fallen. The animage girl cried out and fell to the ground, crawling back inside the tent, but Veronyka kept her attention on the soldiers.
When she had killed to defend and protect her friends, like she had at the Eyrie and even in the Silverwood, fear had driven her. It had made her hands shake and her heart pound like a drum inside her chest.
But fear did not drive her now…. It was something else. Something that made her aim true and her pulse steady. Something darker. There was a savage glee in hurting those who had hurt others—who would hurt again and again. These soldiers had burned and pillaged, killed and captured, had ripped families and friends and whole worlds apart. Even now, when justice appeared on phoenix wings, they’d used innocent children as weapons and shields.
What drove Veronyka was anger. It was hot as fire and cold as steel. Veronyka was here, but not. Her body was present, but not her heart.
Her heart was elsewhere, buried deep or forgotten behind, she wasn’t sure, but what was left was a chilling detachment.
Whenever emotion tried to surface, Veronyka pushed it down and cleared her thoughts, reordering her mind to focus on the task at hand. She couldn’t undo what had already been done, but she could make damn sure it did not happen again.
These soldiers weren’t just standing between her and her goal—innocent animages. They were here, in Pyra, with the express purpose of destroying everything Veronyka held dear. And unlike the Silverwood soldiers, who had been quick to scatter and retreat, these soldiers were here to fight, to hold their lines and stand their ground. They maintained their positions, drawing together with spears and crossbows raised—no matter how many of them dropped—and Veronyka felt her own survival instincts kick in. She wasn’t just preventing harm from coming to herself in this instance—she was protecting all of Pyra.
It was surprisingly easy to think this way. With every arrow loosed, it got easier still, because the soldiers were fighting back, and this was war, just as Val had said.
It was kill or be killed.
Xephyra continued to dive and circle, and with a brief instruction from Veronyka, swooped around wider, bursting into flame and trailing sparks and swaths of fire in her wake, catching on tents and brittle grass and any soldiers too slow to get out of the way.
With a ring of fire as protection, Veronyka decided it was safe to land.
She whipped open the flap of the tent, and the occupants cowered from her, eyes wide and hands raised, as if expecting to have to defend themselves. Outside, Xephyra released an earsplitting shriek, and the animages within understood for the first time that the camp was under attack by Phoenix Riders—that this was a rescue.
“Come,” Veronyka said, her chest expanding with the hope on their faces. She located two of the adults in the group, then pointed at the children. “Get them ready to walk. Quickly. We don’t have much time.”
Back outside, Veronyka loosed a few more arrows, filling the gaps in Xephyra’s flame wall. She relished the sight of the rippling heat waves, the scent of ash and singed fabric. It was the smell of phoenix battle, the smell of victory.
When all the animages were outside—nearly fifty—with the oldest carrying the little ones or holding tightly to their hands, Veronyka led them to the back of the tents.
The soldiers’ camp butted up against the Foothills, which rose behind in great stony spears and slabs of jagged, soaring rock. The Foothills could be traversed on foot, though it was slow going, the narrow paths steep and the ground uneven. There were also sudden holes and gaping caves—some made by nature or the gods, some made by humans past and present.
Veronyka ran until she spotted a juncture between two large stones—a path she had chosen from above—the entrance so narrow that the animages had to squeeze in single file. There was no other way to