my mother, the huntress, the doctor. The one who would come home to her village with a kill slung over her back. The one who had somehow managed to flee with me into Mara and kept us alive all these years.
“Where did you go?” I sign up to her.
She hops down to the ground and comes up to my side. “The metal yards,” she replies, holding up a sheet of old steel that she’s transformed into a shield.
The scrapyards. Of course. The Federation has no reason to raze the yards the way they’re destroying the Outer City. They’ll salvage the metals there for their own use. It’s a brilliant hiding place, at least for now.
My mother hoists her crossbow on her back. “But first, I think you could use some help,” she tells me. Her eyes tilt skyward, to where the silhouette of a Skyhunter sweeps. “Your Shield seems to be busy with his own fight.”
Red. Even now, I can feel the fury pulsing through our bond as he attacks the Federation’s troops.
I can’t help but smile. My mother has been through invasions, conquests, and poverty. She can do this too. I nod at her and start running back in the direction of the other Strikers defending the gates. My mother runs easily beside me.
This battle isn’t finished yet. And even if the Federation wins in the end, we’re going to make sure they feel the cost.
34
I see Red the instant we round the bend of the Inner City walls. He’s fighting a pair of Ghosts guarding the Premier on his steed—but to my surprise, he’s not attacking them in the efficient way that he usually does.
As this realization hits me, I feel a jab of pain through our bond. One of his wings is severely injured. The way he slices through the air is uneven. As if on cue, another rivulet of agony seeps through the tether that binds us. This time, it’s so sharp that I wince.
Beside me, my mother frowns. “What’s wrong?”
I nod up in Red’s direction, then see the silhouette of a winged figure gathering to protect their Premier. Another Skyhunter. The sight chills my blood. They’re going to make a strike at Red if we don’t get help for him.
My gaze scans the rest of the battlefield. Strikers are converging near the gates in an attempt to hold off the overwhelming tide of Federation troops, their silhouettes dark and exaggerated behind the veils of smoke and flame that blanket the Outer City shanties. Others have turned their attention up to the ramparts, where a Skyhunter is sweeping among them, cutting Maran soldiers into pieces as though they were made of air.
I turn my attention back to Red. He’s decided to take aim at the Premier. If we can help him, if we can secure the slightest chance at taking him down—maybe that alone would cripple the Federation in this battle.
I point to Red and give my mother a meaningful look.
To her credit, she doesn’t flinch for an instant. Instead, she picks up her pace and motions for me to follow. “We can cross through the metal yards,” she says as she goes. “It’ll give us some cover, so they don’t know we’re coming.”
I run beside her at a steady pace. Ahead, a patrol of four Federation soldiers stumbles upon us—but my mother’s already moving, lifting the crossbow in her hands and aiming it directly at the nearest soldier. At the same time, I yank out my gun and fire twice at a second soldier, then flip the weapon into my left hand and fire at the third.
My shots hit the second soldier square in his chest—the third manages to duck, but a bullet catches him in the leg. I dart out of his line of sight as he falls, swearing, and lifts his gun to fire blindly toward us. My boots move without a sound as I climb up the side of a burned-out shack, the destroyed metal shifting unsteadily beneath my feet as I go.
Below me, the soldier doesn’t even know that I’m now running above him. I feel like the phantom that I’ve trained all my life to become—a Ghost killer, a weapon of destruction, an invisible outsider in every way. The wind rushes beneath me, blasts of heat accompanying it from the fires that rage all around us, and for a moment, it seems like I might be lifted into the air.
Then the soldier turns his gun toward my mother. I pivot