He kicked his heels back and began to trot off, and I hurried to kneel down to Haunt. “That’s our future king,” I told the wolf. “I want you to go after him. Keep him alive, no matter what.” I reached out to scratch behind her ear. “Keep yourself alive too.” Haunt pressed affectionately against my hand for half a second, and then she was off after Kingston.
I stood again, and I didn’t need to say anything to my companions for them to know that it was time. We all turned, climbing onto Night Phoenix’s and Pine Shadow’s backs, and we were soaring toward the castle within seconds. We flew over our troops, over the sea of enemy soldiers advancing to meet them, and then straight over the cobbled castle walls, where we passed over all the other stone buildings beyond them until we reached the castle. As we descended, I leaned farther over Night Phoenix’s shoulder to get a better look at the ground below, nearly meeting the head of an arrow.
The arrow flew right by my face, and another passed by my knee, glancing off the dragon’s sturdy scales. The large yard beyond the walls was littered with soldiers, at least sixty, and the few archers I could see were already firing relentlessly. Our fight had begun.
“Nira!” I yelled over my shoulder as Night Phoenix brought us closer to the ground, “we’ve got the archers!”
I heard her shout an affirmative as the dragons landed at the heart of the yard. Night Phoenix immediately snapped a soldier up in its jaws, and one of Nira’s arrows hit the first archer up on a tower. I pulled my dagger and spark jumped off the dragon’s back to the next nearest archer, grabbing his neck with a current while I searched for my second target.
Skif was hurling fire at enemy troops and covering Denig, who’d turned into a bear and was swiping and charging through multiple men at once. Ava and Rhien—who’d transferred her vials of potions to a small bag over her shoulder—had taken defensive positions on either side of Nira, blocking her from close range attacks while she helped take out the archers. It was the best decision we’d ever made, going to find the dragons. Not only were they devouring men faster than I could blink, but they were drawing most of the archers’ fire as well.
I spark jumped onto a tower, burying my dagger in the heart of a bowman and then immediately vaulting back to the ground. I landed in front of an archer who’d been about to fire at Denig, knocking her aim off and then shooting her with current. Just as I turned to move on, Skif reached where I was standing, and curled himself around me to block the arrow of the last archer. The arrow bounced off his impenetrable flesh, and before the archer could wind up again, Denig had reached him.
Now that all the archers were taken care of, I swiveled around to check on Ava, and what I saw made me freeze in awe for an entire handful of seconds. I’d watched her fight only twice—the first day I found out she could wield a sword, while she was practicing with a rebel, and again on occasion of the competitions at the caves—but it was something else to actually see her in the midst of battle. Her skill lay not in her strength or her speed. The soldiers who came at her were larger and stronger, and she didn’t beat them by matching their aggressions.
The brilliance of her defensive technique was in her intelligence and her perception. She could read body language and movement perfectly, and in the split moment it took her to predict the soldier’s next blow, she’d already decided how to deflect it. Ava knocked the sword’s swing off course, leaving the soldier’s upper body unguarded. And she brought her sword hand around through the swing, smashing the hilt of it against the man’s temple and instantly knocking him unconscious. The next soldier that came at her, she deflected much the same way, only this time she didn’t get the same opening to knock the woman out. Ava pushed her toward Rhien instead, and Rhien sidestepped the soldier’s sword and grabbed the woman’s head, putting her right to sleep and then passing a beaming grin at Ava.
It was spectacular, and I’d have stood there all day admiring and thinking that maybe they could get through this battle without bloodshed, but I caught movement heading my direction. I spark jumped backward to avoid the point of the poleax a soldier had charged me with, and then I flicked my wrist, wrapped a static coil around him, and threw him upward. It hadn’t been my intention when Night Phoenix caught the man in its jaws in midair, but it worked just as well…
“Retreat!” came a holler near the entrance of the castle, and one of the enemy soldiers was waving frantically. “Inside! Beyond the dragons’ rea—” One of Pine Shadow’s long spikes got him before he could finish, and Night Phoenix whipped his impressive tail, knocking back the first few soldiers who tried to run for the door.
The enemy troops on the outskirts started sprinting for the entrances on either far side of the long yard, but the ones nearer to us couldn’t run in time. We finished off the last handful of them, and then I paused long enough to take in the state of my companions. Denig and Skif hadn’t a scratch between the two of them; Rhien was pulling up her chainmail and tunic to look at the forming bruise across her side, where the chainmail she was wearing had saved her from being cut; Nira was taking stock of her dwindling supply of arrows; and Ava was poking with the toe of her boot at the soldier Rhien had put to sleep, perhaps to see if the woman would wake.
Without any more enemies out here for the dragons to fight, I turned to Night Phoenix, stretching out my hand to touch its snout. “Would you go and fight with our troops beyond the walls?” Night Phoenix made that friendly clicking noise. “Thank you.” The dragons soared into the air and disappeared over the wall. “Everyone alright?” I asked. Each of them nodded, and we headed for the open doors.
“Off to a good start,” Skif observed as we strode through.
“Let’s keep it that way,” Nira agreed.
We stopped inside the massive entrance hall of the castle, glancing up and down the halls to check for soldiers. There were none, and so I motioned for the others to follow as we headed off in the direction of the throne room. We paced through the corridors until we reached another section where the ceilings were high, and at the back of the circular foyer were the throne room doors. The area was deserted, but only for a few moments longer. There was the sound of heavy footsteps echoing from either direction.
“The soldiers?” Rhien guessed, and I nodded, because surely the enemies who’d retreated from the courtyard would try to cut us off.
“We’re in a bad spot here,” Nira said, glancing around the hall we were standing in. There were the doors behind us that led to the throne room, but we couldn’t retreat through them in case Hazlitt was there. If I had a choice, I wouldn’t face him with the distraction of other soldiers around.
I looked around at where we were, and then down each of the curved halls where the thudding of footsteps were getting closer. “Get to the edges of the hall,” I ordered, and as we scattered, added, “Rhien, I trust you know what to do.”
She looked confused for all of a moment before her eyes widened with recognition, and she gave a sharp nod. “Nobody move,” she said once we’d each plastered ourselves against the walls, “I’ve got this, and remember to hold your breath.” She searched the sack over her shoulder for a specific round vial, and pulled it out as her lips moved with the same phrase she’d said in the mountains of the Amalgam Plains—the one that had made us invisible to Denig and Skif—and then she held the vial up to her mouth. She murmured something to it, and the red mist inside turned black.
The footsteps reached us, and from both halls in either direction came a flood of the remaining soldiers from the courtyard. They filtered in ready to attack, but as each one came into the hall and found it seemingly empty, they slowed, searching around in surprise.