“Vara!” Lysandra thundered up to the girl, who looked at her with wild, scared eyes. “You’re alive!”
“What are you doing here?” Vara whispered.
The area was as crowded as a small city and buzzing with activity. Everywhere Lysandra looked there were piles of wood and rock as tall as cottages. Dotted along the edges of the road were large tents where the Limerian guards could take breaks and step out of the harsh sunlight.
Lysandra pulled Vara behind one of these tents to shield them from a nearby guard. “Where’s Gregor?” When the girl didn’t reply, she shook her. “Where is he?”
“I–I don’t know. I haven’t seen him.”
Lysandra’s heart twisted. “When did you see him last?”
“In the village-when they descended upon us.” Her voice broke and her eyes welled with tears. “Lysandra, so many are dead!”
It was only confirmation of what she already knew was true. “How many still live?”
“I don’t know. You shouldn’t be here! They might capture you too!” She bit her bottom lip, frowning. “But. . but you’re a good fighter-I know this. You can help us.”
“Help you? With what?”
“Our escape.” Vara nodded firmly, but Lysandra noticed there was a strange, unhinged look in her eyes. “It was already supposed to happen. I’m only waiting for the sign. You’re the sign. You must be. It’s time for us to free ourselves.”
“What are you talking about? Is there really a plan for escape?” It lightened Lysandra’s heart to think that her people would be planning a revolt here, even against so much armed opposition. Jonas had been right about one thing-attacking a place with so many guards would lead to many, many deaths of rebels and slaves alike. And certainly no guarantee of victory.
Most Paelsians accepted life as it was handed to them, believing that fate and destiny were unchangeable. Jonas was one of the few she’d met who had something inside him-something that defied this belief. This certainty shone through his very skin, and she knew it was what had singled him out as a leader. Jonas was a leader. He believed that destiny wasn’t to be accepted with head bowed; it was to be challenged at every turn.
That Vara, too, wanted to break free was a sign that there was a chance for others to do the same.
“I dreamed it would be me,” Vara whispered. “That I would kill them all.”
She turned and Lysandra winced to see the red lash wounds on the girl’s back. What remained of her dress was in tatters.
Still, there was something very wrong about the way Vara spoke. “Of course you will. They will die for what they’ve done, I promise you that.”
Vara glanced over her shoulder and gave Lysandra a big grin that sent a shiver down her spine. “Watch me.”
“Watch-watch what? Vara, what are you talking about?”
Picking up a mid-weight, jagged rock from the ground, Vara began walking directly toward a guard. Lysandra’s heart began pounding wildly. What was she doing?
“Sir. .” Vara said.
“What is it?” The guard looked at her.
Without hesitation, she smashed the rock into the guard’s face. He let out a pained roar as his nose and teeth were crushed by the force of it. She crouched over him when he fell to the ground and continued to beat him with the stone, over and over until there was little left of his face but red pulp.
Lysandra looked on from the edge of the tent, horrified, as other guards shouted out an alarm. They rushed toward the assault, pushing past other workers, swords drawn.
There was no hesitation as one guard thrust his sword through Vara’s side, straight through to the other side, and she let out a piercing scream, losing her grip on the bloody rock as she fell to her side on the ground. Dead within moments.
Lysandra clamped her hand down over her mouth to keep from making a sound, but a strangled cry escaped her throat. Other slaves were not so quiet. Many began to wail and scream at the sight of the blood, the dead guard, the dead girl.
An older man with thick muscles and a heavy beard roared out in fury. Lysandra took only an instant to recognize him as Vara’s father. He ran toward the guards and took hold of a guard’s sword, wrenching it from his grip. He struck quickly and brutally, severing the guard’s head where he stood.
In mere moments, three dozen Paelsians joined the fight in an attempt to kill as many guards as they could-with rocks, with chisels, with their bare hands and teeth. Other slaves stood back, looking on with fear and shock etched into their faces.
A swarm of new guards approached at a run. One raised his arm to bring his whip down upon a young boy, but then the guard staggered backward. With wide eyes, the guard looked down at the arrow that had sunk into his chest, just below his shoulder. His gaze shot to Lysandra.
When he opened his mouth to yell, to point her out to the other guards as a target, another arrow impaled his right eye socket. He fell to the ground without uttering a sound.
The first arrow had been from Lysandra’s bow. Her already callused fingers felt raw from the speed with which she’d nocked an arrow and let it fly.
But the second. .
Brion and Jonas swiftly moved toward her. Jonas let free another arrow aimed toward an approaching guard, catching him in the throat.
“Get her,” Jonas barked.
Brion didn’t argue. He grabbed Lysandra and threw her over his shoulder. She was shaking violently and couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t see straight.
She fought him, digging her fingernails into his back. “Let me go! I need to help!”
“And let you get yourself killed?” Brion snarled. “Not a chance.”
Vara had walked right into that without thinking twice. There had been no organized plan of revolt. The girl was mad. The death she’d seen in the village, and whatever nameless abuses she’d suffered here. . they had driven her insane.
Jonas led the way, making use of his jeweled dagger, slashing his way past any guard who stepped into their path so the three could make it back to the tree line. Once cloaked by the branches, Brion finally put Lysandra back down on the ground.
She stared back at the camp with horror. She couldn’t count the bodies that now lay bleeding and broken and surrounded by masses of chaotic, rioting slaves and the guards attempting to restore order. Thirty, forty. . maybe more had been slaughtered in mere moments. Both Paelsian and Limerian, their blood now soaked into the parched ground.
It was a massacre.
“Are you all right?” Brion was shouting at her, but his voice sounded a million miles away. “Lys, listen to me! Are you all right?”
Finally she looked at him, into his blue eyes, which held deep concern for her. “I was trying to help,” she said faintly.
Relief flashed through his gaze, followed by anger. “You had me worried. Do not do that to me again, you hear me?”
A breeze brushed against her face when before the air had been still. Brion felt it too, and looked up. A roaring noise approached, growing louder by the second.
“What is that?” he asked.
Something strange and unexpected now moved across the land, pulling up dust and debris, wood and rock, as it gathered strength. Something that had formed out of nothing so suddenly that no one had noticed until it fully hit.
A tornado. A swirling cylindrical mass that twisted its way toward the road camp. The winds picked up, blowing Lysandra’s hair back from her face, making it impossible to speak. The noise was so loud now that they wouldn’t be able to hear each other anyway. Dark storm clouds quickly gathered, blocking out the sunlight within seconds.
Slaves and guards alike ran to escape its path, but some were swept up into it, disappearing for moments before being thrown free, like broken dolls as they hit the ground.
“It’s coming!” Jonas shouted. Brion grabbed her hand and they started running but didn’t get far before the force of the approaching wind blew them off their feet. Evergreens were pulled up out of the ground by their roots and hurled through the air like arrows.