“Not as safe as the inner keep—”
“I’m not going to the keep. My husband told me to stay here until he returns. That’s what I plan to do.”
I swallow a gulp of frustration as she collapses stubbornly onto a straight-backed chair she’s turned to face the door. I notice a slender, lethally sharp saber sitting on the end table beside it. When she sees me looking, Carys shrugs. Her lips curl up at one side and a ghost of humor drifts through her eyes.
“I’m no Ember Guild member, but Uther taught me well enough to stop anything that comes through that door.”
“I’m relieved I have you two fearsome ladies to protect me,” Farley says with only the slightest edge of mockery in his tone. Grinning, he slips the bow and quiver off his back and passes them to me. “Take this, Ace. You’re a better shot than I am.”
“But—”
“I’m covered.” He gestures down to the short sword at his hip. “Just take it, would you? We both know I can’t aim worth a damn when I’m leaning on a cane for support.”
“Thanks,” I murmur, fingers closing around the quiver. I feel instantly safer with a weapon in my hands.
Discussion stalls as we sit in the dark shop, flinching each time an explosion sounds in the distance. None of us has the heart to keep up the charade of normal conversation. Physically, we are in the room, and yet our hearts and minds are far beyondthe confines of these four walls, caught up in the battle that rages on in the streets, coming closer and closer as the minutes tick by.
Certainly, there is horror in the fight; however, there is a different sort of horror in the wait for that fight to end. In sitting idly by, counting minutes, counting heartbeats, praying that the news, when at last it comes, will be good.
I have never before felt so useless. A pathetic girl in a pretty dress, sitting in the shadows, hiding out instead of helping.
What have you spent these past weeks teaching her?
I am a failure. I have no aptitude for maegic, no ability to keep anyone safe. Would that this gift had passed to someone else. Someone worthy of it. Someone who could actually be of some consequence in a war zone, instead of hiding out like the worst sort of coward.
One haunting thought chases another across my mind, a dark circle that snakes through me and coils at the center of my chest. My Remnant burns, a constant reminder of my own stagnation.
“Carys…” I try again when a blast hits so close, the chandelier rattles over our heads and several bolts of fabric tumble to the floor. “We should really—”
“I’m not leaving,” she repeats for the umpteenth time, digging in her heels. “Uther said—”
“Uther did not know the severity of this situation!” I cast a desperate look at Farley, but he merely grimaces, at a loss for what to do. We can’t exactly drag her, kicking and screaming, into a battlefield with a baby in her arms. No sooner can we leave her here alone.
We are stuck.
“At least take the baby and get out of sight,” I plead with my pigheaded friend. “If the fighting reaches us…”
Carys heaves an annoyed sigh but ultimately does as I bid, moving toward the rear sitting area. She drags her saber with her.
Farley blows out a tense breath. “Stubborn as an ox, that one.”
“She’s scared. She doesn’t want to leave her home.”
“She may not have a choice, Ace.”
The sounds of battle edge closer, increasing in decibels as the bloodshed spills outward from the breached tunnel down King’s Avenue, into surrounding neighborhood squares and side alleyways, and, eventually, onto the quaint cobblestones of High Street. I listen to its approach, a melody unique to wartime—the heartrending peal of screams, the piercing clash of blades, harmonizing into an anguishing din that grates at both the ears and the heart.
All too soon, the fight rages right outside our door. I tuck a high-backed chair beneath the knob, but I know the barricade is flimsy at best. Scurrying up into the window display, I squeeze between two mannequins and press my face against the glass pane to get a look outside.
“Rhya—”
I silence Farley with a terse hand gesture. People are running down the street, their faces streaked with dust and grime and blood. Not soldiers but civilians, many of them still clad in their fanciest Fyremas attire. My heart lurches when I see a mother dragging two children in her wake, desperation contorting her face as their tiny feet stumble.
“To the keep!” a Dyvedi soldier is shouting as he runs in the opposite direction, pointing wildly over his shoulder. “Take shelter in the keep!”
The door of the shop directly across the lane cracks open. I watch two cloaked female figures dart out, not even pausing long enough to turn the locks. The cobbler and her wife join the fray of fleeing Caelderans and disappear. One shop down, the apothecary’s hammer and planks lie abandoned in front of his half-boarded windows.
The fleeing crowd thins, then tapers off until only a handful of stragglers streak past the window, heading in the direction of the marketplace and the palace beyond. When a shadow lurches to a stop at the front door, my heart seizes in panic. I realize it is not an enemy as desperate fists pound and a familiar voice calls out.