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I offer her a tight smile. “This is why we’re here. Why we’re fighting. To make sure this doesn’t keep happening.”
She draws herself straighter and swipes at the glint of tears in her eyes before catching an accomplice in mid-lurch. “Let me get you out the door. There’s a comfortable wagon waiting.”
“Anything to serve,” the accomplice mumbles. The devotion in his little-used voice makes my throat constrict.
“You’ve done so well already,” I tell him, not knowing what else to say.
Just beyond the farm’s gate, Casimir greets the accomplices with much more grace than I’m capable of. “Thank you for joining us. We’re going to ask that you climb up here in the wagon—that’s right. I’m sorry for the sudden visit, but what you’re going to do is so important for Silana.”
I step back, letting him and the devout take over. Gentle reassurance has never been my forte.
The rest of our group gathers around the wagon, returning from their initial posts. One of Voleska’s men is wrapping a bandage around a shallow gash on his arm, and a couple of the soldiers are sporting bruises on their jaws, but it looks like we got through the assault without any major injuries.
That thought has just passed through my head when an arc of light flashes through the air toward the edge of our group.
I don’t have time to do much more than sense the vicious tang of the magic in that energy and react. No blade can stop that killing bolt.
I thrust out my arm with a surge of my magic.
Training and practice come through—even as I swat at the conjured attack, my mind reaches toward the wood we left and visualizes a branch being pulled toward me in the reverse of how I’m pushing the assault away.
Wood cracks, and the arc of light bursts apart into a shower of sparks.
They dissolve in the air just inches from the faces of the two men they nearly struck. The soldier takes a step back with a grimace, his eyes flicking to me with an almost accusing look as if I’m somehow to blame for the initial attack.
Filip gapes at the spot where the attack fizzled out before his gaze slides to me too.
“It would have killed me,” he says. “I hardly saw it coming.”
I inhale slowly, my body tensed for any sign that this one jab of magic has addled my mind. “I want us all leaving this place as unharmed as I can manage.”
Was it worth the trade-off? I don’t know. But faced with the question, I can’t imagine standing back and letting two men simply die to preserve some small shred of my sanity.
Even if the soldier is still eyeing me like I might explode at any second.
A twinge of queasiness passes through me. How long will it take before Petra’s followers from Florian pass on what they’ve heard about me to Voleska’s people?
It doesn’t matter, I tell myself. What matters is that I’m here, doing what’s right for the country, whatever they end up thinking of me.
Rheave has already charged off in the direction the attack was flung from. There’s a sizzling noise before he lets out a resolute grunt. “That sorcerer is definitely not hurting anyone else now.”
Casimir shoots me a concerned glance from where he’s guiding the last of the sacrificial accomplices into the wagon, and I smile in return to say I’m okay. Then I clamp down on the rest of the power squirming inside me.
Just a small push. Not that big a deal, and I controlled the consequences. I saved a couple of lives.
But I never want to get back into the habit of using it for anything I don’t absolutely have to.
Voleska sets her hands on her hips, watching the devout pull the curtains shut on the back of the wagon. “Well, hopefully this’ll put a little dent in the Order’s influence. I wonder if it’ll affect Lothar’s festival plans?”
My head jerks around. “Festival plans?”
She cocks her head with a swing of her sandy blond ponytail. “Hadn’t you heard? The Order of the Wild’s been announcing it all over the place in the past couple of days. On the next full moon just a few nights from now, he’s holding a country-wide party to celebrate King Konram’s death.”
Nineteen
Alek
The soft rasp of footsteps brings my head up from the book I’ve been poring over. A twinge of pain shoots down my neck from the cramped posture I’ve held.
