Page 10 of Keldori By Daybreak

Neon light erupted from the other end of the clearing, and Orla’s warning shout mingled with the sound of Ciarán’s magick crackling and snapping in his hands as he intercepted Sabrina’s fresh attack.

Sabrina’s burst of orange shattered against Ciarán’s glowing shield, and I let the fresh flail I’d procured evaporate in my hands.

“She’s not going to learn if you block it for her,” Sabrina snapped.

Ciarán’s shield dissipated into auburn steam, and he wrapped a sudden, protective arm around my shoulders.

“Get off—” I tried to wiggle out from his embrace, but he held a finger to his lips, his glowing eyes trained on the dark trees behind Sabrina.

For a moment, I thought he must be imagining some nonexistent danger, but the longer I stared, the stronger the soft haze of indigo light percolated through tree trunks and underbrush.

“Move!” Sabrina hissed, pushing Orla into the low bushes that lined the clearing.

Ciarán pulled me after them, and the adrenaline helped dull the pain in my sides.

“Shouldn’t we run?” Orla whispered.

“There’s no time.” Ciarán fought through snow-covered underbrush, and then dropped below the vegetation to lie on his stomach in the snow. He helped me down after him, and the leaves rustled as Orla and Sabrina followed suit so we could watch our abandoned clearing together.

“Ciarán, the snow,” Sabrina hissed.

“I’ve got it.”

The prints we left in the snow behind us glowed a faint orange for a half moment, and then filled with fresh powder to hide our footsteps. And I remembered what Ciarán had said just minutes before.

Not all Skal constructs glow.

The ice beneath us at least felt good against my ribs as we waited in silence, and I set my forehead down on my hands in front of me.

“Maybe they went a different direction?” Orla whispered after a tense minute of holding our breath. Ciarán shushed her, and she shifted uncomfortably against my side.

The sound of snow crunching beneath feet accompanied that of snapping tree branches, growing louder as the newcomers approached. We watched in silence as a squadron of leather boots trudged into the clearing where we’d just been sparring. Wagons dragged behind them, laden with supplies and tarps. Whoever these people were, and wherever they were from, they were planning on a long stay wherever they were going.

“Breachriver?” Sabrina whispered from Orla’s other side. “Judging from the coating on their boots?”

Ciarán murmured back in agreement.

“How about a rest, Captain?” a man called from the middle of the troupe. “This field is—”

“We’ll rest when we get to the Bay of Teeth!” someone yelled back. They were met with groans and sighs. “If the Rift clears before we arrive, the trip over the mountains will have been for nothing. I refuse to let the Baron reach Keldori before us.”

A man on the group’s outskirts stumbled and fell, landing on his hands and knees in the snow mere feet away from our hiding spot. Nervous Skal jumped in my fingers, and Ciarán shifted to place his hand over mine.

“Careful, Blue,” he warned in my head. “Just wait.”

The man took an extra moment to kneel in the snow. Ice had frozen his wiry beard, and his cheeks were ruddy and chapped. His comrades stepped around him, unfaltering in their steady trek, and when he finally leaned forward to push himself back to his feet, his eyes lifted. He froze when he saw us lying beneath the underbrush.

Ciarán’s fingers wrapped around mine, but he otherwise remained still, as did Orla and Sabrina.

I braced for a fight. Or to run. I wasn’t in good condition to do either, but we’d been spotted and wouldn’t have much of a choice.

However, the man must’ve wanted an altercation as much as we did, because he staggered to his feet and fell back in line.

Ciarán kept his fingers around mine until the last of the Breachriver soldiers had passed through the clearing. He didn’t move until the sounds of their sleds dragging through snow had disappeared into the trees.

Sabrina was on her feet first, charging into the clearing where soft snow was now compacted and muddy.

“We attack them from behind.” She shook out her shoulder and the wooden arms of a crossbow deployed from her leather bracer. Orange magick sparked between its ends to form a crackling bowstring of Skal. “Pick them off one by one.”