Page 70 of The Blood Queen

The soldiers are all looking toward the stone, but their nearness has me whipping my focus from them to Alyth, emotion breaking through the heavy grief hanging over this village.

“Drop your magic,” I whisper.

She frowns at me. “What? Why—”

“I can see your magic. It’s a Red Cap trait, yeah? So they can too.”

Immediately, Alyth lets go of her spells. The spells that kept us from being seen, from being heard.

From here on out, we’ll just have to rely on our own stealth.

The two of us stumble back around the corner, out of sight of the army. The building we’re up against is mostly whole, three levels towering overhead. I survey them, glance back toward the army in the field.

We need to know what’s going on. Need some information about their reason for being here.

I grab Alyth’s hand and haul us inside, through a door hanging off its hinges. The interior matches the destruction outside, and my heart breaks even more at spotting a half-eaten meal spread out on a table, chairs overturned like the family ran mid-supper.

Blood’s smeared against one wall. A bright, vivid streak of it. And the word RISE.

I dunno what it says about me as a Red Cap that this kind of violence doesn’t call to me at all. I should be crazed at the sight of blood, any blood, shouldn’t I? But the sight just turns my stomach.

A monster with morals.

A ladder sits at the back of the room, and I lead us to it, scurrying up as silently as I can, Alyth just the barest brush of noise behind me.

We climb to the cottage’s third floor, a slanted attic, and I find a window overlooking the army sprawled out in the field. That stone is centered within ’em.

The nearest soldiers are a good few paces off, and we’re high enough they shouldn’t think to look up even if they turn around. Still, Alyth and I crouch against the window frame, keeping ourselves low and small.

She leans into me and whispers, barely audible, “That’s Sueno’s Stone.”

I look at that stone again. It’s not glowing with magic. It looks just like a normal, harmless tower of rock.

“A portal?” I ask. “It’s dead.”

She nods. “And this town is Forres, then. We’re nearly to the northern tip of Scotland.”

A shout breaks over the chatter of voices and clank of armor below. We both stiffen.

The shout grows to a piercing wail. There’s the sound of something metal striking stone, a clattering ring, over and over.

Then a voice.

“Bastards! You think you can block us? You will face our wrath! You will fall!”

The High Blade.

A shiver rushes down my spine, pricking fear along my nerves, readying me to fight, to dive in front of Alyth.

The High Blade is by that stone. I see her distant form now, thrashing around, a sword glinting as she lifts it, hacks at the column.

Alyth slumps next to me. “The princes killed this portal.”

“And she’s none too happy about that,” I say as the High Blade carries on. “By the looks of it, this isn’t the first portal she’s made it to that’s been locked off while we’ve been gone.”

“We have to stop her before more portals are killed.” Alyth’s face goes grim.

“Or before she gets to one that isn’t killed.”