Still dark. Still empty. The darkness is trying to creep into the dungeon while the blazing torches fight it away. And then—
A big old head fills the space, towering close to the top of the door. The head grunts and I know it’s true.
Skye slips back into her cell and all is revealed.
Abe stands there grinning, or at least I think that’s what it is, all crooked and honest-like. Behind him is Hightower, rising a head higher, the head I saw filling the dark, empty space, grunting a greeting, like he always does. And the biggest shocker: Brock’s there too, scowling, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.
“What the…?” I say. And then in one breath, “Whatthechillareyoudoinghere?”
“You know them?” Skye says, looking back at me sharply.
“Of course he knows us,” Abe says. “I was his master not that long ago.”
“His master? Dazz—these’re the men you worked at the border with?”
I nod. Skye’s face clenches with anger. “I’ll kill ’em,” she says.
“Do that and Daisy here’ll spend the rest of his days rottin’ in this cell,” Abe says.
“What are you doing here, Abe?” I ask again. “There are guards all over this place. If they catch you…”
Abe raises a hand, silencing me. “Don’t worry ’bout the guards. We’re ’ere to git you out.”
“Out?” I say. “What are you talking about? Why would you—”
“Don’t question it, kid, we ain’t got much time.” As Abe stomps over to my cell, he jangles a set of keys in his hand.
“How did you—what did you…?” I can’t get the words out, because I’m so confused it’s like I’m standing on the ceiling, and everything’s up instead of down, right instead of left, backwards and twisted. Abe’s helping me? I mean, he already did, but now he’s really helping me, like if-he-gets-caught-his-head-will-roll kind of helping.
“Later,” Abe says, turning a key in the lock. The cell door swings open.
I hear, “Abe?” from down the row. Buff stands up, rubbing his eyes, probably thinking he’s dreaming too.
“Yah, Fluff, it’s me and the whole gang.” He leaves me to gawk at Tower and Brock, who’re waiting by the door, Tower looking the other way. There’s a click and a moment later Buff’s by my side, as free as I am.
Everyone’s waking up now, making tired and curious noises. Wes crawls over to the bars, eyes as wide as if he’s been awake for hours. Abe says nothing, just opens his door too.
“We gotta go, kid,” Abe says to me. “We ain’t got a spare second ’fore more guards’ll come.”
I look at Skye, who’s looking back at me, horror all over her face. “What about them?” I say. What about her? I add in my head.
Abe shoots me a look, rolls his head around. “C’mon, kid, really? You expect me to break out a bunch of Heaters?”
“I’m the only Heater,” Circ says. “You can leave me if you like. Get the others out.”
“No,” Siena says. “If he stays, I stay.”
“You’re all stayin’ as far’s I’m concerned,” Brock growls. “Abe, we gotta go. Now!”
“You comin’ or what?” Abe says, staring at me and my two brothers, one by blood, one by everything else.
I look at Buff, then Wes, and last at Skye. Go, she mouths.
“Not without them,” I say. “All of them.”
~~~
It doesn’t take more than a minute for Abe to unlock all the cell doors. He doesn’t seem happy about it, but I think the thought of leaving empty handed is worse to him than leaving with his hands way fuller than he expected.
“Why’re you doing this?” I ask him as he snaps open the last lock, Skye’s. She’s watching us both curiously.
“Later,” Abe says.
“Thank you,” I say, clapping him on the shoulder.
“Don’t get all snowy on me or I’ll throw you back inside and eat the key,” Abe says.
“Thank you, too, Tower,” I say. Hightower, well, he does his usual. “And Brock,” I add, half-joking.
“Shut the chill up ’fore I smash yer face in,” Brock says. I shut up.
Abe moves for the door and so does everyone else, but I let them go past. Brock hands each of them a weapon as they pass by, a sword or an axe or a knife. The weapons gleam bright and new and look suspiciously like the ones the guards are always carrying.
The only one who doesn’t move is Skye, still in her cell. “This is our only chance,” I say.
“Them fellas, they delivered the Heater children to the king?” she asks.
“Yah. And so did I,” I remind her.
“But you only did it once. And you told us why. They probably did it again and again and again, countless times. They mighta been the ones who gave him my sister.”
“Maybe,” I say, “but I don’t think they wanted to. There’s something I’ve been missing. And they’re helping us now—that’s more than anyone else has done. We can describe your sister to them, maybe they’ll remember her.” I’m pleading now, trying to get her outta that cell, so we can escape together, so maybe one day we’ll be able to finish what we started before Abe showed up.
She swallows hard, steps out, so close to me, closer than we’ve been since I chased her in the forest. Dangerously close. My heart drums harder. The feelings from before return. There’s no time for this but I have to touch her, have to do something, before it’s too late. She brushes past me and Brock hands her a short dagger.
“Aren’t you the icy one,” Brock says.
“Shut yer tughole,” Skye says.
Smiling, I say, “Don’t mess with her,” and slap him on the back, ignoring both the look he gives me and the axe he tries to.
~~~
There’s blood and bodies on both sides of the passage, littering the path beneath our feet. I look back at Brock with a question, and he says, “Don’t get Hightower worked up. It ain’t pretty.”
Walking behind Skye, I step around and over the bodies, staying close, feeling her closeness like a promise. A promise of what could be if we ever get outta the palace.
We climb the steps leading out to the main hall, but I have to stop halfway up when Skye stops in front of me. Everyone stops, and I see Hightower bending his neck to look around the corner. Then, without even the smallest grunt, he motions for us to follow.
With soft footfalls, we sneak into the hall, leaving the piles of bodies behind us in the dungeons. Skye and I walk stride for stride, while Brock jogs past us, cradling the axe I refused, moving toward the front of the column, as if he’s just itching for us to run into more guards.
“Follow my lead,” Skye says as we approach the high, white archways that lead to the palace courtyard. I plan on it, I think to myself.
The archways fly away overhead and fresh, cold air fills my lungs, sharpening my senses.
A cry goes up from one of the watchful tower guards. A dozen other wall guards turn and let out a chorus of shouts, alerting the groundsmen, who are lounging in the yard, probably not expecting any action from behind the safety of the high, stone wall.
Our group breaks into a run, scattering across the yard, making us each an individual target. An arrow zips past my head, so close its tail feathers leave behind a buzzing in my ear. The wall guards are shooting at us.
I dart left, following after Skye, who’s moving faster than the wind now that we’re outside, opening up her long strides, just a blur of brown and grace. A guard stands waiting, clutching a two-headed battle axe, his face harder than the metal of the weapon he’s carrying.
Skye closes in.
He swings—
—but she’s already ducking, ramming into him shoulders and head first, knocking him flat on his arse, the axe spinning away over his head. She raises her knife over her head, slams it down without hesitation.
I gawk at her as she climbs off the dead guard, making the act of killing look so easy that I wonder how many times she’s done it befo
re. More times than my zero, that’s for sure.
While I’m acting my usual idiot-part and standing around watching Skye in action, I see a shadow closing in from my left. I turn sharply, catching the glint of metal before I see the face of the guard wielding the long sword.
I jump back, narrowly avoiding getting slashed to ribbons as the guard brings the sword chest-high across the empty space I was just standing in. Anger floods my face with warmth as I rock back on my heel and then spring forward, using my arm and hand like a club, bashing him over the head. I finally see his eyes, but only when they widen and roll back into his head. He slumps to the ground.
I pick up his sword.
I throw it back down, having never really used one before.
Another guard rushes me, wielding a battle axe. Maybe even a fool with a sword woulda been better than what I am now: a weaponless fool.
I dodge his first slash and, getting inside his weapon’s arc, crush my elbow into his jaw. But he recovers nicely, jabbing my nose with the butt end of the axe. It hurts like chill and I see stars for a second, feeling the discomfort and metallic taste of blood running from the inside of my nose down my throat.
When I grab the handle of his axe, he pulls back on it sharply, trying to wrench me loose, and we grapple with it for a few seconds, him pulling, me pulling, the axe slicing around at a blank spot of air.
When I’m sure he’s pulling with every last bit of his strength, I let go. He goes flying, taking two stumbling off-balance steps before rolling onto his back, still clutching at the axe handle, as if he thinks it will protect him against—
—cracking his head off a pillar. He shoots me a final helpless look and then his eyes close, his shoulders weaken, and his fingers uncurl, letting the axe slide away. Two down.
There are grunts and cries all around me. I whirl around, trying to take it all in, but it’s too much. Everything’s a blur of movement and fighting and killing. This is no pub fight. This is real. People are dying. And then—
like the strange distortion of a nightmare becoming real,
everything twists
and turns
and comes together
in one moment of clarity, as the curves straighten and the blurs sharpen. And what I see is this:
Skye standing over a growing pile of bodies, wiping her dripping knife on her hip;
Siena dodging a punch from a guy twice her size, diving, rolling, snagging a satchel of arrows and a bow from a fallen guard, stringing one, shooting the guard through the neck;
Circ sword fighting another guard, taking a blow to his off-shoulder, but swinging his own sword across his opponent’s chest, striking him down;
Feve, moving as fast as Skye, running from enemy to enemy, eliminating them with seemingly no more than his bare hands and a short knife;
Wilde, using a long dagger to hold her own against two medium-sized guards with swords, but getting pushed back, back, back toward the palace, until—
—Buff charges from the side tackling the guards, laying down a barrage of punches on one of their faces while the other lies motionless, his own sword sticking from his chest;
Abe getting hit in the leg by a wall guard’s arrow, going down, Brock standing over him and screaming obscenities at the foursome of guards that surround them, holding them off until—
—he gets stabbed through the gut and his eyes go white, and he falls, falls onto Abe, who’s injured but not dead, a dead man covering a living one, but then—
—Hightower is there, swinging a huge club in one hand and a battle axe in the other, chopping down guards like small trees, throwing his axe down, rolling Brock off his brother, picking Abe up and slinging him over his shoulder, arrows filling the air like sleet, hitting him once, twice, thrice, shoulder, chest, thigh, but he’s running, running like a raging bear, using his club to knock away the guards in his path, another arrow, this one in the arm with the club, which he’s forced to drop, reaching the gate crank, kicking the guard who’s manning it, and finally, finally, using one arm to spin the crank faster than anyone’s probably ever cranked it.
The gate starts to open.
It slides higher and higher, rising up into the hollowed out wall. We all hear it—and so do the guards, who begin running toward it to make their last stand. The wall guards abandon their posts and throw ropes over the wall, slide down them. There are only a half-dozen left.
Skye yells, “To me!” and there’s no doubt that she’s the leader of the fighting portion of our escape.
I start to run to her, but then I realize that in my moment of clarity, there was one person missing. The person I should’ve been looking for first, who, was I thinking clearly, I would’ve sought out. My brother. Wes.
I stop and spin around, searching, searching—frantically freezin’ searching—and not finding. The others rush past me toward Skye, stampeding over any guards in their path. Buff grabs my arm, tries to pull me. “We gotta go!” he says.
“Wes,” I say. “Have you seen him?”
“What? Nay. He’s probably with the others…” We both look to where the others are standing, Skye shouting quick orders. He’s not there.
“C’mon!” Skye yells in our general direction.
I push Buff toward them. I run the other way.
Chapter Twenny-Six
I hear a cry behind me but I don’t look. The others are storming the gate, fighting their way through. I should be with them, helping, not running away, but I can’t leave him. I can’t.
I run through the courtyard, tossing aside bodies of guards piled on bodies of guards, desperately trying to find the man who clothed and fed Jolie and I when my father was dead and my mother stricken with something worse than death. But he’s not here. He’s not here.
Then, suddenly, Buff’s beside me, pulling at bodies, searching alongside me. “Go!” I yell at him, right in his face. “Go, you can’t be here!”
“I’m not freezin’ leaving,” he says, and I know he won’t.
The sound of death burns near the gate, but it seems miles away, the cold windless night becoming eerily calm around us, like we’re in a normal place, doing normal things. But my erratic heartbeat and ragged breaths tell me everything I need to know about the desperateness of our situation.
We’re out of time. More than out. If we’re going to escape, it has to be now.
“We have to go,” Buff says.
“I can’t leave him,” I say.
“We’ll come back for him.”
“When?!” I shout. “He’s already got my sister. I can’t let him take Wes too.”
And Buff nods grimly because he knows. He knows I can’t. He was just saying what he had to as my friend.
We keep looking while someone dies at the gates.
But we’ve looked everywhere—there’s nowhere else to look. Every body’s been turned, examined. Nothing. No Wes. It’s like he disappeared.
We look around us helplessly, trying to find somewhere we’ve forgotten to look.
That’s when we hear it. A groan. Amidst the cacophony of battle noises, it’s faint, and I think I mighta imagined it until I see Buff’s head tilt to one side. He hears it too.
“Hurry,” I say.
We fan out, listening intently, moving toward where we think it might be. We close in on the opposite sides of a pillar near the palace entrance, which is full of shadows.
“Uhhhh,” the voice says.
I run toward the sound, circle the pillar, find him, find Wes, back against the stone, clutching his blood-soaked side, streams of red running between his fingers and down his leg, more blood than I’ve ever seen.
“Nay,” I say.
“I’m dying,” Wes says.
“Nay,” I say.
“Leave me.”
“Nay.”
Buff grabs his feet and I pick him up under his arms and he screams louder than I’ve ever heard him scream, even louder than when we were kids and I pegged him with an iceball and he fe
ll offa a wall and broke his leg. And he screamed plenny loud then.
But we have no choice. No choice. We leave him, he dies. We take him, there’s a chance. Slim, yah, but a chance nonetheless.
We run sort of sideways, sort of front ways, Buff on one side, me on the other, my brother airborne between us. In front of us is carnage.
Bodies are strewn every which way, but by the looks of it, we’ve won the night. Several weaponless guards are staggering and stumbling away from the gates, holding bloody arms or putting pressure on blood-spouting stomach wounds. Skye’s waving to us to hurry the chill up, or the scorch up, or however they say it in fire country.
We run, hobble, stumble across the flat area outside the castle walls, reaching the White District a minute later. We duck behind a tall, snow-covered wall to catch our breaths and assess our injuries.
Although I’m sure everyone contributed to the fight, it’s clear that Hightower, despite being stuck with more arrows than a shooting range target, did more than his fair share. He’s down on one knee, panting heavily and loudly, soaked in blood that’s surely equal parts his own and his enemies’. Abe’s standing over him, a broken arrow sticking from his leg. “Can you walk, Tower? Can you?”
He grunts and pushes to his feet. I think every single one of us just stares. He’s a sight to behold, what with half a dozen arrows sticking from him and more slash and cut wounds than the rest of us combined, he looks like the magnificent warrior that he is. The hero that he is.
“Is yer brother alright?” Skye says, looking right at me.
“He’s not good,” I say. “We need to get help fast. Hightower’ll need it too.”
“Circ too,” she says, motioning to where Siena and Feve are holding Circ up, his arms draped over their shoulders, hobbling on one leg.
“My people say the cold helps heal,” Feve says.
“And what do you know about it?” I say sharply.
“I know of healing,” is all Feve replies. He leaves Circ to Siena and bends to grab a handful of snow. “Pack this in your brother’s wound,” he says. “It might help with the bleeding.”