Crush the King (Crown of Shards #3)(89)

I tightened my grip on my weapon and waited. Beside me, Serilda did the same thing.

The guards came closer . . . and closer . . . and closer . . .

And walked right on by our position.

I let out a breath I didn’t even realize I’d been holding. The two men crossed the clearing and stopped by the strix cages, gesturing and talking to each other.

“We need to get rid of them,” I muttered. “Right now.”

Serilda sheathed her sword and set her knapsack on the ground. “Leave that to me. Stay here.”

She vanished around the other side of the tent, while I held my position. A minute later, Serilda reappeared about fifty feet away and boldly sauntered over to the two guards. She’d gotten a glass, along with a bottle of wine from somewhere, and she listed back and forth as though she were already deep into her Regalia celebration.

“Hellooo, boys,” she called out.

The guards whirled around, and Serilda raised her glass and staggered in their direction. At first the guards watched her approach with suspicious frowns, but the closer and more wobbly she got, the more their frowns melted into leering appreciation, especially since Serilda had thrown back her purple cloak and unlaced the top of her tunic to show off her cleavage.

I had never seen Serilda be anything other than a tough, hard-nosed warrior, and it was startling to see this slightly softer side of her—even if it was just for the guards’ benefit.

She reached the guards, smiled, and offered one of them the empty glass in her hand. The two men hemmed and hawed a few seconds, but one of them grinned and reached for the glass.

Serilda smiled and handed it to him. Then she snapped up the wine bottle and slammed it into the side of his head.

The guard’s eyes rolled up, and he dropped to the ground unconscious. The other guard yelped in surprise, but Serilda whirled around and slammed the bottle into the side of his head as well, and he too dropped to the ground.

The second the men were down, I grabbed Serilda’s knapsack, left the shadow of the tent behind, and sprinted across the clearing. Serilda tossed her bottle aside, and we hurried over to the cages.

There were more than a dozen cages, each one containing a strix, and the hot, caustic stench that filled the air indicated that Maximus had booby-trapped every one of these cages with his magic. He was probably the only one who could open the padlocks without being severely injured. He wouldn’t want Mercer, Nox, or Maeven to drink strix blood to increase their own magic—if they could even stomach the idea.

I passed over the knapsack, and Serilda drew out the hammer that Cho had mentioned earlier.

“Do you want me to smash the locks?” she asked.

“Not unless you want to get bludgeoned with hailstones and frozen with cold lightning. I’m going to have to use my immunity to snuff out the magic on each lock.”

“Can you do that without getting hurt?” Serilda asked in a worried voice.

“We’re about to find out.” I pushed up my tunic sleeves, stepped forward, and reached for the first padlock.

Purple lightning sparked to life the second my fingers touched the metal.

I gritted my teeth against the cold, jolting pain, reached for my immunity, and snuffed out the magic. To my surprise, it was much easier to do than it had been on Lyra’s cage last night. Maximus hadn’t used nearly as much magic on these locks, and no hailstones shot out from the metal to bruise and cut my hand. He probably thought no one would be stupid enough to try to steal his strixes from his own camp.

I was exactly that stupid. More than that, I wanted to do it. Not just to save the creatures from a pointless, gruesome death, but also to hurt the king. Sometimes a small slice in the arena could sting much more than a deeper wound, and I wanted Maximus to feel as much pain as he had inflicted on me over the past year.

One by one, I wrapped my hand around the padlocks and snuffed out the magic on them. Serilda came along behind me, undoing the clasps, yanking off the locks, and opening the doors.

It didn’t take me long to extinguish the magic on the last lock, but we had another, unexpected problem—the strixes weren’t moving.

“Why aren’t they flying away?” Serilda muttered. “Don’t they realize that we’re trying to save them?”

I remembered how the first, doomed strix had stared resolutely at Maximus during the ball. It had known that it couldn’t escape, so it hadn’t even attempted to fight back or fly away. Maximus had broken its spirit, and it had given up all hope of avoiding its bloody, brutal fate. These creatures all had that same dull, lethargic look, and they all smelled of dusty resignation, even now, with their cage doors standing wide open.

I bent down and waved my hand at the strix inside the closest cage. “Come on,” I cooed in a gentle voice. “We’re not going to hurt you. We want you to fly away and be free.”

The strix kept staring at me with dull, blank eyes, and it didn’t even twitch its feathers at the sound of my voice. Well, if it wouldn’t come out on its own, I would have to reach inside and get it. The creature would probably stab me with its beak, but I had to try. So I pushed my sleeve up higher and started to reach inside—

Caw! Caw-caw-caw! Caw!

Serilda and I both whirled around. At first I thought one of the adult strixes had realized what we were doing and was crying out a warning, but then I noticed that the caws were coming from a nearby tree branch—and that Lyra was making the noise.