Crush the King (Crown of Shards #3)(91)

“Oh, fuck this,” Serilda growled.

I surged to my feet and whirled around just in time to see my friend lift her hammer and bang it against the side of one of the cages.

“Leave! Fly! Now! Before it’s too late!” she yelled.

The banging hammer finally startled that strix and all the others out of the last of their dull lethargy. With a series of loud caw-caw-caws, the creatures hopped out of their cages and took flight in an explosion of sound and feathers that made Serilda duck. A strix zoomed by me, and I ducked too.

The creatures soared up into the bright blue sky. Lyra let out another fierce caw, lifted her wings, and flew up to join them. I watched them go with a smile on my face. The strixes’ wild cries faded away, but they were replaced by other, far more worrisome sounds.

“Hey! The strixes are free!”

“We need to catch them!”

“Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!”

More and more shouts rose up, and I whirled around. In the distance I could see guards running through the maze of tents, heading this way. Those men were all shouting and stabbing their fingers and weapons up into the air, but the second they spotted the two unconscious guards, they would realize we were here. We needed to be out of camp before that happened, or we would never leave Morta alive.

Serilda shoved the hammer back into her knapsack and drew her purple cloak around her shoulders again. She also pulled the hood up over her blond hair, quickly morphing back into just another Mortan spectator. I did the same with my own cloak.

“Evie!” Serilda hissed again, heading back toward the tents. “Move! Now!”

I watched the strixes fly away for another moment, then hurried after her.





Chapter Twenty


Serilda and I abandoned all pretense of stealth and ran through the Mortan camp as fast as we could.

We hadn’t seen many guards on our way in, but now they were everywhere. Running, shouting, brandishing their weapons. Most of them were focused on getting to the strix cages, so they didn’t pay any attention to us.

Most, but not all.

Serilda and I darted down an aisle and ran straight into two guards heading the opposite direction.

“Hey! You’re not supposed to be here!” one of the men yelled, and reached for his sword.

Serilda stepped up and coolly punched that guard in the face, knocking him unconscious, while I darted forward and slammed my sword hilt into the other man’s temple, dropping him as well. The second the guards were down, we jumped over their prone forms and hurried on.

Luckily, we didn’t run into any more guards, and we broke free of the tents and made it back to the grassy clearing at the front of the ridge. More guards, merchants, and servants were yelling and running around here, but no one seemed to realize what was going on. Serilda and I sheathed our weapons and used the cover of the chaos to sprint down the steps to the waterfront, cross the plaza, and head toward the bridge.

I thought we might run into trouble trying to get onto the Mortan bridge, but all the guards stationed down here had gone up to the campsite, instead of cutting off the bridge as a potential escape route. Serilda and I slowed down to a quick walk, trying to blend in with the other people crossing the span.

“Don’t look back,” she muttered. “Only guilty people look back.”

I did as she commanded, although my shoulders were tense and I expected a blade to punch into my back at any moment.

It seemed to take forever to cross the bridge, although it couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes. We walked by the two guards we had passed earlier. Both men were shading their eyes with their hands and peering up into the sky, as though they were trying to see where the strixes had gone. Serilda and I bowed our heads and scurried by them without stopping.

The second we were back on the island and out of sight of the bridge, Serilda ducked behind a merchant’s cart, ripped off her purple cloak, and stuffed it into her black knapsack. I did the same, and my cloak disappeared into the bag too.

“Hurry, hurry!” Serilda whispered as she slung the knapsack over her shoulder. “We have to get back to the arena. We’ve already been gone too long.”

The two of us raced up the hillside steps as fast as we could, but it was still slow going, given the crowds. Several minutes later, we finally reached the plaza, threaded our way through the throngs of people, and ducked into the same shadowy archway as before.

Cho was pacing back and forth in the small opening, and he looked up at the sound of our quick footsteps. He rushed over to us, took the black knapsack from Serilda, and slung it over his own shoulder.

“What did we miss?” Serilda asked.

She wasn’t even winded, but I was sweating, sucking down breath after breath, and trying to ignore the throbbing stitch in my side and burning ache in my legs from running up so many bloody steps.

“Most of the tournament,” Cho replied. “The final bout is set to start in less than an hour.”

“Please . . . tell me that . . . Paloma . . . is in . . . the final,” I rasped between gulps of air.

Cho grinned. “She easily advanced. She did everyone at the Black Swan proud.” His grin faded. “Paloma is fighting Mercer.”

Serilda let out a soft muttered curse.

“What’s . . . wrong . . . with that?” I rasped again. “Paloma . . . can beat him . . . just like . . . she beats . . . everyone else.”