An Ember in the Ashes (Ember Quartet #1)(98)

Right. Like having our throats ripped open by whatever is waiting for us out there.

“Are you ready?” Cain asks.

A battle to the death. That means some of my men—my friends—might die today. Dex meets my eyes briefly. He has the look of a trapped man, a man with a gnawing secret. He flicks a fearful glance at Cain and lowers his gaze.

That’s when I notice Faris’s hands trembling. Beside him, Cyril toys anxiously with a dagger, rubbing its edge against his finger. Darien stares at me strangely. What is that in his eyes? Sadness? Fear?

Some dark knowledge haunts my men, something they aren’t willing to tell me.

Has Cain given them cause to doubt victory? I glare at the Augur. Doubt and fear are treacherous emotions before a fight. Together, they can infiltrate the minds of good men and decide a battle before it’s begun.

I eye the door to the theater’s field. Whatever’s waiting for us out there, we’ll have to be equal to it, or we’ll die.

“We’re ready.”

The door opens, and at Cain’s nod, I lead the platoon out. The rain is mixed with sleet, and my hands tingle and grow stiff. The bellow of thunder and slap of rain on mud muffles the sound of our passage. The enemy won’t hear us coming—but we won’t hear them either.

“Split!” I shout to Dex, knowing he’ll barely be able to make out my words over the storm. “You cover left flank. If you find the enemy, report back to me. Do not engage.”

But for the first time since he became my lieutenant, Dex doesn’t acknowledge my orders. He doesn’t move. He stares over my shoulder into the mist obscuring the battlefield.

I follow his gaze, and movement catches my eye.

Leather armor. The flash of a scim.

Has one of my men slipped ahead for recon? No—I do a quick head count, and they are all arrayed behind me, awaiting orders.

Lightning splits the sky, illuminating the battlefield for a tantalizing moment.

Then the mist descends, thick as a blanket. But not before I see whom we’re fighting. Not before shock turns my blood to ice and my body to stone.

I find Dex’s eyes. The truth is there, in his pale, haunted gaze. And in Faris’s and Cyril’s. In every man’s. They know.

At that moment, a blue-clad figure flies with familiar grace out of the mists, silver braid shining, descending upon Red Platoon like a falling star.

Then she sees me and falters, eyes widening.

“Elias?”

Strength of arms and mind and heart. For this? To kill my best friend? To kill her platoon?

“Commander.” Dex grabs me. “Orders?”

Helene’s men emerge from the mist, scims out and ready. Demetrius. Leander. Tristas. Ennis. I know these men. I grew to adulthood with them, suffered with them, sweated with them. I won’t give the order to kill them.

Dex shakes me. “Orders, Veturius. We need orders.”

Orders. Of course. I’m Red Platoon’s commander. It’s up to me to decide.

If you show mercy, if you do not kill your enemy, there will be consequences.

“Strike to injure only!” I shout. Damn the consequences. “Do not kill. Do not kill.”

I barely have time to give the order before Blue Platoon is on us, fighting as viciously as if we’re a tribe of border raiders. I hear Helene scream something, but I can’t make it out in the cacophony of pounding rain and clashing swords. She disappears, lost in the chaos.

I turn to look for her and spot Tristas cutting through the melee, coming straight for me. He flings a saw-toothed dagger at my chest, and I only just deflect it with my scim. He reaches for his own scim and rushes me. I drop, letting him roll over me before bringing the blunt end of my blade to the back of his legs. He loses his footing and slips in the thickening mud, landing on his back with throat exposed.

Open for the kill.

I turn away, waiting to disarm my next foe. But as I do, Faris, who has gained the upper hand in a fight with another of Helene’s men, starts to shake. His eyes bulge, the spear he holds falls from his nerveless fingers, and his face turns blue. His opponent, a quiet boy named Fortis, wipes sleet from his eyes and stares, open-mouthed, as Faris collapses to his knees, clawing at an enemy no one else can see.

What is happening to him? I rush forward, my mind screaming at me to do something. But as soon as I get within a foot of him, my body is flung back as if by an unseen hand. My vision goes black for a moment, but I scrabble to my feet anyway, hoping none of my foes will choose this moment to attack. What is this? What’s happening to Faris?

Tristas staggers up from where I left him, his face lit with frightening intensity as he finds me. He means to end my life.

Faris’s chokes fade. He’s dying.

Consequences. There will be consequences.

Time shifts. The seconds stretch, each as long as an hour as I gaze at the mayhem of the battlefield. Red Platoon follows my orders to injure only—and we are suffering for it. Cyril is down. So is Darien. Every time one of my men shows mercy to the enemy, one of their comrades falls, their life wrung out of them by Augur devilry.

Consequences.

I look between Faris and Tristas. They came to Blackcliff when Helene and I did. Tristas, dark-haired and wide-eyed, covered in bruises from the brutality of initiation. Faris, starved and peaked, no hint of the humor and brawn he’d possess later in life. Helene and I befriended them in our first week, all of us defending each other as best as we could against our predatory classmates.