Rebel Spring (Falling Kingdoms #2)(33)

She fought him, digging her fingernails into his back. “Let me go! I need to help!”

“And let you get yourself killed?” Brion snarled. “Not a chance.”

Vara had walked right into that without thinking twice. There had been no organized plan of revolt. The girl was mad. The death she’d seen in the village, and whatever nameless abuses she’d suffered here . . . they had driven her insane.

Jonas led the way, making use of his jeweled dagger, slashing his way past any guard who stepped into their path so the three could make it back to the tree line. Once cloaked by the branches, Brion finally put Lysandra back down on the ground.

She stared back at the camp with horror. She couldn’t count the bodies that now lay bleeding and broken and surrounded by masses of chaotic, rioting slaves and the guards attempting to restore order. Thirty, forty . . . maybe more had been slaughtered in mere moments. Both Paelsian and Limerian, their blood now soaked into the parched ground.

It was a massacre.

“Are you all right?” Brion was shouting at her, but his voice sounded a million miles away. “Lys, listen to me! Are you all right?”

Finally she looked at him, into his blue eyes, which held deep concern for her. “I was trying to help,” she said faintly.

Relief flashed through his gaze, followed by anger. “You had me worried. Do not do that to me again, you hear me?”

A breeze brushed against her face when before the air had been still. Brion felt it too, and looked up. A roaring noise approached, growing louder by the second.

“What is that?” he asked.

Something strange and unexpected now moved across the land, pulling up dust and debris, wood and rock, as it gathered strength. Something that had formed out of nothing so suddenly that no one had noticed until it fully hit.

A tornado. A swirling cylindrical mass that twisted its way toward the road camp. The winds picked up, blowing Lysandra’s hair back from her face, making it impossible to speak. The noise was so loud now that they wouldn’t be able to hear each other anyway. Dark storm clouds quickly gathered, blocking out the sunlight within seconds.

Slaves and guards alike ran to escape its path, but some were swept up into it, disappearing for moments before being thrown free, like broken dolls as they hit the ground.

“It’s coming!” Jonas shouted. Brion grabbed her hand and they started running but didn’t get far before the force of the approaching wind blew them off their feet. Evergreens were pulled up out of the ground by their roots and hurled through the air like arrows.

The roar of the tornado was like thunder—only more deafening. More terrifying. Lysandra couldn’t catch her breath, couldn’t think. Something whipped past her face, cutting her cheek, and she felt the warmth of her blood. She found she now clutched on to both Brion and Jonas for fear of being picked up and carried away by the cyclone. For a moment, she was certain that would happen.

Nearby, a thirty-foot-tall tree rose up from the earth and crashed down to the forest floor, missing them by only a few paces. She stared at the tree over Brion’s shoulder, knowing it could have crushed them to death.

It felt as if it had gone on forever, but finally the tornado grew smaller and smaller until it disappeared completely just before it fully reached them. The thunderous noise faded to nothing. A few more moments of eerie stillness stretched out before the birds resumed chirping and the insects began to buzz. Cries could be heard from the camp a hundred paces away as all present reeled from the disaster.

A pair of guards had spotted them through the felled trees and had broken away from the rest of the pandemonium. They stormed into the forest line, swords drawn.

“We need to move,” Jonas growled. “Now.”

Clutching tightly to her bow, Lysandra shakily got to her feet and tore after Brion and Jonas through the forest, her boots sinking into the loose earth and tangled roots.

“Halt in the name of the king!” one guard shouted.

A branch whipped Lysandra in the face, and she tasted the coppery tang of her own blood as she shoved it away. They couldn’t slow. After what had happened at the road, these guards would cut their throats immediately, assuming them to be slaves who’d escaped during the disaster.

The shouts of the guards faded, but the three continued to run for as long as they could before finally slowing.

“What happened?” Brion said, his expression strained. “What just happened back there?”

Lysandra found she was shaking. “What part?”

“All of it. That tornado . . .”

“A coincidence,” Jonas said. He was winded but kept striding quickly.

“Too strange to be a coincidence.” Brion scratched the back of his head. “Buckets of blood spilled results in something like that? Out of nowhere? My grandmother used to tell me stories . . . about witches, about blood magic . . .”

Lysandra looked at him, her eyes widening. “I saw a witch like that just before my village was attacked. She was using blood magic to try to see the future, I think. My brother called her an Oldling, one who worshipped the elements. She—she’s dead now. Like so many of the others.”

“I don’t believe in magic,” Jonas said firmly. “Belief in magic is what has kept our people down for centuries, what keeps them from fighting back like they should. What I believe in is what I can see with my eyes. Paelsian weather has never been predictable. That’s all that was. But as far as the camp—I’ve now seen what the king has done. You were right, Lysandra.”