This one was fast, but Ember was faster. After blocking the attack, she pushed forward, remembering the Kellish aggression and not wanting to give this one a chance. The Kell pressed forward, too, and their blades locked, but Ember twisted the Kell’s sword to the side and bent slightly to bring her free arm up and bash the Kell across the nose. The Kell staggered, and Ember flipped her sword up and pushed it through the leather armor and into the heart.

  Killing the lizard people had pained her. She’d never taken the life of a human before, but there was something about these Kells, who didn’t even acknowledge that others were real and stole their personhood before even meeting them. Ending a life still complicated her feelings, but it was less with the Kells.

  And the captured one had said they didn’t mind dying anyway. Maybe that made it okay.

  Ember whirled and slashed and punched at Sydney’s side, guarding her reckless attacks. Sydney still got a slash across the thigh, but Ember stabbed that opponent in the knee before he did further damage. She helped the other knights, too, because Sydney wanted it, and the combat almost seemed like a dance as Ember worked her way faster and faster through the living and dead. Even with the blood and noise, the fear and complicated feelings, there was something majestic in a battlefield.

  Soon, all the enemies lay dead, and the knights were thanking her or grabbing her by the wrist and shaking her arm up and down. She tried to listen to their garbled words and asked their names and if they were all right, but they all talked at once, including Sydney, who moved among them like a hummingbird.

  “Your thigh,” Ember said near Sydney’s ear.

  Sydney didn’t seem to hear, too busy speaking to the fifteen knights who lived and lamenting the comrades they couldn’t save.

  “Your wound needs a bandage,” Ember said loudly. “Blood is trickling down your leg and will fill your boots, and that won’t be pleasant.”

  When Sydney still ignored her, Ember hooked a foot around Sydney’s unharmed leg and twisted, forcing Sydney to sit hard on an old, felled tree.

  All the chatter stopped. Ember almost laughed. She’d never been one to stop the conversation. Rowena would have laughed, too. But when some knights went nervously for their weapons, Ember quickly kneeled and took off her pack.

  “All the wounds need tending,” Ember said slowly and loudly as she pointed to Sydney’s knee. She dug out the meager medical supplies all the knights carried—or so Sydney said—and unrolled the bandages.

  The knights muttered and began examining one another as if Ember had cast a spell of reason on them. They’d moved away from the bodies, and the conversation turned into a low, less exuberant drone.

  Sydney squeezed Ember’s shoulder as Ember dressed her wound, but she didn’t seem to have the right words for thanking someone yet. “What happened to you?” she asked the knights.

  The whole company stared, then glanced around as if bewildered by where they were, even those who seemed older than the rest.

  “Juzail,” Sydney said softly, her voice filled with pity. “What happened?”

  One of the men turned to her while another knight tended his bloody ear. He swallowed, looked at the ground, then back at Sydney. His whole body seemed stiff as if he had to force himself to look her in the eye. “We were standing with the rest of the order, getting ready for the spell.” He gestured to those around him. “All the recruits were standing together. And then my whole body hurt like blazes, and there was this blinding flash. I…must have passed out.”

  “We all did,” someone else said.

  Juzail nodded stiffly. “When we came to, we were lying in this scrubby forest.” He gestured north. “And there were only twenty of us.” He swallowed again, tears in his eyes. Ember frowned. There had been ten dead down below, should have been twenty-five in all, but she waited for the rest.

  “We decided to walk south and try to find the others. We found Sir Robert and a few more officers.”

  Sydney went stiff. Ember burned with questions but held them.

  “Not far from where we found them, the Kells attacked with those…” He nodded at the lizard people. “Things. They hit us hard; some of us didn’t make it. The Kells captured a few of us and carried them off, including Sir Robert.” A few tears leaked down Juzail’s cheeks, and he wiped at them hurriedly with the heel of his hand. “I tried to get to him when he went down under their fists, but they had him bound and away so quickly. The enemy pressed on all sides, and we had to run.” He gritted his teeth on the last word, but it still came out a strangled sob.

  Ember finished with Sydney’s leg, and she stood and limped to Juzail’s side. “It’s all right, Juzail. You survived. I’m proud of you, all of you.” She took them all in with her gaze.

  Some nodded and seemed invigorated. Some wouldn’t meet her eyes. A few stared at nothing as if they hadn’t heard a word.

  “What do we do now, Major?” one of the excited ones asked.

  Sydney put her hands on her hips and spoke without hesitation. “We make camp and do what we can for the wounded. I’ll assign some as camp guards, then the rest of us will trail the captives and see what we can find out.”

  Even those who seemed oblivious brightened a bit now that they had a plan.

  Ember frowned. “What about the dragon?”

  The company stared, all looking mystified.

  “What?” Juzail asked.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Sydney said to him.

  Ember started, wondering if Sydney’s memory had dulled. “The dragon that the Kell told us about, the one who stood on that battlefield at some point.” She gestured down the hill. “The one who made the lizard people.”

  “Those were…dragons?” Juzail asked, and others fired questions, some casting her concerned looks, others scoffing or looking around as if searching for a joke.

  “Settle down,” Sydney called.

  “You talked to the Kells?” someone asked.

  “One we captured,” Ember said. “He’d helped burn a village to the ground, and he told us we were dreams, and that Kells were the only people who were real, and that they were being led by someone called Nightmare, who is a dragon, and who made these lizard people with the Kells somehow.” She said it too quickly to make a really good story. Under the circumstances, the knights would want the bare facts.

  Silence greeted her.

  Sydney’s cheeks went crimson.

  Juzail frowned at Ember. “Who are you again?”

  “She’s a friend I met along the way,” Sydney said quickly. “She’s been a great help to me.”

  “So, you live here?” Juzail asked. “You’re not…a Kell?”

  The knights stiffened, hands stuttering toward their weapons again.

  “I’m Ember. I’m not a Kell. I’m a homun—”

  “Human being,” Sydney nearly yelled. “Just another human and not a monster like the Kells. She’s helping us, and she’s a very good fighter, and that’s all anyone needs to know. Now, we’re going to find that campsite. Shira and Rincelle, you take point, look for even ground, but don’t get out of sight of the rest of us. Everyone else, carry packs or the wounded. We’ll see to the dead later.” She lingered, waving the knights away and saying she’d bring up the rear before she joined Ember. “Why did you say all that?”

  Ember tilted her head. “Why wouldn’t I say what’s true? Don’t you want them to know about the dragon?”

  “There is no dragon,” Sydney said before she lowered her voice. “That was a bunch of Kell nonsense.”

  Ember tried to see past her own bafflement. She pointed at the battlefield, at the lizard people. “Then what—”

  “I don’t know, but there’s certainly no dragon.”

  “Certainly isn’t something that goes with I don’t know.”

  “Well—”

  “If you don’t know, you can’t be certain.”

  Sydney put a hand up. “Stop, please.”

  Ember frowned, wondering at her. Sydney seemed angry, but why? Maybe she was thinking of her dead comrades and didn’t want to talk? But she’d seemed happy enough to talk to her soldiers. “Are you mad because of the fight?” She hit on an idea. “Or is it that you don’t want to talk about Kells because you hate them right now?” She nodded, understanding that. “I don’t like them, either.”

  Sydney took a breath and closed her eyes. “Just…stop bringing up dragons. And things that fuc—” She cleared her throat. “And things that Kell said.”

  Ember nodded slowly. She didn’t want her soldiers to know about the Kell she’d killed. Ember could understand that, too. She’d been so upset.

  But they had to talk about the dragon at some point.

  When Sydney marched away, Ember caught up quickly, getting past the dragon to when Sydney had cut her off with the knights. “Why didn’t you want me to tell them who I am?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You stopped me before I could say homunculus.”

  Red leaped into Sydney’s cheeks again. She waved as if shooing the words away. “It would just…raise a lot of questions we don’t have time to answer right now. They’d ask you to explain, to tell them where you came from, and you’d tell them about the Hawk.” She shook her head. “Big mess of questions.”

  She wouldn’t make eye contact, and the rapid way she spoke said that if she wasn’t lying, she was skirting the truth. “You’re leaving something out.” The anger was still apparent in the set of Sydney’s shoulders, but now there was something else. Bashfulness maybe, embarrassment. “You don’t want them to know that you know someone who knows a witch?”

  Sydney didn’t reply, still wouldn’t meet her gaze.

  “You’re afraid they’ll be angry at you? Why? I’m not a witch. They shouldn’t mind you associating with…” A strange thought wound through her mind. Sydney started being embarrassed when Ember spoke about what she was. Sydney had called her magical, but there had been the look in her eyes before that. Disbelieving.

  Maybe even appalled.

  Sydney was ashamed of her, ashamed of kissing and cuddling someone who wasn’t exactly human.

  Ember’s insides froze, and her stomach dropped to her toes. She tried to think of what Rowena might say but came up empty. She needed their connection now so Rowena could tell her what to do, what to say, how to feel.

  There had been a lot of firsts for her on this adventure, but this was the worst. Worse than thoughts of Camille, worse than killing. It was a feeling akin to guilt but a thousand times harsher.

  She’d never even thought to regret who she was before.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Rowena cursed the fact that it was too onerous to travel at night. One small track led from the village toward the moors to the north and another ran to the high hills and scrubland farther east, but the first ended when it reached the pasture where the villagers kept sheep, and the other petered out even earlier. Here, no one wandered very much.

  And trying to keep their footing and direction in the dark would prove difficult in the untamed wilderness. So, that left traveling by the soul-sucking daylight.

  As morning dawned, she and Camille retrieved their camping supplies and set out. She kept her hood pulled low, her focus tight and narrow on the ground, her wounded arm only throbbing occasionally. Camille took her arm without a word, guiding her as she would a blind woman, but Rowena could see where to put her feet, at least. She wouldn’t be able to see any lizard creatures rushing them, but she could depend on Camille for a warning.

  The thought was almost enough to make her stumble. Depending on Camille felt…comfortable. She knew she could depend on Ember for some things, but Ember was a part of her. Camille was…other. And Rowena barely knew her. Circumstance had thrown them together, forcing proximity, forcing them to work together through danger, but in those dangerous instances, Camille had proven reliable and loyal, calm and generous. Rowena cringed, her shoulders twitching, ready for the knife to plunge between them.

  She made herself breathe. Worrying about betrayal and being outdoors would surely trigger another paroxysm of fear, and she couldn’t have that. She told herself it was possible to relax and be vigilant, but even her own brain scoffed at that.

  “This is the direction you sent the husks?” Camille asked.

  She seized on a different topic to think about, worry about. “The most recent batch went this way, though I don’t think we’ll catch up.”

  “Not if they can walk day and night. If they’re wandering out here, and someone else finds them…”

  Rowena waited for her to finish, but when she didn’t, said, “What?”

  “Well, if you’re not used to them, they’re a little…”

  “Off-putting?”

  “To say the least.” Camille squeezed her hand, staving off some of her anger. “I know what you’re going to say, Rowena, but most people wouldn’t see a walking corpse as a ‘tool.’”

  “Most people are idiots.”

  Camille laughed, and Rowena sneaked a peek. Her tone seemed affectionate, not mocking, and she had a glint in her eye. “If I had a drink, I’d toast that. I hope nothing bad has happened to your husks, too.”

  Rowena sighed, knowing what she was getting at. No matter how useful they were, a group of animated dead wouldn’t foster good feelings toward witches. And it would be hard to justify defending the husks against a group of angry villagers; the living would take priority.

  Even if she didn’t like them as well.

  “I wish we could get a better sense of which way to go,” Camille said as they reached the end of the northern path and the sheep pasture.

  The moors spread out ahead of them in all directions, a bleak, hilly land crisscrossed with animal paths and the occasional clump of trees or jut of limestone. She hadn’t been out here except for when she’d arrived, but it hadn’t changed from the same bleak shade of gray it had always been. Even the sky seemed duller.

  And the openness still seemed ready to swallow her whole.

  “At least we’ll be able to see anything coming for us,” Camille said.

  “Don’t count on it. This whole area is built on a bed of limestone, and there are caverns that stretch for miles not far under the surface. The village had trouble with a group of sheep thieves not long ago, and they used the caverns to hide.”

  “Great,” Camille said.

  Rowena chuckled and set her bag down, happy to have something to focus on besides the outdoors. “I was able to trade for a few more reagents, and I know a little something that might help.” She drew a circle in the dirt with her unwounded arm, taking care to mark the four compass points. “It’s a spell for locating people. Not specific people,” she added before Camille could rejoice. “And it’s only good within a mile or so.” She added some fingernail clippings and a strand of her hair, surrounding them with ancient symbols for humanity. “There are spells for locating all kinds of different creatures, but this is the only one I have memorized.”

  Camille bent over the circle, her scent warm and comforting. “You don’t know one for a creature that’s part dragon and possibly part human?”

  “Nope. Maybe the spell would find the possibly human parts of them.”

  “Not a sentence I thought I’d ever hear.”

  Rowena had to laugh. It was all a little absurd, and she felt like one of the strangest parts, the tracking witch who was scared of the outdoors.

  She sat at the circle’s side and focused, sending her life force over the components and merging them together with the circle, igniting the magic and sending it outward. She felt a strong pull north and pointed that way, then another pull nearly due east, not as strong, which meant they were farther away.

  When the spell had gone full circle around her, it ended, and she opened her eyes.

  Camille stood on tiptoe, looking over the moors. “I found your human to the north. It’s a shepherd bringing back a sheep.”

  “East, then.” Rowena shuddered. “Into nothingness.”

  Camille took her hand, and Rowena huddled into her cloak again, reducing the suffocating outdoors into the ground right in front of her.

  It was hard to count time while watching so little, but any desire she had to peek was washed away by the certainty that the sky was waiting for her to look at it so it could swallow her whole. When Camille said, “I see someone,” she knew the time had finally come.

  After a deep breath, Rowena looked up. They stood at the base of a small hill, the side rolling up before them. Rowena had enjoyed the hills so far; they narrowed her view even more. But this one had a crown of naked rocks at the top, and a small group of people stood among them.

  “Knights,” Camille said.

  Rowena’s breath caught, her flaring anger helping drive away her fear. “Do you see…her?”

  “Sydney?” Camille asked, her tone slightly teasing. “No.” She gasped when Rowena pulled her behind a clump of scraggly bushes. “What are you doing? Aren’t we looking for people?”

  “If they’re knights, and your…friend isn’t with them, they’ll stab a witch first and wonder who she was later.”

  “You might be right,” Camille said.

  Her concerned eyes made Rowena want to lean into her and confront the knights to prove she wasn’t afraid. Wonderful. Conflicting emotions were just what one needed to cast magic calmly. She growled. “Maybe you should just go with them, and I’ll find Ember.”

  “Don’t be an ass,” Camille said distractedly while peering upward. “That isn’t the whole company, and they look like they’re scanning the countryside. Probably looking for the others.” She bit her lip. “Do we follow them?”

  Rowena glared because she didn’t know and because Camille had brushed off her attempt at a fight so handily.