Page 151 of Secrets of Graves and Gold

I waver for a second, but a glance at the carnage on the battlefield has me scrambling down the ladder.

I grasp Alek’s arm. “I think there’s another scourge sorcerer boosting their companions’ power from the farmlands to the west. I’m going to follow the trail of their magic. It might be nothing. I’ll signal you all with my locket if I need backup. If I don’t, focus on the battle here.”

“Ivy—” Alek starts, his eyes wild.

With a pang of regret, I squeeze his arm and let go. “I have to hurry. I’ll see you when this is over.”

Then I take off at a run in the direction the crow flew, hoping I didn’t just tell the scholar my last lie.

Forty-Two

Ivy

As exhausting as our weeks traveling across the country have been, they’ve hardened my muscles beyond any of my previous conditioning. I was never a weakling, but loping across the grassy terrain now comes much easier than it would have when I’d only just left Florian.

As I jog to the southwest, I keep my strides long and swift without pushing myself so hard that I’ll get too winded to maintain the pace.

The tingle of magic gradually thickens. There’s a whole torrent of it flowing toward the skirmish rather than seeping off the battlefield.

Someone’s definitely bolstering the scourge sorcerers’ strength.

If I can stop them before the Darium troops are completely overpowered, the two sides might still wipe each other out. Hopefully before any of the men I’ve given my heart to charge into the fray.

I catch one more flicker of dark wings against the stars up ahead, but I don’t need the crow to guide me. I simply move toward the deeper thrum of the magic, shifting course slightly when I sense it diminishing.

“Kosmel,” I murmur, tapping my hand down my front like I saw Stavros do not long ago. The gesture of the divinities feels awkward.

I’ve rarely used it, rarely trusted on the gods to have my best interests at heart. But I need every bit of assistance I might get.

I lift my voice just slightly. “If you can hear me, please watch over me now. Help me see how to defeat this foe without losing myself.”

I don’t expect to hear the overwhelming divine voice resonating through my head. The godlen of trickery told me himself that he had to stay more distant. But I think I feel a subtle tug on my hair as if affectionately teasing.

Maybe it’s only my mind playing tricks and not Kosmel, but he came through for me before. While I don’t know what rules the gods have to play by, I actually believe he’ll guide me if he can.

The trouble is, I don’t know yet whether his guidance will be enough.

We’ve gotten through plenty of tight spots without his assistance, Julita remarks. You came up with this whole plan without any divine intervention. Whatever’s up ahead, we can handle it ourselves.

She speaks in the archly confident tone I’m most used to from her, but I know her well enough by now to realize that it’s usually a front. She’s got to be nervous too.

“I have two knives,” I say, taking stock for her benefit as well as my own. The third I was still carrying I had to leave on the other side of the channel. “Whoever’s over there won’t expect anyone to trace their magic, so I’ll have the element of surprise. I just have to be smart about it.”

And I’ve no doubt you can manage that.

The corner of my mouth crooks upward in half a smile at my ghostly passenger’s validation, but I lapse into silence—both for the sake of stealth and to avoid losing any more of my breath.

As I trace the reverberating energy through the chilly night breeze, the ground beneath my feet slants upward. I slow, peering up the slope.

A dark shape looms at the top. The faintest glow hazes one of the second-floor windows facing the battlefield, so slight I couldn’t have made it out from even fifty paces further away.

Our enemy is up there.

I prowl through the overgrown grass to the plateau around the building.

Closer up, I can tell it’s a farmhouse, but one that must have been abandoned. The weeds grow high along its walls, and the front steps have caved in. The glass in the windows is cracked.

In one of the first-story windows, the pane is missing completely.

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