Page 130 of Steel Heart Iron Claws

Smoke means fire, and a wildfire always comes with the acrid scent of lightning. But I don’t smell lightning now—only a tang of iron and minerals. Which means this wildfire is human-made.

“Sabine,” I murmur. “What did you do?”

I break into a run, clenching my molars against the pain that shoots through my shoulder with every jostle. If my little violet started a fire on purpose, then I need to reach her before the smoke dulls my senses.

On the one hand, I’m impressed. Few tactics could slow down both me and Artain, but smoke is one of them. It masks scent and taste. Not to mention, reduces my seeing distance by half. Hell, the fire’s roar muffles sounds, too.

On the other hand? I’m fucked if I don’t catch her before Artain gets himself free.

I crash thigh-deep through the water, and once I’m within a few feet of the dam, the bright scent of blood hits me like a drug. It’s fresh. It’shers.

I channel my anger into following her trail. Now that I know she’s bleeding, it’s child’s play. From the scent, I can tell she spent a few minutes hiding inside the den with the beaver family before swimming out to the far shore, where she crawled onto a sandy patch.

I scoop a handful of sand to bring to my nose.Violets. But the worst kind—stained with blood.

The grass is bent where she crawled through, and my feet break into a run, following her scent as surely as if she’d painted arrows on the rocks. There’s a break in the trees ahead where the sun winks through.

It’s past Tenth Hour, judging by the sun’s location.

Smoke blows thicker. Coming from the north, now.The fire is spreading.

Sabine’s tracks fade once I hit a rocky outcropping, but her scent remains strong. I pause to drop into a crouch to touch a blood drop. She can’t be that badly hurt, or else I’d be following a river of blood. That’s some small comfort.

As I study her blood, another drop falls beside it—this time, it’s mine. With a grimace, I clap my hand over my blood-stained shoulder.

Sabine’s scent cuts toward a game trail marked with deer sign, and I hustle in that direction, moving cautiously now. Her scent is strong here, beneath the smoke.

She’s close.

My eyes dart to the nearby trees, searching for her winged spies. She doesn’t have my hearing, so she won’t hear my approach, but her minions will.

Coughing from the smoke, I push through a cluster of huckleberry bushes and see a cave ahead. I came across this cave before when I was setting traps throughout the forest, so I know that it doesn’t have a rear egress.

Her scent pours out of it—she’s in there.

I spare a moment to lift my head to the sky, shoulders sagging in a rare moment of relief. As clever as she is, hiding in a cave isn’t the smartest move. Maybe she’s desperate. Blinded by grief from the deer herd whose scent still clings to her.

“Sabine!” I step out of the bushes. “It’s over.”

I can hear her soft, shallow breaths echoing inside the cave.

About two hundred feet to the north, flames lick at the underbrush. I wipe away a bead of sweat.

“Come out, sweetheart!” I drop my tone into a gentlebeckoning. “You did well. Starting the fire. Hiding in the beaver den. But there was no world where I was going to let that bastard take you. This is how it was always going to end.”

I listen to the quiet rustle of her clothes. Glance at the encroaching fire—one hundred fifty feet off now, moving in fast.

But she still doesn’t come out.

Tightening my jaw, I say, “Now isn’t the time for fighting one another. I’m going to win this damn game whether you like it or not. You’re going to walk out of this kingdom free as one of your birds, even if it means a knife in my heart.”

Still…nothing.

Growling to myself, I shift my approach. Fine. If my little violet wants to play hide and seek, I’ll play.

“I’m coming in,” I call in a hard tone.

I’m two strides toward the cave when a flurry of activity erupts from the darkness.

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