Page 151 of Bound By Darkness

My feet stopped. “What do you mean… vanished?”

“I don’t know!” he half-screamed. “She was right beside me and then she wasn’t. I’ve looked in every tent where I lost her, and nothing.”

“She… she couldn’t have vanished,” I said. “Thalia! Thalia!”

No answer.

My eyes widened as I furiously pried back the flaps.

He did the same as we checked tent after tent, the rebels hot on our tail.

Every single time, they were empty, and every single time, a piece of my heart broke. I could not leave her after being reunited. Not after everything I’d done to find her again.

Tears pricked my eyes as I glanced at him, the same worried expression etched into his brows.

“Anything?” I exasperated, a sob clinging to the back of my throat.

He shook his head and it was worse than any vial of black mineral. “What… what of Iyanna and Naexi? Do you think… think she went for them?”

“I checked. Naexi is guarding Iyanna in her tent. She fell unconscious from the amount of casting she’d used to buy everyone time.”

A large gust of wind blew through, kicking up dirt as I clenched my hands together to keep them from trembling.

I refused to let him see me as weak. I wasn’t that person anymore. Was I?

“We’ll find her,” he stated.

But I wasn’t sure we would as the rebels were less than ten stones from where we stood.

Glancing to the side, he seemed to notice them too as he pulled another dagger from his side. He tossed it to me, the hilt landing in my hand. “Here. For protection.”

“I… I can protect myself,” I muttered, but I silently sent a thank you to the heavens for the weapon.

“I bet. You have some serious strength,” he said with a smile as he flanked my side, dagger in hand as he watched the rebels descend upon the camp like waves of ebony.

A few were faster than the rest, their legs pumping as they met us where we stood. An army of death awaited?—

Fin struck first, a dagger flying from his hand as it sunk into the eye of a rebel, his body crumbling against dead grass.

His comrades didn’t even glance his way as they continued to descend. A rebel appeared from my right—a stupid ambush I saw coming as my dagger jerked upward through his chin, blood splattering the hilt.

A whistle echoed. “Nice one!” Fin yelled, his blade striking through flesh.

“Are you seriously”—my blade twisted through the heart of another—“complimenting my kills in the heat of battle?”

A grunt sounded as he kicked a body from his blade, wet blood steaming on the metal. “It keeps the fear away,” he yelled back.

Strike after strike.

There were even more descending upon the camp and hope began to sink into the ground. They were roaring down the hill like black flames, coating the empty streets in mass evil. How long could we keep this up?

He seemed equally as skilled as me, but we both seemed out of shape, our breath clouding in front of us. It’d been years since I’d trained, my endurance a pile of wilting leaves.

Darkness shrouded my heart and I felt it then—that same power I’d used on the mountainside after Ellia’s death. I didn’t understand it, why their needles and injections didn’t work on me, but if it helped us to escape?—

The blade dropped as I raised both hands toward the descending tide of black.

“What are you doing?” Fin yelled, his strikes closer.

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