Page 71 of Power of Draken

"Yes, but it’s not enough to break through.” I test the chain with my legs again. Iron rusted on the inside may be more fragile, but it’s still tough. I couldn’t get Collin’s or Ellie’s chains to break apart either.

Kai braces his foot on my shackle chain, then brings the blade he’s acquired down on the chain’s center, shattering it beneath the force of the blow. Holy gods. No one should be that strong.

“Ready?” he asks.

“We need Ellie.” I grab his arm as I look for her. My friend is on the ground, huddled in on herself. I rush to her, pulling a cursing Kai in my wake. Gods, but it’s nice to be able to move my ankles more than eighteen inches again.

“Ellie.” I drop beside her. She trembles uncontrollably, her face pale with a terror I’ve never seen in her before. “What’s happened?”

"She’s come for me, Ro,” Ellie whimpers. “The commandant. She knows I broke. She will torture me. Kill me. She knows.”

“No. Listen, the game is over. She is here to get us back. This is a rescue.”

Ellie shakes her head in apathetic, blind disbelief.

I look at Kai for help, but his face is sober. Right. I know my mother. She might be willing to fight to get her people back, but there will be an example made. Of someone. And I can’t promise Ellie it won’t be her.

"We have to move, now," Kai urges, his voice barely audible over the din of battle. His icy eyes dart around, assessing threats closing in around us. Soldiers clash violently mere yards away, swords clanging and flashing in the flickering light of the fires. The scent of blood and death is already rising into the air.

I grip Ellie's arm and try to haul her to her feet but she is bigger than me and little better than dead weight. Behind us, I hear the all too familiar sound of prisoners being loaded into the wagon. The mercenaries are rounding up cadets left and right. Any second now they'll reach us too.

"Come on Ellie, please!” I beg her. “We can't stay here."

Ellie flinches as someone cries out in pain. “They’re going to drag me back and?—"

Sheathing his sword in one fluid motion, Kai scoops Ellie up into his arms. "This way," he commands, jerking his head towards the shadowy treeline.

I nod and scramble after him, my heart pounding in my ears as we weave through the chaotic fray of clashing swords and grunting soldiers. As we near the edge of the fighting, a long-legged mercenary with a patch over one eye lunges at us from the shadows. A cry catches in my throat.

Still holding Ellie, Kai pivots and sinks his booted foot square into the man's chest. I swear I can hear ribs crack as the merc crumples to the ground in a groaning heap.

"Keep moving," Kai orders, shifting Ellie in his arms. He isn’t even breathing hard as he plunges us into the treeline.

I follow close on his heels, branches whipping at my face and snagging on my filthy tunic as we race headfirst into the darkness, slowing only when the half blind trek makes me trip over roots with every other step.

“Are you alright?” Kai demands, the third time I fall.

“I’m—”

“Appear to be deserting,” Collin’s voice announces a moment before the man himself steps out from behind a wide oak. His shackles are broken, same as mine and Kai’s, but whereas Kai’s arms are full of a shocked Ellie, Collin is holding a crossbow with an auric steel arrow already notched and pointed at my chest.

Chapter 35

Rowan

My chest seizes as I stare down the shaft of the crossbow, its deadly point aimed squarely at Kai’s heart. Collin's face, once so familiar and comforting, now burns with a toxic mix of triumph and self-righteousness that sends tendrils of fear through me. Kai tenses, his arms still full of a trembling Ellie, and his attention on the auric steel.

If the mercs dipped one set of arrows in poison, they probably dipped them all. That weapon in Collin’s hand, it’s more treacherous than even he knows.

“Collin, what are you doing?" I ask, my voice barely above a whisper.

His brows narrow, a cold smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "Stopping a trio of traitors and deserters, it seems."

Kai shifts, trying to put Ellie down behind him, but Collin swings the crossbow to track Kai’s movement.

“Don't even think about, well, whatever it is you are thinking,” Collin orders Kai. “You might have had the rest of the Spire fooled into worshiping your perfection, but I’ve always known better. And it seems I was right, doesn’t it?”

"You don't understand," I plead, my palms slick with sweat. "We weren't deserting. We were just-"

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