Page 13 of Swords of Soul and Shadow
He hadn’t moved. Hadn’t shot. She stared at the unfeeling metal ring pointed at her forehead.
“Looking for ashilkawho looks just like you.” He held the weapon steady, aimed straight between her eyes.
Hallie’s heartbeat thudded behind her forehead, pounding like a drum. She wasn’t sure what to do, what to say.
It was her fault. Her fault. Hers. The screams, the uniform, theblood…all her fault.
The fire in her core rose. The sparks clouded her vision.
She could do something. She could make him fall apart like she had done with the fort. She didn’t know how she knew she could do that, only that she could.
But ability did not make it the right choice. She hadn’t meant to kill anyone at Achilles. If she ruined this man the way she’d ruined the fort, shewouldknow. She would be the reason he didn’t go home to his family.
Even a hearty lungful of Zuprium dust wouldn’t be enough to fogthatout of her head.
All this she had time to consider, because the man still hadn’t pulled the trigger. He just stood in front of them, watching, blue smoke lazily leaking from the barrel of his strange gun. Niels shifted to block her from the line of fire. The man traced his movements with the weapon.
“Why?” Hallie managed to get out, though she’d much rather keep quiet. “Why do you need me?”
Half an hour prior, she’d been quietly deciphering the convoluted writings of her dead ancestor, thinking back to birthday gifts and books and the brother she’d lost. Now there was a very good chance she was about to be blown to bits. She would never see her parents again. Not Petra. Not Masie and Nole. Not anyone who mattered to her.
Not Kase.
The power within her raged at that thought of never seeing him again. Like Kase held a spark to the waiting fuse.
The soldier’s finger twitched on the trigger, but Hallie was faster.
Later, she wouldn’t be able to describe exactly what she’d done. All she knew was that she could not bear the thought of never seeing Kase again, that everything inside her rebelledagainst it, that she shoved the possibility away with all her might.
And the sparks that had nearly blinded her surged toward the soldier instead.
Niels ducked.
The Cerl bullet froze in midair, its blue fire crackling like ice—then retraced its path back into the barrel.
The power didn’t stop there. It bubbled and eddied. It languished upon its prey, drinking in the man’s very being. The weapon in the man’s hand unraveled like a skein of yarn. Then the hand itself followed suit.
The man’s skin and sinew turned to ash as it dropped to the rocky floor. Hallie’s jaw dropped with them, horror freezing her in place.
For all the rest of her days, Hallie would never forget how loudly the man screamed as he came undone before her eyes.
The unraveling didn’t stop. It wound up his arm, his shoulder, across his collarbone, untangling his neck like an impatient seamstress with a knot in her thread. His sounds of anguish reached a fever pitch before his throat scattered into filaments of flesh, then crumbled to dust. Not a man any longer, but a knotty and tired sweater, its loose strands caught on a nail intent on tugging the weaving free.
Niels shouted at Hallie, but she could only stare, wide-eyed, as the soldier disappeared before her very eyes. No blood. No bones. As if he had ceased to be.
Blood pulsed in her face. Her throat squeezed tightly. Frigid air came in and out in squeaks. She fell to the ground, scrabbling at the smoke that had once been the man before her. She needed to fix this. She hadn’t meant to do that. She hadn’t meant to—to do—oh, stars—
Another soldier shouldered in just in time to see the last of the man’s body disappear in a wisp of smoke. The air was rancid, smelling like Yalvar fuel.
Before the newcomer had any chance to do anything at all, Niels fired his pistol, hitting the man square in the chest. He pulled Hallie up by the strap of her pack, practically throwing her toward the back of the tent. “Go!”
She wrenched the canvas up and stumbled forward, slinging the pack further over her shoulder. Her hands tingled so furiously they burned; she swayed, but Niels caught her before she could fall. “Don’t fall apart now. If they can’t find you here, they’ll leave.”
“But what if they don’t? What if they hurt them anyway?” Hallie was surprised she could still find the words as she wound past screaming children and the people trying to hide them.
Niels yanked her down as blue fire zinged overhead. He shot his flashpistol in the direction it had come from and shoved her behind a trunk-like stalagmite jutting up from the cavern floor. Blue fire raged around them. More screams.
Niels rifled through his pack and pulled out an electropistol. He shoved it in her hand. “Don’t argue. Just run.”
