The Offering (25 page)

I was useless. Helpless.

I was nothing.

“Get up. You're being moved.”

I heard the voice, and understood the words, but did not comply.

He repeated them. “I said, get up!” This time his grip was ruthless, and he shook me, making my teeth rattle together.

His efforts were in vain, though, and I collapsed the moment he let me go.

“Worthless,” he muttered.

That was when I heard the familiar scrape of metal, and a steel click. That was when something inside me clicked as well.

Lifting only my eyes at first, and then slowly, very slowly, inching my chin up just the scantest amount so I could confirm what my ears had told me, I searched him.

My eyes fell on the gun, the polished black gun he pointed right at my head, and I reawakened.

There was no way I could know if he was the soldier who'd executed Eden—they all looked the same in their raven masks. But I reacted to him as if he were.

I didn't fear the
weapon that threatened me, or the man who stood behind it.

“Get up, you stupid bitch,” he swore, kicking me. “Queen or no, I'll shoot you right here, and no one'll ever know the difference.”

I moved, but I didn't do as he asked. I ignored his orders and instead got to my knees and dropped my chin to my chest.

I invited him to shoot me in the head.

Above me I heard his breathy chuckle, and my entire body prepared for what was about to happen. “Suit yourself, you crazy—”

I lifted my head then, so I could look at his birdlike face. Before he could process what was happening, I grabbed the barrel of the gun with one hand, forcing the nose away from my head so that it was pointing past my shoulder. With my other hand I reached around the back of the gun and secured it so I had a solid hold.

When he finally moved, he pulled on his weapon, which is exactly what I'd counted on. With my grip secure, he pulled me up, giving me the momentum I needed. And before he'd gained his balance all the way, I was already kicking.

My first kick connected with his groin. I was prepared to kick again and again—the way Zafir had taught me, but it wasn't necessary. That first kick was solid. I felt it, the way his body collapsed in on itself the moment my toe landed.

I'd found my mark.

In shock and in pain, the soldier released his hold on the gun and staggered backward, away from me.

His gun was my gun now, and I knew how to use it.

Suddenly
he
became the object of my reprisal. He was the reason Eden was dead. He deserved to die, just as Niko and Elena and Sabara did.

I couldn't see his face right before I pulled the trigger—it was covered by the mask—but I heard his last word, which was only a simpering, “Bitch.” And then he was quiet.

The gunshot blended into the sounds of the rest of the battle raging around us. I held my breath and waited, but no one came running to my tent to see what had gone wrong. No one came to the dying soldier's aid, or to recapture the queen who was now free and wearing a stolen bird mask.

I was rolling the dead warrior over to steal his cloak, too, knowing it would be far too large on me, when I noticed the blade stashed in the back of his belt.

It was solid in my hand, and its blade was sawlike. It would be perfect for gutting the Astonian queen and her traitorous paramour.

I tucked it into the back of my trousers and reminded myself one last time of what Eden had said, letting it take on a whole new meaning.
You're doing the right thing,
she'd said.

Well, I
would
do the right thing, I decided. I would make Eden's death mean something by refusing to surrender. Refusing to be their victim again.

And by making them pay.

There were bodies and blasts and clouds of smoke everywhere. It reminded me of the day at the Academy, when it had been attacked during my visit there, and so many children had been
murdered simply because they'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Simply because they'd been so close to me.

It was like that again today. This was all because of me.

All because Ludania had a new queen.

But I refused to feel blame, especially not for these deaths. The guilt was Elena's to bear, if only she had the capacity to feel guilt. The truth was, this was because of her. Because of her lust, her jealousy, her vanity.

She shouldn't be sitting on any throne, and I certainly wouldn't let her have Ludania's.

I suspected those were my men out there launching the assault against Elena's camp, feeling much the same as I did about Ludania's throne. I suspected that somehow the Ludanian armies had caught up with Elena's forces and were waging war against her.

I doubted, however, that they realized I was in here, and that I could become a casualty should I be in the wrong place when their bombs were launched.

I moved quickly now, my disguise making it easy to maneuver through the throng of other bird-faced warriors. No one seemed to notice that I was half their size, or that I was moving in the opposite direction. They were all too focused on their own tasks. Far too occupied with the trappings of battle to pay attention to a pipsqueak underling who ran away from the uproar of the attacks.

I had no idea where I was headed, though. And the mask made it hard to see. The goggles' lenses were transparent, but they were clouded over by residue from the smoke that seemed to be everywhere, including inside the mask. I choked
on the taste of ash and the stink of my own sweat. I could hear every breath I took echoing back at me.

“Damn!” I cursed as I reached what seemed to be yet another dead end—a row of tents and tanks and soldiers packed so tightly together, it would be impossible for me to get through without drawing attention to myself. “Damn, damn, damn.”

I turned and raced down another long stretch of tents, past more screaming soldiers who barely noticed me. Torches flew past me in a blur as I refused to slow. And all the while, beneath my cloak, my fingers clutched the handle of the gun I'd pilfered, in case my luck soured and someone tried to stop and question me.

I ran, turning corner after corner, and ran some more. I bumped into soldiers and whipped past horses and overheard voices and smelled fire. I had no sense of where I was. I thought I was running away from the battlefront, but then it grew louder, and the ground rumbled more intensely, until it seemed I was standing at the very epicenter of it.

My heart sped, and so did my feet, carrying me away, until again I thought I'd put some distance between me and the fighting. Corpses littered the ground in places where the earth had been hollowed out by explosions. There were body parts, dismembered and grisly and charred, strewn about, and I could only imagine that the stench I smelled was that of burned flesh.

I ran from that, too.

There seemed to be no safe place. And no way out.

Stopping, my side aching, I weighed my options. As badly as I wanted to go after Elena and Niko, I knew this was neither
the time nor place. Even if I managed to find them in this maze, I'd only be recaptured and used against my own troops as a way to force them to surrender.

I could hide in one of the tents and wait it out, stay out of sight until the fighting subsided, and then try to slip away, unnoticed. But that, too, seemed a poor plan. One that would likely end in my being discovered and recaptured by Elena and her men.

No, I had to take a chance. It was now or never.

My best option was to try to slip through the perimeter at its weakest and least defended point. To make a run for it.

Also not a great plan, but better than waiting there to die.

If only I could reach my troops to let them know I was alive. I'd be safe then.

Urging myself to keep going, I ignored Sabara's whispered rancor,
Surrender, Charlaina. Surrender now while you still can.

She was still angry over being bested by me—still trapped in a place she longed to escape. Her vitriol spilled into my thoughts, and my blood, as she tried everything in her power to poison me.

I ran, knowing there was nothing I could do to save myself from the danger within.

Unfortunately, I ran smack into a wall of soldiers who were marching in the opposite direction. The impact threw me backward, and I landed flat on my back.

The mask, which had been too loose for my head in the first place, slipped halfway up my face. The goggles got lost in my tangled hair beneath the hood of my stolen cloak.

I was virtually blinded by the metal covering my eyes.

“Who are you?” a voice boomed above me.

My heart pounded as I realized I'd been discovered. My mouth went dry. Too dry to form words, or even to move. I was paralyzed by fear. Even my fingers, still curled around the gun's grip, were frozen.

I wanted to answer, to tell him there'd been some sort of mistake. To surrender, even. But I was incapable of doing anything.

And then a gunshot split the air right above me, and I flinched. And flinched again at the next one. And again, and again.

I waited for the pain. For the searing heat of a bullet's wound. For the warmth of seeping blood. Something to indicate where I'd been shot.

But there was none of that. Just the sounds and smells of the battle continuing around me.

When I dared to reach for my mask, my heart was hammering so hard, my ribs ached. I lifted it, pushing it all the way aside.

In front of me, where there had once been a massive wall of beaked soldiers, there was now a pile of gunshot-riddled bodies slumped on the ground.

I scurried as far back from them as I could get, glancing around to see who had done this . . . and saw the last person—or people—I'd expected.

Caspar—or at least I was almost certain it was Caspar, with his black eyes peering at me from behind his mud-crusted disguise—grinned down at me. “Thought I might find you here.”

“How—how did you know it was me?”

“Recognized your glow.”

I glanced down at myself and could see he was right. There was a definite luminescence radiating from where I'd removed the mask.

I wasn't sure what to say. This was the strangest turn of events I could ever have imagined. All the fighting—the bombs, the bodies—I had been certain it was Ludanian troops. “Why? Why would you do this? Why are you here?”

Caspar reached down, holding out a hand to help me up. I was still shaking, still half-convinced I'd been shot. The kids behind him were all carrying high-tech, military grade weapons that rivaled any I'd seen Elena's soldiers wielding. I supposed I should've been glad it was his forces who'd found me and not my own. Caspar's seemed to pack a heavier punch.

“We can't talk now. We were told you'd be here. Been tracking you, in fact.” He drew me along, his underage militia surrounding us, ready to fight. “I'll explain later. But for now, we gotta get you someplace safe.”

A new set of rounds started firing at the other end of the encampment, in the direction I'd been heading when Elena's soldiers had cut me off. I raised my hands to cover my ears as blast after blast tore at the air. The ground quaked beneath our feet.

Caspar looked to the black-haired girl beside him, whom I recognized, even without her crow. “What the— Who was that?” he asked.

I looked to each of their faces as they frowned over this new turn of events, but I already knew the answer.

I was about to tell them that this time it
was
my forces, that
these
were the Ludanian soldiers I'd been waiting for, when the ground right in front of us exploded, splitting apart.

The impact threw me, and everyone else, wide and far.

And then everything went black.

The first thing I was aware of was the taste of dirt and the smell of sulfur. Or maybe I was tasting the sulfur and smelling dirt.

There was the ringing, too. It was high pitched and constant, and muffled every other sound around me, if there even were any.