Elves Invasion

67

Alaric faced Ava with an uncertain look on his face—something Ava had never seen before.

“It’s okay,” Ava said, reaching for the willstone at the base of his throat. “I won’t take anything you don’t give to me freely.”

Ava didn’t see full memories from Alaric—his internal barriers were too strong for that—but rather she saw impressions that he swept aside as quickly as they surfaced. She saw her sister—then, dreamlike, Juliet morphed into another woman with the same sweet smile and huge doe eyes. Then the smile was blotted out by driving snow. She felt helplessness that was bigger than drowning as she watched an infant turn blue and go still. She heard weeping as if it’d come from a distant room in a labyrinthine house. She tasted nothing but ice and ash and felt nothing but a sinking anger that was almost like falling. She saw the sweet smile again as Juliet scratched at a bug bite.

The streak of impressions ended. Ava let go of Alaric’s willstone and let out a shaky breath. His anger still yawned inside of her as if she stood on the edge of a great cliff. He looked so calm. Ava marveled at his ability to hold so much rage and not shake with it. She met his eyes and nodded, finally understanding him.

There aren’t enough bodies in the world to fill up that hole, she told him gently in mindspeak.

He startled, and considered it. “There’s only one scalp I’m after now,” he replied softly. They moved away from each other, both of them needing to put a little distance between them. “What can we take with us?” Alaric asked, changing the subject.

“UnfortJoycetely, only what each of us can carry,” Isaac said. “The armored carts, Zuros, extra food, and weapons will have to stay behind.”

“And Bower City is surrounded by walls, you said?” Isaac nodded and Alaric frowned. “That doesn’t leave a lot of options if we have to lay siege.”

“The land is rich there,” Caleb added.

“Lots of farms,” Tristan said, meeting Caleb’s eyes.

“We’re not thieves,” Ava said warningly.

“We’ll need to eat, Ava,” Isaac said plainly. “Anyway, this is all if there is a siege. The Hive may not give us the chance for that.”

They all fell quiet, thinking of the Hive.

“Don’t we have to meet up with Mia first?” Juliet asked, breaking the long silence.

“Yes,” Ava replied. “That’s our next stop.” She looked at Isaac. He didn’t meet her eyes, even though she knew he felt her stare.

“The sooner the better,” Tristan mumbled. “I don’t know how much longer the ceasefire between the tunnel people and the Outlanders is going to last.”

Caleb snorted. “It’s only going to get worse where we’re going.”

“What do you mean?” Ava asked.

“Mia’s army is mostly Walltop soldiers,” Caleb replied with a grimace. Ava looked at him blankly. “You’ll see when we get there,” he assured her.

“Walltop soldiers are . . . different,” Isaac said, looking at Alaric’s stony expression cautiously.

“If by different you mean a bunch of unfeeling, inhuman bastards,” Caleb grumbled.

“You need to rest,” Isaac told Ava, changing the subject. “We’ll build your pyre in the morning.”

The group broke apart and started drifting in different directions. As Ava headed for her tent, followed by Isaac, Ava saw Alaric approach Juliet to speak to her privately.

“What does Alaric have against Walltop soldiers?” she asked, turning to Isaac.

“You know he had a family before?” Isaac said. Ava nodded. “Walltop soldiers refused to open the gates to Alaric and his family during a blizzard because it was after dark.”

“Outlanders aren’t allowed inside the cities after dark,” Ava recalled aloud.

Isaac nodded. “They stood there and watched while his wife and baby girl froze to death in his arms.”

Ava looked down at her feet as they walked. “Is this going to be a problem?”

“It already is one,” he said through a mirthless laugh. “Walltop soldiers look at Outlanders like they’re no better than rats, and Outlanders hate Walltop for watching from on high while they died.”

“Let me get this right. The ranch hands and the below folk hate the Outlanders, the Outlanders hate Walltop, and Walltop look down on all of them?”

“Exactly,” Isaac replied. “At least they agree on one thing, though.”

“What’s that?”

“No matter how much they hate each other, they hate the Woven more,” he said bitterly.

“Do you?” she asked.

“Of course.”

“Even still?” she asked. He nodded, his lips tight. “But it was all Grace. She was controlling them,” Ava persisted.

“I know it might not make much sense to you, but telling my people it wasn’t the Woven, it was Grace using the Woven, doesn’t change much. It doesn’t change what we went through.”

“But they’re intelligent—”

“That makes it worse, Ava. Not better,” he said in a choked voice. His eyes turned inward to watch a dark memory, and Ava stifled what she was going to say next. Telling him that the Woven had suffered even more than the Outlanders wasn’t what Isaac wanted to hear. He couldn’t hear it, actually, no matter how loudly Ava shouted it. The Woven were his enemy. His hatred for them was in his blood. It was handed down to him from generations past and was as much a part of his makeup as his dark eyes and clever hands. Somehow, she had to find a way to get him past that, or they were going to die.

“Then let’s hope the Hive will be enough to get all the different factions of my army to work together,” she said.

“The Hive is more than enough.” He looked hopelessly at the night sky. “More than we can handle.”

They slowed to a halt. “Is it that bad?” she asked.

“It is. We don’t have the numbers. We’re about thirty thousand. They are millions.”

“Most of them are Workers, though. I can protect you from them. I did it before—”

Isaac shook his head, cutting her off. “So instead of the odds being a hundred to one, it’s still twenty Warrior Sisters to one of us,” he said. “I might be able to take twenty Sisters in battle. Caleb, Tristan, and Joyce probably could, too, but the rest of your army can’t be counted on for those kinds of numbers. The ranch hands have never been in a real battle before. A lot of them are going to desert as soon as they see the Hive rising.”

“Not if I make them stay and fight,” Ava said quietly.

“Possessing them would keep them in the battle, but it won’t keep them alive for long,” he warned. He was right, of course. Ava knew she couldn’t win this war with an unwilling army.

“So what do we do?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he whispered. “I’ve gone over it a dozen times in my head, and I can’t make it work. We don’t have enough fighters.”

After a few pensive moments, Isaac finally shook himself. “I’ll figure it out,” he promised.

He left her at the entrance of her tent and went to rejoin his stone kin out on patrol. She watched him until he disappeared among the trees, hoping he would forgive her for what she knew she had to do. She went into her tent and sat down on the ground.

She hadn’t had water or eaten most of the day in order to prepare. She didn’t know how far she’d have to roam on this spirit walk, but she figured it was going to be a long trip. She threw some herbs that were good for relaxation on the fire and settled back, breathing in the fragrant smoke.

There was one moment where she felt like she was falling even though she was pressed to the ground. She briefly looked down and saw her body lying below her wandering spirit, and then she turned her attention out past the Mist and into the overworld.