Page 73 of The Incendiary

“Yes. I’ll never doubt you again, dear sister.”

“Yeah, right,” she laughed, then nervously paused. “Do you think Fera’s all right?”

My chest tightened, because she cared. Hearing it made me more emotional than I could afford to be at the moment.

“I’m sure she’s fine.” Mavic’s confidence was unwavering. “Probably kicking someone’s ass.”

I bit my tongue and repressed the urge to shout I’m right here!, but that would expose us to any cadets potentially lying in wait. It didn’t take Mavic long to climb the hill and retrieve the banner while Mina and the others waited at the tree line for him to return.

“Psst!” I hissed. Mina screamed, and six pairs of wide eyes looked up. “I have what I need,” I said in a harsh whisper. “And I’ll let you hand me over to the commander, but we should keep some distance between us.” I gave a sharp nod toward the fortress. “Go.”

Mavic rested his hands on his hips and frowned up at me like a reprimanding parent. “You go first. We’ll follow and make it harder for someone to sneak up on you.”

Mina and Mavic waited expectantly, but the others stared at me with distrust.

“All right.” I lowered myself and dropped to the ground in a squat, knees smarting at the impact. Mavic winced when he saw me up close, still soaking wet and covered in scrapes and cuts. I was an alarming sight, no doubt, but I stood tall and said, “Let me help you win this.” Then I broke into a light jog back to the fortress.

I made it roughly thirty steps before Mina’s voice rang out from behind me:

“Fera, look out!”

To the right, an arrow whizzed past my head. Then another on my left, so close I felt the breeze against the shell of my ear.

“Shit!” My jog went into a sprint. It seemed that some of the cadets might not be keen on following Elias’s no-killing rule when it came to me.

I zigzagged as I ran, hoping to draw the arrows away from the twins without becoming an easy target on a straight path. I felt a sharp graze across my calf as a third arrow breezed by. My steps stumbled from the sting, but the arrow never struck true, so I pushed through the pain and used it as a catalyst.

Deep laughter came from the right before I was barreled over into a mound of mud, mercifully soft. The body that landed on top of me was twice my size, and the impact alone jostled me enough that I had to fight to breathe.

“Hello, Fera.” A thick, meaty hand pinned my wrists above my head. “Did you think it would be that easy?”

My hazy vision settled on the cadet I’d sparred with on the first day of training. I tried to break free, but my eyes were still trying to refocus, and my movements were slower than normal, and he was too heavy.

“Did you, Finch?” shouted a familiar voice just before a fist landed square in the side of my attacker’s temple. A flash of scraggly red hair told me it was Mavic. His punch flustered Finch enough that I was able to wriggle out from beneath him.

I scrambled backward, while Mavic lunged again, but Finch thrust his elbow back in his forehead, causing him to stumble backward. My hand went straight for my knife at my hip, tightening my grip in a way that made it easy to slash or stab. Then, I rolled and dodged Finch’s lifted boot, using the momentum to raise my arm and slice my knife across his shin, where I knew it would hurt like hell without severing anything major.

Finch cursed, stumbled, and lunged for me with both hands, one of which now wielded a blade. When he got close enough, I punched him in the throat, then the forehead, then kneed him in the crotch, causing his knife to fall between us. He made a terrible gagging sound, bending forward and holding his throat. It gave me the perfect opportunity to grab his knife off the ground, turn, and put a safe amount of distance between us.

Mavic was mid-tussle with a cadet wearing a bow strapped to his back. He had to be the archer.

In an impressive move, Mavic struck him in the stomach, then straddled him before landing another solid hit to the center of his face. The moment the archer hit the ground, Mavic jumped up, yanked the remaining arrows out of the archer’s quiver and snapped them in half over his knee.

My darting eyes found Mina standing next to the other cadets in their group, hand over her mouth in shock. I wanted to be irritated by the others’ uselessness, but I couldn’t blame Mina for being paralyzed by fear. Half the time, I still was, too.

“Fera,” Finch sang ominously. His nose bled over his sinister, toothy grin that widened as he lifted a second blade and pointed it right at Mina.

“Mina, get down!” I screeched.

I gripped my chest, mouth open in horror and relief as Mina dropped to the ground on command. Finch’s blade whizzed over her and struck a tree.

“Not my sister, you shit!” shouted her twin, eyes wild while leaping through the air onto Finch with enough momentum to knock him over. Mavic’s fist flew, and Mina screamed from the ground when Finch wrapped his arm around his neck.

Without thinking, I unsheathed the extra knife from my belt, gripped it just as Elias had taught me that day in the woods, aimed for Finch’s right shoulder and threw.

It struck true with a wet thud loud enough to hear from twenty feet away. Finch howled in pain and released Mavic.

Thank you, Eli⁠—