Chapter 11

I didn't think.

I only knew.

I knew the sensation of teleportation, so I knew we weren't in camp anymore. I knew these people were criminals and traitors. I knew they had killed my people today. I knew that we had nothing to offer them.

It wasn't as though we had taken something of theirs, and they took us as collateral to bring it back.

We were here to be made an example of.

So I didn't think.

I only fought.

A moment ago, we were engulfed in bright white light. Now, there was only the faintest glow of a campfire and torches. The air against my skin was warmer than the chill of the tent. Wet as well. It smelled of mildew and death.

Cave. That was my best guess.

But distinguishing where we were wasn't as important as making it out alive.

They were blurs. Vague outlines rushing toward me, rushing toward Rain, and that was all I needed to know.

I summoned Graham's fire to my hand and shot it at the silhouette running toward me. The silhouette burned red and orange, but it kept running.

Pressed against my back, Rain circled an arm around me. She twined our fingers together. Then she chanted.

She was almost through the first line when I remembered. I didn't have a clue what half of the spells meant, much less how to pronounce them. But I recognized this one.

Luci had taught us it for emergencies. He called it, Your Last Resort.

The man drew closer. We didn't stop chanting. He was only inches away from me when yellow burst from my flesh, coalescing with the pink of Rain's soul as it exploded out of her.

Illuminating the tunnel, the energy of our souls thrashed through the man's body. Only inches from my face, he fell to the ground.

The top half of him did, at least.

The bottom half, from his belly button to his feet, stayed standing. For a few seconds, anyway.

That power smacked off the walls of the cave and rang like a bell. It traveled at hyper speed, out of sight. Screams sounded. The scent of blood—that sickly, wrong blood I had smelled at camp—filled my nostrils.

And then, silence.

Silence, and the dim glow of the distant campfire and torches somewhere around the bend.

Rain released my hand.

Walking past me, she unsheathed the blade at her hip. Once at my assailant's side, she squatted, grabbed the man's hair to stabilize his head, and rammed the blade into his skull.

"I think being cut in half probably did the job, love," I said.

"Laila said they don't die easy. Better to be safe than sorry." She yanked back on the blade with a grunt. Standing, she glanced from left to right. "Any idea where those screams came from? I heard them, but I can't remember which direction."

I glanced around, breathing in that awful, sickly smell. When it resonated, and I picked up on the wind direction, I pointed to the left. "That way. But maybe we should get help first?"

She propped her hands on her hips. "Everyone back at camp is fighting for their lives. They don't need to worry about us right now. But we can get an inside look. We might learn something, and we just wiped a bunch of them out, so we might as well exploit this opportunity. Right?"

For a heartbeat, I only studied her face. Despite the blood that drenched her hands, the fast breaths that panted in and out of her chest, her eyes were calm. Her hands were steady.

And it puzzled me.

"Ezra." She snapped her fingers in front of my face. "We need to move. These fuckers could be regenerating as we speak. Let's go sever some heads. Unless you have a better idea."

After taking her hand, lacing our fingers together, I lowered them between us. "It's a good idea."

She held mine tightly and continued ahead.

The next dozen strides, we walked in silence. Ducking cave rocks overhead. Turning to fit through tight openings. Listening for an enemy. Preparing for another attack.

None came.

Truth be told, though, I wasn't worried. Not for us. Not for Rain.

Her gaze darted left to right. I felt her heart pumping fast, but she didn't look scared. She didn't feel scared. She was focused.

Apparently, I kept looking at her for too long, or too many times, because she finally turned my way and said, "What?"

All I gave her was the slimmest of a smile accompanied by a headshake.

"You keep staring at me. There's gotta be something going on in that noggin' of yours."

"I'm just surprised."

"Surprised by what?"

"How well you're handling this." I squeezed her fingers. "I expected you to be a bit more nervous."

And for that, I expected a blush. Maybe a smile. Something that showed emotion.

Instead, she shrugged. "We've been training for weeks. I told you guys I was prepared."

Of course, she had told me so. Of course, we had trained for this.

But she was as calm as the forest after a storm had passed.

She'd just sliced a man in half and then stabbed him in the brain. And she was calm.

Granted, so was I. But this wasn't my first time on a battlefield. This wasn't the first time I'd awoken to the sound of death and destruction. This wasn't the first time I had to push the people I loved, my comrades and fellow soldiers, from my mind to focus on the task in front of me.

Not to say that made it easy. My hands were shaking. In a few years, I would probably have a nightmare about what had just happened.

But I knew how to detach myself, had learned from traumas just as terrible as this one. That was the only way I thought one could truly prepare themself. I didn't realize that anyone was capable of staying this calm in the moment of crisis.

"Do you think I'm a psychopath or something?" She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. This time, the corner of her lips twitched with a smirk. "Because, in case you forgot, your partner has killed people for a living since you met."

"No, nothing like that." My voice stayed low. Sound liked to travel in caves. "I just thought that this would be more difficult for you."

"Yeah, well…" Feet slowing to a stop, she released my hand and brought a ball of fire to it instead. On the ground, half a dozen strides away, lay another man. Also split in half, but this time vertically instead of horizontal. She lowered the hand with the blade to her side. "I was born into chaos. Guess I'm just accustomed to it."

While I understood the philosophy, it didn't make much sense to me. Rain had suffered throughout her life—I knew that. She'd never had a father. Her grandfather died when she was young. Her mother lived with severe schizophrenia, only to commit suicide in Rain's adolescence. Her grandmother raised her, only to die when Rain was barely more than a child.

All that grief certainly did a number on her mental health. But it wasn't quite the same as what had happened here.

There was a part of me that wanted to pry. Curiosity was perhaps my biggest character flaw. But not here. Not now. Not when we were walking through blood.

"Sure," I murmured, taking her hand once more. "I'm sorry."

That, I got a smile for. "Don't be. Like you said, I'm handling this a lot better because of it."

"Small victories, I suppose."

"Honestly, I was more worried about your mental state than mine here."

I arched a brow. "Is that right?"

"It is."

"And yet, Graham and I are the only ones who've seen a battleground before."

"You saw the battleground. But you weren't fighting on it."

There was no stopping the ache that pinged through my chest. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Eyes sympathetic, she met my gaze. "Not that you didn't witness horrible things or that you're not traumatized by them. I wasn't trying to invalidate your experience."

"But?"

"No but, really," she said. "Just that I know how much that shit has fucked you up. I wasn't sure if being here, facing these things"—she gestured around—"would make you spiral or something."

With a deep breath, I shook my head. "I doubt it. Trauma is an odd thing, you know. Humans, we're so quick to adapt. When we're in situations like this, when we know there's danger around every turn, we act. Cognitive processing slows. It's only once it's over that we register it. Living through something is often easier than living after it."

She snorted.

I laughed. "What?"

"You're really giving me something to look forward to, aren't you?"

Chuckling, I squeezed her hand tighter. "That's not to say you'll experience that. I may not either this time around. Many of the men I knew back then didn't develop PTSD. It isn't unanimous. People just handle these things differently. It fascinates me, really. The human mind—that's what fascinates me. It used to intimidate me, but now that I can read people's minds, it opens up so many doors."

"Yeah? You gonna go back to school for a doctorate in neuroscience?"

"Perhaps with a minor in psychology. After all, with the ability to read minds, and the current scientific understanding of the human brain, paired with imaging and budding technology, there's so much to discover. It makes me wonder why other mind readers haven't."

"Probably because mind readers understand the brain," she said. "They don't need imaging and technology to figure it out."

"True. I wonder if that's how Graham sees it."

I was reminded of another question, then, with both trauma and mind-reading at the forefront of my thoughts. What had the inside of Camila's mind looked like? Graham had known her. Surely he had glanced inside a few times.

"He used to say that it was like everything was firing at once," Rain said.

"I'm sorry?"

"My mom. I asked Graham that same question about her mind once. What it was like. And that's what he said. Like everything was firing at once."

It shouldn't have, but it took me a moment to realize how she knew what I was thinking. While I was used to Graham doing it, Rain had never gone into my mind without permission.

When the four of us bonded, shortly after, we decided it wasn't right to constantly invade one another's privacy that way. After talking to the other par animarum, they agreed that this was standard. Although we had access to one another's mind at any and all times, it was best in relationships to respect one another's individuality and private thoughts.

Because of situations exactly like this.

From time to time, we all thought things that might be offensive to another person. Every person alive did. Speaking something and thinking it were not the same thing. There was no stopping thoughts that passed through the mind. That didn't mean that they were harmless, though.

Now, I felt it necessary to justify a passing thought––one I never would have voiced at the risk of insensitivity.

"I wasn't trying to paint your mother as some type of science experiment. I was just?—"

"It's okay. I was curious about that when I was growing up too," she said, focused gaze still scanning the dark, damp path ahead of us. "And sorry for listening in on your thoughts. I was trying to send Warren and Graham a quick message, but they can't hear me."

My stomach knotted up. Why had I not thought to do that?

So I attempted, focusing on Warren's energy, on Graham's, but a nails on a chalkboard vibration pulsed through my mind instead. Yanking myself back from the thought, I physically cringed and rubbed my ear. "I can't reach them."

"They can't either," she said. "I'm not sure why I can. It must be a spell. My mind might be able to break through it easier than yours because I'm more experienced with magic."

I couldn't wait for the day when I was just as experienced as she was. "But they're alright?"

"Yeah, the fight just ended. They had to kill them all. No hostages to interrogate." Squinting ahead, she let the fire in her hand burnout. We were close enough that it wasn't necessary. Judging by the god-awful smell and the distant light of torches, they were camped around a bend just a few dozen strides from us. "If any of them are still alive, we should take one."

"Oh, sure. Such an easy task." I kept my voice low, listening for the sound of a heartbeat. There may have been one, but I couldn't place it clearly. Not over the sound of my own. "It would be ideal, though. Because I'm not sure how we will get out of here without a guide of some kind."

Rain only released a deep breath. She squeezed my hand tighter and slowed her pace. In my mind, she said, Do you have a blade?

I found the one Jeremy insisted I strap to my hip last night. As I lifted it, it twinkled, catching the light that emanated from around the bend.

Only then did I see the slightest tinge of fear in Rain's eyes. She had been on high alert throughout our walk, but now the danger was just around the corner, and reality had caught up to her confidence.

She gave a curt nod.

I returned it.

Edging slowly to the cave wall, Rain pressed her back against it. I did the same. Like decaying dynamite was strapped to our chest, we tiptoed to the crest of the opening. When we were only inches away, Rain raised her blade.

Then she jumped out around its corner.

A bit dramatic, but as established, she wasn't half bad at this. And as Rain had pointed out, and I'd graciously not pressed her on, I'd only been a medic in the war. So I followed in the footsteps of the natural.

Her theatrics were wasted on an audience of dead or dying men. I exhaled with relief at the sight of their camp and all their bodies on the ground.

Until I looked above the fire, and I understood that sickly smell.