“What is it?” The guard looked at her.
Without hesitation, she smashed the rock into the guard’s face. He let out a pained roar as his nose and teeth were crushed by the force of it. She crouched over him when he fell to the ground and continued to beat him with the stone, over and over until there was little left of his face but red pulp.
Lysandra looked on from the edge of the tent, horrified, as other guards shouted out an alarm. They rushed toward the assault, pushing past other workers, swords drawn.
There was no hesitation as one guard thrust his sword through Vara’s side, straight through to the other side, and she let out a piercing scream, losing her grip on the bloody rock as she fell to her side on the ground. Dead within moments.
Lysandra clamped her hand down over her mouth to keep from making a sound, but a strangled cry escaped her throat. Other slaves were not so quiet. Many began to wail and scream at the sight of the blood, the dead guard, the dead girl.
An older man with thick muscles and a heavy beard roared out in fury. Lysandra took only an instant to recognize him as Vara’s father. He ran toward the guards and took hold of a guard’s sword, wrenching it from his grip. He struck quickly and brutally, severing the guard’s head where he stood.
In mere moments, three dozen Paelsians joined the fight in an attempt to kill as many guards as they could—with rocks, with chisels, with their bare hands and teeth. Other slaves stood back, looking on with fear and shock etched into their faces.
A swarm of new guards approached at a run. One raised his arm to bring his whip down upon a young boy, but then the guard staggered backward. With wide eyes, the guard looked down at the arrow that had sunk into his chest, just below his shoulder. His gaze shot to Lysandra.
When he opened his mouth to yell, to point her out to the other guards as a target, another arrow impaled his right eye socket. He fell to the ground without uttering a sound.
The first arrow had been from Lysandra’s bow. Her already callused fingers felt raw from the speed with which she’d nocked an arrow and let it fly.
But the second . . .
Brion and Jonas swiftly moved toward her. Jonas let free another arrow aimed toward an approaching guard, catching him in the throat.
“Get her,” Jonas barked.
Brion didn’t argue. He grabbed Lysandra and threw her over his shoulder. She was shaking violently and couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t see straight.
She fought him, digging her fingernails into his back. “Let me go! I need to help!”
“And let you get yourself killed?” Brion snarled. “Not a chance.”
Vara had walked right into that without thinking twice. There had been no organized plan of revolt. The girl was mad. The death she’d seen in the village, and whatever nameless abuses she’d suffered here . . . it had driven her insane.
Jonas led the way, making use of his jeweled dagger, slashing his way past any guard who stepped into their path so the three could make it back to the tree line. Once cloaked by the branches, Brion finally put Lysandra back down on the ground.
She stared back at the camp with horror. She couldn’t count the bodies that now lay bleeding and broken and surrounded by masses of chaotic, rioting slaves and the guards attempting to restore order. Thirty, forty . . . maybe more had been slaughtered in mere moments. Both Paelsian and Limerian, their blood now soaked into the parched ground.
It was a massacre.
“Are you all right?” Brion was shouting at her, but his voice sounded a million miles away. “Lys, listen to me! Are you all right?”
Finally she looked at him, into his blue eyes, which held deep concern for her. “I was trying to help,” she said faintly.
Relief flashed through his gaze, followed by anger. “You had me worried. Do not do that to me again, you hear me?”
A breeze brushed against her face when before the air had been still. Brion felt it too, and looked up. A roaring noise approached, growing louder by the second.
“What is that?” he asked.
Something strange and unexpected now moved across the land, pulling up dust and debris, wood and rock, as it gathered strength. Something that had formed out of nothing so suddenly that no one had noticed until it fully hit.
A tornado. A swirling cylindrical mass that twisted its way toward the road camp. The winds picked up, blowing Lysandra’s hair back from her face, making it impossible to speak. The noise was so loud now that they wouldn’t be able to hear each other anyway. Dark storm clouds quickly gathered, blocking out the sunlight within seconds.
Slaves and guards alike ran to escape its path, but some were swept up into it, disappearing for moments before being thrown free, like broken dolls as they hit the ground.
“It’s coming!” Jonas shouted. Brion grabbed her hand and they started running, but didn’t get far before the force of the approaching wind blew them off their feet. Evergreens were pulled up out of the ground by their roots and hurled through the air like arrows.
The roar of the tornado was like thunder—only more deafening. More terrifying. Lysandra couldn’t catch her breath, couldn’t think. Something whipped past her face, cutting her cheek, and she felt the warmth of her blood. She found she now clutched onto both Brion and Jonas for fear of being picked up and carried away by the cyclone. For a moment, she was certain that would happen.
Nearby, a thirty-foot-tall tree rose up from the earth and crashed down to the forest floor, missing them by only a few paces. She stared at the tree over Brion’s shoulder, knowing it could have crushed them to death.