Damon stood at the open carriage door a moment longer than necessary, collecting himself.
He had walked into festivals, funerals, riots, and the kind of ballrooms where a single misplaced smile could start a war. None of that had ever made his palms sweat like a bridge that let him see the sky beneath his feet. He glanced once at the stonework, at the dark line of the gorge, and then immediately decided he hated architecture.
“Everyone ready?” Jayce called, already mounted, already practical.
Rush’s horse tossed its head, impatient. Fenway glanced back to Damon as the prince went back into the carriage to focus on the floor.
Darius was a statue on horseback, spine straight, jaw tight, eyes fixed not on the gorge but on Kairi riding with Kylar. Every time she leaned to get a better view, instinct screamed at him to tell her to stop.
Kairi, on the other hand, looked like the bridge was simply a large, inconvenient path that happened to have dramatic scenery. She had insisted on riding this one, chin lifted, hands easy on the reins. Kylar sat behind her on Onyx, close enough that his breath warmed the side of her neck when he spoke.
“Are you sure?” he murmured, low enough that only she could hear.
She leaned back into him just slightly, a quiet press that said yes without the risk of anyone watching their mouths. “I’m sure, I want to see,” she whispered. “It’s beautiful. The red rock. The river that carved it.
Onyx snorted like he approved of her audacity.
Zen rode a few lengths behind them, scanning the cliffs. Kurt and another guard flanked, the wagon and extra mounts trailing. The carriage fell in the middle where it always did, protected, heavy, slow. Jayce made a small motion with his hand. The line began to move. Hooves struck stone. Wheels creaked. Somewhere behind them, Damon muttered something that sounded a lot like prayer and a lot like complaint.
The bridge hummed under the weight of it all. Halfway across, the wind shifted. A cold gust funneled up from the gorge and pressed against their backs like an urging hand.
Kairi’s braid tugged loose at the ends. Her shawl fluttered. She tightened her grip on the reins, more from the wind than the height.
Darius’s knuckles were white around his own.
“Don’t look down,” Damon’s voice floated from the carriage, too bright, too casual in a way he needed for his own bravery.”
Rush rode up beside the carriage and looked at him. “I wasn’t,” Rush replied, flatly unimpressed.
“I wasn’t speaking to you,” Damon said, but his eyes were glued to his feet.
Kairi huffed a laugh, and Kylar’s chest warmed against her back as he felt it.
Then Tessa, riding near the carriage, went still.
Her head turned a fraction.
One sharp sign, half hidden by her body:
Kylar felt it before the sound. A faint pressure through the stone, like a breath held too long.
“Hold,” Jayce snapped, and the convoy stuttered, horses confused by the sudden halt.
The world took one heartbeat to decide.
And then it exploded.
The center of the bridge erupted upward with a roar that drowned every other sound. Stone lifted. Mortar shattered. A shockwave punched through the line and threw men and horses sideways.
For an instant, there was nothing but dust and the violent percussion of falling rock. Kairi clamped her hands around the reins and felt Onyx lunge beneath her, muscles bunching as Kylar hauled them both low over the horse’s neck.
Behind them, the bridge split. Not a crack. A mouth. The center section dropped away in a jagged, collapsing bite, taking chunks of railing and stones the size of heads with it.
The convoy fractured with it.
Onyx and the front riders had cleared the blast zone by a breath, scrambling to the far side as the bridge tore itself open behind them.
The carriage, Damon, Jayce, Rush, Tessa, and Fenway were thrown back toward the near side, wheels skidding, horses rearing, the gap suddenly yawning between them like the world had been cut in half.
Kairi twisted in the saddle, trying to look past the billowing dust. “Rush!” she shouted, but her voice vanished into the cloud.
On the other side of the collapsing span, she caught a glimpse of dragon-red and black, Rush’s silhouette braced over his horse like a spear.
Damon’s pale face flashed at the carriage window, eyes too wide, mouth moving on a curse she couldn’t hear.
Then the archers started. At first it was a hiss, like rain that didn’t belong.
Arrows punched into stone with sharp, ugly thunks. A few came in at angles that made no sense unless someone was firing blind into the dust and hoping to hit something expensive.
Zen swore and yanked his horse sideways. "ARCHERS!" He yelled, trying to put stone and chaos between them and whatever cliff the arrows were coming from.
“Down!” Kylar barked, dragging Kairi lower as an arrow clipped past where her head had been.
Darius’s blade was out, though there was nothing to strike yet. His eyes were searching trying to pin where most of the arrows were coming from. But the visibility low he couldn't tell. He cursed. "Shields up!"
Kurt screamed.
Kairi’s head snapped toward the sound.
Kurt’s horse panicked at the blast and the screaming arrows, hooves skidding on loose rubble. The animal reared, slipped, and then the world simply removed the ground from under it. Horse and rider went over the broken edge. Kairi’s stomach dropped with them. Kurt’s hands shot out. Fingers scraped stone. He caught the lip with both hands, elbows locking as his body slammed into the edge.
His horse did not. The animal plunged, legs flailing, and the sound it made as it fell was the worst kind. The silence afterwards deafening.
Kurt dangled there, boots kicking at air, dust and pebbles raining down on his whitening knuckles.
“NO!” Kairi shouted. Before anyone could stop her, she was moving. She swung herself off Onyx and sprinted toward the broken edge, boots sliding on shattered stone.
“Kairi!” Kylar’s voice cracked, sharp with panic.
Darius lunged too, reaching for her cloak, missing by inches.
“Kairi, STOP!” he barked, like the word could physically catch her.
She didn’t stop. She dropped to her knees at the edge, dust biting into her palms, and reached down toward Kurt’s wrist.
“Kurt!” she shouted. “Look at me!”
His eyes were huge, frantic. “I can’t— I can’t hold—”
“Yes, you can,” she snapped, and there was something in her voice that made men listen even when they were dying.
Her fingers closed around his wrist. Cold exploded from her skin. Ice crawled over stone like it had been waiting for permission. It shot down in a thick line around Kurt’s forearm, sealing his wrist to the rock in a hard, gleaming anchor. The ice thickened, reinforcing itself, spreading into a brace that bit into the bridge’s broken lip like a hooked claw.
Kurt gasped, startled by the sudden, unnatural support. Kairi gritted her teeth, jaw trembling as she forced the ice to hold.
The dust made her eyes water. Her breath hitched. Magic always stole oxygen first.
“Pull,” she ordered, voice tight. “Use the ice. Pull yourself up!”
Kurt’s boots found purchase against the rough stone. He hauled himself upward in jerking, desperate movements, the ice anchoring him when his grip slipped.
Arrows continued to strike, some clattering harmlessly into rubble, some slicing through the dust close enough to make Kairi flinch.
Kylar and Darius reached her at the same time.
Kylar grabbed her waist and yanked her backward even as she kept her grip on Kurt, refusing to let go.
Darius slammed his body between them and the arrow fire, blade up, shoulders wide.
“You’re insane,” Darius snarled, not at Kurt, not at the bandits, but at Kairi herself. “You can’t do that!”
Kairi’s eyes flashed. “He was falling!”
“And you were next,” Kylar said, voice low and furious, hands shaking as he held her back from the edge. “Do not do that again.”
Kurt finally cleared the ledge with a strangled sob. Zen grabbed him by the collar and dragged him fully onto the bridge, rolling him away from the edge like hauling a netted fish.
Kairi’s ice anchor cracked and held, cracked and held, then finally released with a soft shattering sound as she let the magic go. Kurt lay on his back, shaking, staring at the sky as if he couldn’t believe it still existed. Kairi’s chest heaved. She blinked hard, trying to clear the dust from her eyes. Then the arrows shifted.
More concentrated now, like the archers had adjusted to the noise and guessed where bodies were clustering.
“Shield!” Zen shouted.
Kairi didn’t hesitate this time. She thrust one hand out, and a wall of ice surged up between them and the cliffside, thick and opaque, forming a curved barrier that caught arrows with sharp, brittle cracks.
The sound was horrifying and reassuring all at once.
Kylar swore under his breath. Darius’s hand was still on her shoulder, grip bruising, as if physically anchoring her might stop her from throwing herself into danger again.
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“Move,” Kylar ordered, voice all steel now. “We move now.”
Zen looked back toward the gap, toward the far side of the bridge.
Through the dust cloud, they could barely see Rush’s group, silhouettes shifting, too far away, trapped behind broken stone and a canyon’s worth of air.
No one could cross. No one could help.
Jayce’s voice carried faintly through the haze, a shout that sounded like an order to retreat.
Rush’s answer was lost, but Kairi felt it anyway in the tightness of her ribs.
Kylar’s hand closed around her forearm. “Onyx. Now.”
Kairi nodded once, swallowing the urge to scream her brother’s name again.
Zen hauled Kurt upright. “Can you ride?” he demanded.
Kurt’s legs wobbled. His face was gray. He looked at the gap where his horse had vanished and swallowed bile.
“I can,” he rasped. “I can ride.”
“Good,” Zen snapped. “Because we don’t have time for you to decide otherwise.”
Kylar swung up onto Onyx first, then reached down.
Kairi grabbed his wrist and let him haul her up, seated in front of him again. His arms came around her, reins in his hands, body braced like armor.
Darius mounted hard, jaw clenched. He looked like he wanted to run back into the dust and carve someone into pieces with his blade.
Zen swung up. Kurt grabbed the reins of a riderless mount, eyes refusing to look at the body it had left behind. Behind them, the wagons sat like bait, heavy and helpless.
Kylar made the decision without ceremony. “Leave them.”
Kairi’s throat tightened. Supplies. Tools. The quiet, careful packing. The things that made them feel prepared. All of it abandoned.
But then another arrow hit the ice shield and cracked a spiderweb through it, and preparedness suddenly felt like a luxury.
“Go!” Kylar shouted.
Onyx launched forward, hooves striking stone, then dirt as they cleared the far end of the bridge approach and surged onto the road beyond.
Darius and Zen followed. Kurt rode behind glancing back at the bridge and then toward their escape. They fled back along the road they’d just taken, not toward the bridge, but away from the kill zone, away from the dust cloud and the archers and the gap that had severed them from the others.
Behind them, the ice shield shattered under the sustained impacts, falling in glittering chunks. More shouting rose from the cliffs. Shapes moved in the haze, bandits scrambling down goat paths and hidden ledges, trying to flank, trying to cut them off.
They weren’t just raiders. They were hunting.
Kairi twisted in the saddle, looking back through the thinning dust.
She caught one clear shout, a voice not concerned with loot or wagons or even princes.
“THE GIRL!”
Her blood went cold. Kylar’s body tensed behind her. He had heard it too.
Darius swore, vicious and shaking. “They want you.”
Zen’s voice was tight. “They’re not subtle.”
“They don’t have to be,” Kairi whispered, and the threat she didn’t want to say tasted like ash in her mouth.
Saebria
Kylar leaned down, his mouth close to her ear. “Hold on,” he murmured, voice raw. “Do not let go.”
Kairi’s hands tightened around the pommel. “I’m not letting go,” she breathed back, and she didn’t know if she meant the saddle, or him, or her own courage.
The main road ahead forked. One route stayed broad, predictable.
The other was older, narrower, half swallowed by brush. A forgotten service road for patrols, used when you didn’t want to be seen.
Kylar didn’t hesitate. He wrenched Onyx onto the older track, forcing the horse through a tight turn that sent loose stones skittering.
Darius followed without question. Zen and Kurt came last, Zen cursing under his breath as branches slapped his shoulders.
The world closed in. Trees crowded closer. The air cooled. The road dropped into shallow dips and rose sharply over ridges, a path designed to break sight lines.
Behind them, bandit hooves thundered onto the old road too. They weren’t giving up their prize.
Kairi’s pulse hammered in her ears. The wind tore at her hair. Every jolt of Onyx’s stride drove the reality deeper: they were separated, and she was the thing being chased.
Kylar’s voice cut through it, firm and anchored. “Zen. How far to the next bend?”
Zen glanced back, eyes sharp. “Two minutes. Maybe less.”
Kylar didn’t slow Onyx. He couldn’t. Not with the hoof-thunder behind them and the old road narrowing into a tunnel of trees.
But he did glance down, just once, at Kairi twisted in front of him, eyes sharp over her shoulder, calculating angles and distance the way she always did when the world turned dangerous.
“Wildflower,” he ground out, breath tight, “help.”
She didn’t answer with words. She shifted her weight, and Kylar felt the tug, subtle and urgent, at his bow strap.
He adjusted immediately, shifting his torso so she could reach. One arm locked around her waist, anchoring her to him and Onyx’s pounding stride, keeping her steady as the horse ate the road.
Kairi’s fingers slid the bow free like she’d done it a thousand times. She rose, careful, using Kylar’s body as a brace, knees pressing into the saddle, his arm iron at her middle, feet firmly in the stirrups. She twisted looking back.
Kylar’s heart tried to sprint ahead of Onyx. She nocked an arrow and aimed.
The first shot went wide, splintering into a tree trunk with a sharp crack.
“Damn it,” she hissed, and her voice wasn’t panic. It was focus.
Second arrow. She loosed again. Another miss, closer this time, whistling past a rider’s shoulder. The man ducked, swore, and the chase tightened, bandits riding harder, sensing their prey had teeth.
Kylar tightened his grip on her waist. “Take your time,” he murmured, though time was the one thing they didn’t have.
Kairi inhaled, slow and deliberate, and the world narrowed behind her eyes.
Third arrow. It struck home.
A rider jerked, went sideways, and fell with a wet thud into brush. His body tangled under his own horse’s legs, and the animal stumbled, then crashed, taking the man behind it down in a clatter of hooves and screams.
Zen let out a sharp, delighted bark of laughter from the side. “THAT’S what I’m talking about!”
Kairi didn’t look back. She was already moving to the next target.
Arrow four. She hit a horse in the shoulder. The animal shrieked and veered, throwing its rider into another, and suddenly three men were fighting to keep their mounts upright on a road that did not forgive mistakes.
Kairi worked methodically, like she was thinning a hedge with shears. Not frantic. Not wild. Efficient. Kylar felt the heat of pride and dread twist together in his ribs.
Then the bandits adapted. The sound changed. Less shouting. More coordinated calls. Someone in the back barked an order, and the next volley came not as blind arrows but as aimed retaliation.
Kairi dropped her bow a fraction and flicked her hand up.
A thin sheet of ice snapped into existence, angled just enough to catch an arrow with a sharp ping that vibrated through the air. The ice shattered immediately, but it did its job.
She raised another, smaller shield, more reflex than ritual. Another arrow skittered off it. And another as a arrow meant for Zen fell harmlessly to the ground.
Kylar heard the click before he saw it.
Crossbow.
His body reacted on instinct, twisting to take the hit, because that was what guards did. What Shadowguards did. What he had trained himself to do until it was bone-deep.
The bolt struck him high in the back, upper left shoulder.
Pain detonated. It wasn’t just a puncture. It was impact and penetration, metal biting through muscle, driving breath from his lungs.
And then the bolt didn’t stop. It punched through him, driven by the force of the shot, and kept going. It buried into Kairi’s side where she was braced against him. Kairi cried out, a sharp broken sound that turned Kylar’s blood to ice. Every nightmare he’d been carrying chose that moment to become real.
Her hands flew to his shirt, gripping hard, fingers fisting in fabric like she could hold herself together by holding him.
“Kylar,” she gasped.
Kylar made a sound that was half growl, half choke. Every stride of Onyx’s gallop drove the bolt deeper, a white-hot stab with each jolt. He could feel it, the foreign weight, the sick connection between their bodies. And with each jolt, he knew she felt it too and it tore at his soul she was in pain.
“Hang on,” he rasped, voice shredded. “Hang on, Wildflower.”
He tried to keep his seat, tried to keep them steady, tried not to collapse forward on her.
Darius surged up alongside them, face going hard the instant he saw the bolt.
“Shit,” Darius snapped, and drew his bow one-handed, firing back without slowing. The arrow went into the trees, but it forced a rider to duck.
Zen came up on the other side, eyes widening as he saw blood darkening Kylar’s back and Kairi’s tunic.
Zen’s voice went bright with panic dressed as humor. “Alright! Princess! Any chance you can explode stuff? That would be great right now. Truly. Any special exploding would be appreciated!”
Kairi turned her head slightly, eyes glassy with pain. “I… won’t be able to heal then.”
Kylar’s vision swam. He clenched his teeth so hard his jaw ached. “They… they can bandage us up,” he forced out, breath stuttering. “Explode… damn… explode away.”
He felt her hesitate. He felt the fight in her. The healer’s instinct clawing against the warrior’s necessity. She looked to him, he glanced up and nodded. "Zen is a good field medic. I promise" He gritted out.
She gripped his shirt once more and then took a deep breath. She lifted one trembling hand as arcs of lightning danced along her skin. Lightning jumped from her fingertips, a violent blue-white lash that cracked through the air behind them.
It didn’t strike once. It became a storm.
It hit one rider and arced to the next, then the next, electricity chaining through metal, wet leather, and screaming flesh. Horses went down twitching. Men toppled, bodies seizing, voices shredding into panic. The road behind them became chaos.
Kairi sagged instantly, the expenditure ripping whatever strength she had left right out of her. Her weight collapsed onto the bolt, and Kylar nearly blacked out from the pain.
He held her tighter, arm locking around her as if he could keep her from falling apart.
Darius reached across, grabbed Onyx’s reins with a firm, practiced hand.
“I’ve got him,” Darius barked to Kylar, voice like a command hammered into place. “Focus on yourself and her.”
Kylar’s breaths were coming in ragged pieces. He could taste copper. He could feel his fingers starting to go numb, like his body was already deciding which parts were optional.
They pushed on a little farther, just enough to break line-of-sight, just enough to find a small clearing where the trees pulled back and the road widened into a rough patch of dirt and stone.
“Here!” Darius shouted.
Onyx slowed at last, sides heaving. Zen’s horse pulled in beside them. Kurt was off his mount before it fully stopped, sprinting to Onyx with the urgent speed of a man who remembered exactly what it felt like to hang over a gorge and be saved by her hands.
Kurt held his arms up, eyes on Kairi. “Kylar, give her to me.”
Kylar blinked slowly, trying to make his mouth work. “Bolt… went through me… into her side.”
His hand rubbed her back once, a shaky, gentle motion. “Sorry,” he whispered, and then he did the only thing he could.
He pulled her off the bolt.
Quick. Clean. As fast as mercy allowed.
Kairi screamed, a raw, strangled sound that ripped through the clearing like a blade. Kylar made a sound too. He wasn’t sure if it was a groan or a broken prayer.
Kurt caught her easily, cradling her with surprising steadiness, and carried her over to where Zen was already tearing open their limited medical supplies, laying out cloth, bandages, water, whatever they had.
Darius hauled Kylar down from Onyx. Kylar’s boots hit the ground and his knees nearly gave. Darius caught him under the arm, grim strength keeping him upright.
Kylar looked down at the shaft protruding from his shoulder, blood dripping in slow, heavy drops. The world tilted slightly, as if the ground couldn’t decide which way was up.
Something glinted on the bolt, a faint sheen in the light.
Green. That meant... Kylar’s stomach dropped.
He swallowed hard and tasted blood. “You… got antidotes?” he asked, words thick, wrong, like his tongue had forgotten how to behave. Another symptom. He started thinking what it was. Green. Numbness. His tongue thickening. He knew that poison.
Darius froze. Then he moved fast, yanking his medical kit open, fingers digging through packets and vials. He checked again like the antidote might materialize if he searched hard enough. Then he looked back at Kylar. “No.”
Kylar nodded once, slow acceptance that made no sense with the fear rising in his chest.
Kurt was already rummaging through saddle bags, frantic. “How do we not have any poison kits!?” he snapped, voice breaking with disbelief. “We have royal people! We have a princess!”
Zen, crouched beside Kairi, was cleaning her wound as gently as hands could be when the injured person was half-conscious and the healer was the one bleeding. Kairi’s lashes fluttered. Her breathing was shallow, uneven. The lightning had taken too much. The bolt had taken the rest.
Kylar’s fingers tingled. Then the tingling faded into emptiness.
His hand slipped against his thigh like it wasn’t his anymore.
“It’s… not lethal, Saebrian poison.” he slurred, and immediately hated the way it sounded, the way his mouth betrayed him. He blinked hard, trying to force focus, trying to stay present.
Kurt guided him down to sit, hands steady, voice rough with urgency. “Don’t want you falling over, Your Highness.”
Kylar’s head lolled forward, then he jerked it upright with stubborn will. “Don’t… call… me… tha—”
Darius was in front of him, eyes sharp, voice flat with grim intent. “I’m pulling this out,” he said. “And then I’m pouring disinfectant on it and praying it helps.”
Kylar tried to smile. It came out like a grimace. “Don’t… tell her… I screamed.”
Darius’s hand patted his head once, absurdly gentle. “Sure,” Darius said, and it was the least believable promise in the world.
He cut the bolt head off with swift efficiency, jaw clenched so tight a muscle jumped.
Then he pulled. Pain tore through Kylar like fire through cloth.
Kylar screamed. It wasn’t dignified. It wasn’t princely. It was raw and human and impossible to swallow back.
The world narrowed to a white line, then widened again as the bolt came free, blood spilling, Darius immediately pouring the disinfectant over the would. Kylar hissed and bit down into his glove. Darius and Kurt then began pressing cloth hard against the wound.
Kylar’s breath came in gasps. His vision blurred at the edges. Somewhere to his right, Kairi made a small sound that might have been his name. Kylar turned his head toward her, fighting the heaviness dragging at him.
Zen looked up, face pale. “Okay,” he said, voice tight. “Okay. We stop the bleeding. We keep them awake. We… we do not let anyone else shoot any creative green nonsense at us.”
Kurt looked between them. “How far to the next town?” he demanded.
Darius’s gaze flicked to the road, calculating distance with the ruthless calm of a guard who had no room for panic. “Far,” he said. “But we’ll make it.”
Kylar’s eyes found Kairi, crumpled on the ground with Zen’s hands working over her, and his chest tightened with something that wasn’t the poison yet.
“Hey,” he tried to say, voice thin. “Wildflower…” His throat closed around the words. He forced them anyway. “Stay… with me.”
Because the bandits hadn’t gotten what they wanted. Not yet. But the bridge had. The bridge had taken their safety, their supplies, their easy path forward. And now the road wanted blood too. Darius leaned closer, voice low and fierce. “You don’t get to leave,” he told Kylar, like it was an order. “Not today. Not with her watching.”
Kylar managed the smallest, bitterest huff of laughter, and then his eyes slid shut for a heartbeat too long.
Darius’s hand clamped his shoulder, hard. “Kylar.” Kylar’s eyes opened again, unfocused but present.
“Yeah,” he rasped. “I’m… here.” And somewhere behind them, in the trees, the world stayed quiet in the way it always did right before something tried again.