We couldn’t rush forward. We needed them to come to us.
“It’s just past midday,” I said, trying to calm myself as much as him. “We have hours of daylight yet.”
And then a horse broke free from their front lines. A distant speck at first, but then charging, fast. I heard the ratchet of the ballistas as it stormed toward us. But something about its coloring was wrong.
“Wait!” I said.
It wasn’t a brezalot. And there was a rider.
As it drew near, I knew.
It was the Komizar.
He stopped a hundred yards off. He held his hands up to show he wasn’t armed.
“What the hell is he doing?” Rafe asked.
“I request a parley with the princess,” he called. “Alone!”
A parley? Had he gone mad?
But then I thought, No. He is deadly sane.
“And I bring a gift of goodwill,” he called again. “All I ask for is a moment to talk—without weapons.”
Both Rafe and Kaden balked, but then the Komizar reached behind his back and swung a child down to the ground.
It was Yvet.
My heart stopped. The grass swallowed her up to her waist.
I remembered the day I had seen her huddled in the market with Aster and Zekiah, clutching a bloody cloth after her fingertip had been cut off. She looked even smaller and more terrified now.
The Komizar dismounted. “All yours,” he called, “just for the price of a few minutes.”
Rafe and Kaden railed against it, but I was already unbuckling and handing them my sword and knives.
“Our archers can take him down, and we can have the child too,” Rafe argued.
“No,” I answered. Nothing was ever that simple with the Komizar. We knew each other too well, and this was a very clear message to me.
“And when do I get Zekiah?” I called back to him.
He smiled. “When I’ve returned safely to my lines, I will send him. And if I don’t make it back—” He shrugged.
He was enjoying this. It was a game, theater. He wanted to draw it out, squeeze all the game pieces a little tighter in his fist.
I knew Rafe and Kaden were both a heartbeat away from signaling the archers. The sacrifice of one child for the beast himself. A child who could die anyway. A child who would likely die anyway. And our prize was in our grasp. But it was a choice that came with a price, one the Komizar had already calculated. The air was taut with the decision. He stood there, unafraid, knowing, and I hated him more deeply. How much was I like him? Who was I willing to sacrifice to get what I wanted?
“The Komizar’s fate will come later,” I whispered. “Do not lay a hand on the beast yet.”
I rode out to meet him, but when I was still ten yards away, I dismounted and waved Yvet forward. Her wide frightened eyes turned to the Komizar. He nodded, and she walked toward me.
I knelt when she reached me and held her tiny hands. “Yvet, do you see those two horses far behind me with the cloaked soldiers?”
She looked past me at the thousands of troops, her lip trembling, but then spotted the two dark cloaked ones. She nodded.
“Good. They will take care of you. I want you to go to them now. I want you to run and not look back. No matter what you see or hear, you will keep going. Do you understand?”