Grey heard the first scream while staring at the roof of the Chief's hut, still turning the story over in his mind.
His mother. Arcadia. Powerful forces hunting her bloodline. He held the ruby locket in one hand and the totem in the other and tried to make the pieces fit into something that resembled sense.
Then the scream came again, closer this time, and the night outside split open. Cries from every direction. The crack and boom of explosions. Firelight flickered red through the gaps in the hut walls and the smell of smoke arrived suddenly and with intent.
He was through the door before he finished deciding to move.
What he saw stopped him for one terrible heartbeat.
The village was on fire. Not one hut, not one corner of the square. All of it, the celebration fires spreading into thatch and timber and dry grass.
Masked figures moved between the burning huts with the smooth deliberate purpose of people executing a plan, while the villagers ran and fought and screamed in the chaos of people who had none.
He pressed himself against the wall of the Chief's hut and forced himself to breathe.
'Think,' he told himself. 'Stop staring and think.'
He had to find Lysa. He had to find the Chief. They were his top priority now.
He kept to the shadows, moving along the backs of the huts, low and quick, slipping behind fences and stacks of firewood. Twice he pressed flat against a wall as masked fighters rushed past dragging struggling children.
A girl cried out her eyes as her hands clawed at the ground, fingers leaving marks in the dirt, until a stick connected with the side of her head and she went still.
Grey's hands trembled. Every part of him wanted to do something useful. He swallowed it and kept moving.
He was too weak. He knew it and hated knowing it. He kept moving anyway because stopping to sit and berate himself would help no one.
'Find them first,' he told himself. 'Everything else after.'
The smoke was thicker near the center, the air heavy and stinging. He cut between two collapsing structures, sparks falling around him like angry orange snow.
He finally rounded the village well and stopped.
Lysa was on her knees beside a fallen figure.
'The Chief' Alarm bells were ringing in his head and he rushed to their side.
Arven was down on one knee, breath coming in short laboured pulls, blood soaking through his robe from more wounds than Grey could quickly count. Lysa had both hands on his shoulders, her hair tangled, her face wet, holding him upright through sheer refusal to let him fall.
"Dad..." she was saying, her voice fracturing. "Please get up. Please."
Arven lifted his head. His eyes found Grey immediately.
"Good," he rasped. "You came."
Grey crouched beside him. "We'll get you inside. I can find something for the bleeding—"
"No." Arven's hand shot out and gripped his wrist with a strength that had no business coming from a man in his condition. "Listen. They're here for her."
Grey's stomach dropped.
"Neridia," Arven said, each word costing him something. "They felt her aura from the Heartlands. They're searching the newly bonded children until they find her. They don't know her face yet. That's the only advantage we have and it won't last long."
Lysa shook her head. "I won't leave you!"
Arven turned to her. He raised his bloodstained hand and pressed it gently against her cheek, slow and deliberate, completely unhurried despite the burning village and the sound of slowly approaching boots
"Little tide," he said quietly. "You must."
"Dad—"
"Trust me one more time."
Lysa pressed her hand over his. Her eyes closed briefly. When they opened the tears were still there but something else had arrived alongside them, the steadiness of someone making a decision they didn't want to make.
Arven looked at Grey. His eyes were clear and focused despite everything.
"Take her east. Into the old cedar forest. Don't stop and don't look back."
Grey nodded. "I'll come back for you. When she's safe—"
"Promise me." His voice cut through. "Keep her alive. Whatever it takes."
He pressed a small knife into Grey's hand, folding his fingers around the handle.
Grey looked at the knife. He looked at the man who had sat beside him in the dirt when he was eight years old and crying over a dead ferret.
Who had named him from the colour of his eyes.
Who had kept a dead woman's secrets and nurtured her son for twelve long years.
"I promise," he said with firmness.
Arven held his gaze one moment longer. Then he smiled, small and genuine and slightly sideways on his face the way it always was.
"Go," he said. "Now."
Grey grabbed Lysa's hand and ran.
They ran through smoke and falling sparks, through the outer fields of the village where the ground had been trampled into churned mud by boots that had come a long way with bad intentions.
The air was thick with ash and the orange glow of the burning square painted everything behind them in terrible colour.
Lysa stumbled twice and Grey hauled her forward both times without stopping, her hand tight in his, her breathing ragged and hitching with sobs she couldn't hold back.
Behind them steel clashed. Arven's voice rose in a roar somewhere in the chaos and someone screamed in response. Then a sound came, sharp and final and without follow-up, that Grey's mind registered and immediately refused to process.
He did not turn around.
He kept Lysa's hand in his and his eyes on the dark tree line and filed everything else into the place where things went that needed to wait.
The tightening in his chest was getting worse but he ignored that too.
They hit the forest at a run. Branches clawed at their faces, roots snagged their feet and the darkness swallowed the firelight behind them almost immediately.
The sounds of the village dropped behind them as the trees thickened, muffled and distant and then present only as a reddish glow between the trunks when Grey glanced back once.
He didn't glance back again.
They ran deeper, pushing through undergrowth that tore at their clothes and navigating by the faint light that filtered down through the canopy from whatever the sky still offered.
Neither of them spoke.
There was nothing to say that wouldn't cost more than either of them had right now.
Grey focused on the ground in front of his feet and the sound of Lysa breathing beside him and the feel of her hand in his and kept going until his lungs were raw and his legs had begun to make their objections known in a way that was impossible to ignore.
He pulled up beside a fallen log and Lysa collapsed against it, shaking from somewhere deep inside, her whole body moving with it.
He dropped to his knees before her, letting the knife fall to the floor. With a helpless motion, he held out his hands, unsure what gesture could possibly be right for a moment like this.
"Lysa." He kept his voice low. "Hey. Look at me."
She stared past him at something he couldn't see.
"He's dead," she whispered. "He's dead."
Grey opened his mouth and closed it. He didn't know if it was true and didn't want to say anything that made it more real than it already was.
He reached out and squeezed her shoulders gently, the only thing he had to offer.
"We'll go back," he said. "When it's safe. We'll—"
A twig snapped behind him.
Grey spun.
A masked man stepped from the shadows between the trees, silent as fog, his blade already drawn.
Grey grabbed a nearby broken branch from the ground and swung. The attacker caught it easily, twisted it from his grip and drove his elbow into Grey's stomach in one clean motion.
The air was knocked completely out of him. His body folded as the man swept his legs from under him, and he crashed to the ground, pain bursting through his ribs.
He tried to roll away, but a boot slammed into his back, forcing him flat against the ground.
"Stay still," the man said quietly.
Grey clawed at the dirt for the knife, fingers finding only leaves and soil. The man wrenched his arms behind him and bound his wrists with rope that bit immediately into his skin.
He twisted his head. Lysa sat unmoving, tears sliding silently down her face, eyes fixed on nothing.
The masked man crouched before her. "You'll come quietly," he said. "Yes?"
She didn't answer.
He tied her hands as well in one swift motion.
"Leave her!" Grey choked. "Take me instead! She has nothing to do with this!"
The man looked at him. Something moved briefly behind his eyes. Then he raised the hilt of his blade and brought it down against Grey's temple.
The world lurched around him. Sound faded into a dull ringing as darkness crept along the edges of his vision before swallowing everything entirely.
Rough hands seized him, hauling him through leaves and mud, yet his body refused to respond in any way.
The last thing he heard was Lysa's voice. Very close. Barely above a breath.
"Grey... I'm scared."
Then everything went black.