Swallowing Darkness   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

If she used her magic again there might not be a second miracle to save us. Goddess helps those who help themselves. We were armed with automatic weapons; we'd help ourselves.

I felt the soldiers around me shifting, and thought they were readying their guns. Orlando squeezed my hand one last time, then took his hand into the dark. He was getting ready to kill my queen. Would she still be where we'd left her? "The queen may not be standing where we last saw her," I said.

Dawson gave orders for the men to cover a circle around us, because there was no cover save the darkness that held us. Once free of that, we would be naked to the view of all.

We stepped into the moonlight, and it seemed unbearably bright, bright enough to make me blink. I was still blinking into the brightness when the first gunshots exploded around me. It made me jump, but the stag jerked so violently that for a moment I thought he had been hit. Then he bounded away, a blur of white, streaking away from the noise, the guns, the violence.

I yelled his name. I could not help it. "Frost!" But there was no one inside that body to answer the sound of human words. The stag vanished into the tree edge, and I was alone again.

Dawson yelled beside me, "Field of fire, the black area. Suppressive bursts with rifle, squad weapons, give me ten seconds of raking fire. She's hiding behind it."

I turned and looked at the battlefield. I turned and looked at my aunt and my cousin and the nobles from the court I was supposed to be fighting to rule, and I cared more about the stag leaving than about them dying.

Andais had called darkness, like a mist to hide herself and Cel and the other nobles. Dawson and the rest were firing into it. If they were still there, the bullets would find them, but there was no way to tell what lay in the dark. Had she fled?

I looked behind us, and found that the men who had been given the job of watching the back of the circle were doing just that. They were letting the others fire into the dark, but they watched to see whether the darkness was a trick, whether our enemies were trying to sneak up behind us.

What could I do to help them?

"They're behind us!" someone yelled, and I turned with that yell.

I had time to knock the rifle to point at the ground, and move myself into the line of fire. I could have tried yelling, but watching the Red Caps move out of the darkness, I knew that words wouldn't have kept the men from firing on them.