Heart racing, I dart for the wizard barracks on the second floor. The women's sleeping quarters is closer to the stairs than the men's, so I burst in, propriety be scorned.

"Everybody up!" I yell. "The grounds are under attack. All available battle casters report to the front of the castle now." Women scramble up. "You"—I point to a third-tier diviner—"repeat that message to the men's barracks. Go!" She runs off, and I exit, rushing out of the castle.

When I burst through the doors, moonlight catches on the axes and curved swords of twenty fur-clad Kadranians. A handful of soldiers battle them, but just as many are motionless and bloody as standing.

These beasts have no right to kill my people.

I wish I had throwing knives to send hurtling magically into these savages. Instead, I dance into the fray, cloak whipping around me in the windy night, and I fight. My rapier becomes an extension of my arm, years of drills flowing through me. What skill I lack with it, I compensate for with a muttered et væ and a wave of my left hand. Here, a man stumbles; there, a sword twists aside. In my fury, I feel like I'm zoomed out, watching everything from above. One animal falls before me and another takes his place. I'm aware of both him and the adversaries around him, of my countrywomen around me, of the men on the wall. The world roars with shouting and rings with metal. Blood soaks the dead grass.

More Kadranians flood my widened awareness, and sparse reinforcements from the castle run to meet them. My stomach drops. There shouldn't be any more Kadranians; what Kadranians are already here shouldn't be possible. I freeze.

They have an open entrance to the grounds.

A sword sweeps toward my still form, and I duck into a crouch. My rapier strikes at my opponent's leg, and as he stumbles away, I draw back, earning a moment's respite. The gate is shut, I can see that from here—

An axe arches toward my neck.

"Et væ!" My left hand shoots to the side, and his axe follows it. He's open, and my rapier plunges into his side and back out, slick with the same dark blood pulsing from the wound. The brute crumples.

My eyes flick across the battle. Kadranians stream from the shadows. The shadows near—

A swordtip swipes past, and I scramble away. I whirl around two men locked in battle, duck an axe's backstroke, and run. It's the wall. The door I left the castle from. In Niv, Amarris had my cloak, and my cloak had my instructions to the wall. She's letting them in through the wall.

I press forward, fighting to reach the opening. In the darkness, I can't see it, but it must be where these creatures swarm from.

I dodge between northern savages. I have to get behind them.

"Aster!" a rough voice yells. I spin that direction just in time to see an axe arcing down. I dance away and shove my gory rapier into the man. He howls. Out comes my sword, down goes the man, and now I can see Reyan fighting through the chaos. The charging Kadranians shift toward me, but I run through a breach in their ranks.

"What are you doing?" he demands.

"I know where they're coming from!" I duck an axe and jerk away from a reaching hand. I'm swimming against a raging current, and every time I dodge one obstacle, I find myself caught amidst three more. I dart around another towering beast, and an elbow slams my face. I stumble sideways into a Kadranian, eyes blurred and nose streaming. Suddenly, they surround me, axes swinging. Trapped, I pivot, rapier raised. One steps forward, and I shove his axehead to the side with magic as another swings up. Desperate, I raise my sword to block. The axe crashes through my guard and whooshes past my chest. Vibrations ring up my arm. Time slows as the weapon swings back around, bearing down on my defenseless form.

I gape as a sword tip erupts from the man's chest then disappears. Wide-eyed, the man falls. He coughs as he collapses, thick blood spraying from his mouth. I stare, horrified and sickened.

Someone pushes my shoulder, and stumbling, I look up. Reyan stands beside me, fighting those around us.

"Go!" he yells.

I scramble away, dodging through men, casting to shove them away from me, with Reyan close behind, making sure I'm clear. We reach the wall the moment another group starts to push through. I heave in a breath to call out the ancient word to close it, and my mind blanks. I don't have the paper anymore; Amarris kept it. I have to remember.

A man charges me. Reyan steps in the way, and their weapons clash.

Two, four, seven men already through, and I can't remember the one word that will stop this flow of Antium scourge.

"Aster!" Reyan yells. Stars above! I remember the words to open it, but that's absolutely useless.

Reyan's long, straight sword sings as the curved metal of another batters it. Come on, come on... A Kadranian warcry startles me. His sword throttles toward my chest, and I jump aside, tripping. As I hit the ground, my rapier tumbles out of my hand. The beast towers over me, sword coming down, and I twist to dodge. The blade thuds into the earth where my chest used to be. He yanks it up, and I roll the other way. The tip scrapes flesh from my arm. Pain ignites like fire, and I cry out. He tugs the blade free from the soil.

"Et væ!" I shove his chest and scramble to my feet, arm buckling when I put weight on it. Then I'm up and grabbing my rapier, and my memory clears, and I scream at the wall. "Te'irfannæ!"

A great shuddering rocks the doorway, and a woman's angry scream pierces the chaos. Through the gap, Amarris' face twists in fury. Amidst the darkness of the night, a flicker of triumph kindles. She can't open it from the outside.

The grating of the stone crashes against the shouts of the men near the door. Kadranians scramble away. One man left trapped in the quickly closing wall screams, and his bones snap and crack as it grinds him. He falls limp, suspended in stone, and his blood cascades down the moss. The stink of death catches in my nose, in the back of my throat, and I gag. With the close of the wall, everyone falls to stillness, and even Reyan looks disgusted and afraid.

Then one of the Kadranians screams an angry, brutal warcry and charges me. The other savages take up the call. I stumble back, fear and pain and weariness slowing my movements. Reyan spins, and we fight back-to-back as the Kadranians press closer.

A savage hacks at me with a long, wicked dagger alongside his sword, and I can't hope to ward off both. I'm not meant to be a ground fighter, not taught for extended melee. My stomach churns, and my shaking hands can't keep my rapier steady.

I bat away one of his attacks, two. In the corner of my eye, a Kadranian guts a Morineause soldier. A third attack catches on the already-torn flesh of my left arm and drags down. As I scream, pain dulls the part of my mind trapped in the sickness of the battle and sharpens the part bent on survival.

My sword thrusts into his arm, and I step over someone's body to pursue the attack. His knife flicks out at me, but angry, I cast, throwing it to the side. Inside his reach now, I draw my casting knife and plunge it into his throat. I turn, ready for the next man. Around me, our soldiers cut through the invaders, tearing down the brutes that dared attack my home.

Soon, only a handful of Kadranian soldiers remain, and Reyan yells for his men to capture who they can.

My mind is numb and spiteful as I survey the destruction around me. Good women and men lie cold and dead on my ground. Larger bodies surround them, but I won't feel pity for the creatures that did this. No. Those men don't count. I am not to blame for ending their detestable lives.

The yells and clangs of metal on metal still ring from the top of the wall. If those savages manage to break through our wall defenses after all of this—

My head shakes in fury as I pick my way over to Reyan. They won't.

"Do you want me to go check with the people at the wall while you finish what needs done here?" I realize I addressed him as if he has authority over me, but right now, I don't care. I feel less like equals and more like a little brother who knows far less about what we're doing. I swipe my sleeve across the blood from my busted nose.

He glances at me. Somehow, he got his chain shirt on before the fighting began, and other than a cut on his cheek, he doesn't seem injured. Still, blood spatter covers him, some of it smeared into his shoved-back hair.

"No. I'll take care of it. Go see Illesiarr for that arm." He turns away, but I speak again.

"You don't have to do it all."

He looks at me. "You're injured."

The cut mostly stopped hurting during the fight, but now, with him drawing attention to it, it burns like lightning crackling up my arm. I tear my sleeve off the rest of the way, and start to tie it around the wound. One-handed, I can't make good work of it but refuse to ask him for help.

He does anyway, wrapping the fabric tight and steady around my arm. Now it won't bleed so much, but the pressure hardly makes it feel better.

I nod as if that fixed it. "There. Now, do you want me on the wall or down here?"

His jaw tightens, but he nods, almost as if in grudging respect. Above us, the clamor crescendos. "We'll go up together. Officer!" he calls to a woman overseeing the captured Kadranians, and her blood-streaked face turns our way. "Take a force to clear the castle."

She salutes and starts barking directions. We turn.

"Don't get your head lopped off," he orders as we enter the tower and mount the spiral stairs to the wall. "You get fatigued, get hurt, you fall back. We need you for more than this fight. Alright?" I feel stupid for wondering earlier how he did this so easily. He's been up here before, in the fighting. And Kadranians don't count.

I agree, but it feels pointless. If we don't win this fight, there won't be another for them to need me for.

"Good. Stay close."

With that, he shoves open the door, and we burst into the fray.