I stared after them as realization hit. I was barely able to see anything but exploding colors and leaping after images, but then, I didn’t need to, did I? Everything had centered around the spot where Aeslinn had been walking.

I felt my heart clench in my chest, felt hope—dead and buried a moment ago—suddenly rise once more, felt—

Arsen shaking me, and yelling something in my face.

I couldn’t hear him, but then he shoved the goat thing at me and grabbed Pritkin’s limp body off the ground, obviously preparing to run. Until he caught sight of the third prisoner, and oh, shit. Oh, no, no, no, no!

I grabbed his arm when he pulled out his knife, and clung like a limpet. “No!” I yelled. “No, you don’t understand—”

Arsen was yelling something back, which probably had to do with the attack on the capitol and Mircea’s part in it, but I couldn’t hear him. I couldn’t hear anything but goddamned explosions, echoing in my head like a kettledrum from hell. Until something cut through the din, but not because it was loud.

But because it was soft.

My head came up as a cool glissando reached my ears, like a tinkle of bells tossed about on the breeze, or a silken whisper, or a blowing song…

I kept hold of Arsen’s arm, but turned my head to look out over the forest, facing away from the camp, and the song grew louder. It seemed to be in my mind more than my ears, and was a chorus now instead of a few random notes, soft and cool and beckoning. It didn’t sing words, much less sentences, but the idea was there.

The idea was deafening.

“The tree line,” I murmured, and Arsen stopped yelling to stare at me, as if he’d heard something, too. Or maybe he was wondering why I was suddenly just standing there, with my head cocked, while the world burned.

A silence spell clicked shut over my head, and the sudden absence of sound was staggering. Quite literally, causing me to fall into Arsen when he stopped pulling away, only to have him shake me some more. Which… wasn’t helping, I thought, right before my ears popped painfully.

“—is wrong with you?” I heard him yell.

I swallowed and tried to focus. “I—we have to get to the tree line. To the forest—”

“You think I don’t know that? But I’m not taking him!”

He kicked Mircea, who looked up, fangs bared.

“Why are you taking any of us?” I challenged, despite the fact that this wasn’t the time for a conversation. But anything was better than he and Mircea fighting it out, two half dead men in the middle of a goddamned inferno! “If the king is still alive—”

Arsen gave a laugh utterly devoid of humor, which made me stare at him some more.