Her older brother’s voice slammed into her ears, magically directed this time and loud enough to make her flinch. Now, Cordelia! Don’t make me get Mother to drag you back. If you come now, I won’t tell her what you were up to.

Ugh! Cordelia spread out her wings in furious preparation to launch back toward her ridiculous brother, who never trusted her to look after herself.

Lightning cracked across the moat beneath the cloudless sky. It came from the clearing full of soldiers.

There were sorcerers among the invaders, too.

If that lightning had struck Connall’s shifting cape of shadows, it would have bounced aside without harm. Cordelia had seen it repel magical attacks before, when Connall had practiced it with Mother in their courtyard. But this sorcerer wasn’t aiming at Connall … and apparently, when Connall had come running to save his sister, he hadn’t expected anyone behind him to need a shield.

The lightning shot over his head and through the arch of the open doorway.

A terrible scream sounded inside.

“Alys!”

It was Connall who shouted her name, whirling around, but Cordelia screamed, too, as she flung herself into the air.

… Too late! The safe tunnel of air her older brother had shaped vanished the moment that his concentration broke.

Black arrows shot in a murderous cloud across the moat, their steady thwack … thwack … thwack filling the air with an inescapable percussion. Connall’s back was still turned, blocking the sight of whatever was happening inside their home. Arrows bounced off his shifting cape and off the smoke-wrapped stone walls of the castle, showering into the moat as snakes hissed and dived for cover. No one even noticed Cordelia’s small brown body amid the chaos, flying frantically back and forth as she searched for any possible angle of approach.

Archers lined the banks of the moat. Even bird-sight wasn’t powerful enough to find a way through their combined attack.

“Why would you ever take such a risk?” Connall shouted at their invaders. Cordelia couldn’t see him anymore through the cloud of arrows, but she could hear him, and his voice was choked with horrifying tears. “You may hate me and my mother, My Lord Duke of Arden, but that’s your sister who was struck just now!”

“Rubbish!” The bear-leader stomped out of the central cluster of tents with a young squire scurrying after him, still fastening the last plates of armor around his enormous chest. “I have no sister anymore. Even if I had, Alys was raised in a fortress. She’d never be fool enough to stand so close to—”

“What have you done?” Mother burst past Connall through the door, throwing out her arms to create a transparent bubble of protection that no arrow could pierce. “You shot a lethal curse into our home?”

Scowling, Arden crossed his arms with a clank of armor. “Lune? What nonsense is she spouting now?”