He made too good a target standing there holding back the horse with his body. Raisa rolled to her feet and ran in a half-crouch to Amon. Pulling free her belt knife, she cut the cords binding Amon’s hands.

“They’re Demonai,” Raisa gasped into Amon’s ear. “The archers. On our side.”

More Demonai arrows arced over the meadow, and two more guards fell, one with an arrow sticking out of his throat. The attack was all the more frightening because the archers were silent, apparently invisible.

Amon pulled Raisa into the edge of the forest, shoving her up against a tree.

“Stay here,” he growled. Snatching up his quarterstaff, he waded into the meadow, swinging it at the renegades fleeing in all directions.

“Amon!” Raisa called. “Be careful.” She wasn’t at all sure the Demonai would distinguish between Amon and the rest of the guards.

It was all over in a matter of minutes. Amon stood alone in the clearing, breathing hard. All of the guards were down, four felled by Amon and his wicked staff.

Raisa quieted Sloat’s panicked horse and yanked the dead guardsman’s boot free of the stirrup. Shadows in the fringes of the woods coalesced and came forward, some dragging the bodies of the guards who’d fled into the trees. All at once there were a half dozen Demonai in the meadow, clad in their nearly invisible traveling cloaks.

Two of them walked toward Raisa. One, tall and raptor-eyed, she recognized as the warrior Reid Demonai, called Nightwalker. His shoulder-length hair was sectioned off into multiple plaits wrapped in colorful thread. Raisa had met him at Demonai, though he wasn’t in camp much. Only two years older than Raisa, he was already a legend, hotheaded and deadly, the object of much speculation by the girls in the camps.

In fact, he and Raisa had shared a brief romance during her time at Demonai Camp. But she’d found that a romance with Reid was like fighting a series of daily skirmishes in an ongoing war of egos.

The girl beside him looked to be about Raisa’s age, and she moved with an easy, long-legged grace that Raisa envied. Her head of dark curls hung free from thread wrappings. Though dressed in Demonai colors and fully armed, she did not wear the Demonai warrior amulet around her neck.

“Find out if any of them still live,” Reid said to the girl, who broke away to kneel beside the nearest fallen guardsman.

“Princess Raisa, how goes it with you?” Reid asked calmly, as if they were meeting at a harvest feast.

But his eyes gave him away. They glittered with excitement and feral joy. His face and clothing splattered with bluejacket blood, the Demonai warrior looked elated, exhilarated by the recent battle. Nightwalker was much too fond of bloodshed.