“Run,” she hissed. She felt the hilt of her knife between her fingers for a moment, then flung it. The weapon sprouted from Branch’s chest, blood spurting under the blade. He looked down, dumbstruck, then up: and he fell to the ground with a limp crunch. She reached down, found nothing, and swore; the knife was her only weapon. She darted over and yanked it from the dying man’s chest, blood gushing from the dark red wound. A sound made her pivot. Gultin approached, huge and hulking, his sword drawn. He had the reach, but Scratch had her own advantages. She darted under his thrust, slashing at the tendons behind his ankles. He shouted as he fell, hobbled in the dirt. His sword slipped from his fingers.

“Thanks for this,” she garbled through a mouth numbed by adrenaline, “been meaning to pick up one of—”

“Ahh-hells!”

She had felt fear before. There was the dull, final fear of waiting to be executed in the dungeons. There was the thrill-tinged anxiety as she watched her octagon bloom on the battlefield. But there was no fear that compared to the ragged terror that tore her chest at the sound of James’s broken, horrified scream.

He was on the ground, his leg splayed out at a nauseating angle. Blood soaked the side of his pant leg, and his face had gone ashen white.

Her mouth hung open. She closed it with a click. “James . . .”

“Hello, Sergeant Major.”

She had been so focused on James that she hadn’t realized Hester was still fighting. He lunged at her, short sword out and glistening with blood. James’s blood, she thought, swallowing the fear, sour in her tight throat. There wasn’t time for fear. Instead, she forced herself beyond the fear into the anger. It came to an instant boil, every moment that had scalded her since her last meal in the castle rising up, shrieking. Frances’s truths. King Ingomar’s dismissal. Her last hours in the dungeons. Vel’s and James’s laughter. Brella’s fiery eyes and vague insults and stiff jaw and evasiveness and the cold knowledge that everything Scratch had worked for was now meaningless. It was all meaningless.

She screamed and slashed with the borrowed sword, but it had been Gultin’s and he was a big man. She misjudged the balance, spinning out with the momentum, and Hester seized his opportunity. She blinked, and she was disarmed, the sword slamming against the earth, just out of reach. She bore down instead, fists up, looking for an opening, not letting herself believe this was the end. It couldn’t be. Not after she had come so far. It didn’t make sense that she would die here in the forest at the hands of a mediocre sergeant because she had had to leave her own sword behind.