Page 268 of Kingdom of Ash

She’d gladly take days of pacing instead of what approached them.

“Fifty thousand,” Ansel said, throwing a wry glance to Rolfe.

Lysandra swallowed against the tightness in her throat. Evangeline pressed her face into Lysandra’s side.

And then the witch towers took form.

Like massive lances jutting from the horizon, they appeared through the gray morning light. Three of them, spread out equally amid the army that continued to flow behind them.

Even Ansel stopped counting now.

“I did not think it would be so terrible,” Evangeline whispered, hands digging into Lysandra’s heavy cloak. “I did not think it would be so wretched.”

Lysandra pressed a kiss to the top of her red-gold hair. “No harm shall come to you.”

“I am not afraid for myself,” Evangeline said. “But for my friends.”

Those citrine eyes indeed shone with tears of terror, and Lysandra brushed one away before watching the advancing witch towers creep toward them. She had no words to comfort the girl.

“Any minute now,” Aedion murmured, and Lysandra glanced down to the snowy plain.

To the figures that emerged from beneath the snow, clad in white. Flaming arrows nocked in their bows. Morath’s front lines were nearly upon them, but those soldiers were not their target.

Down the wall, Murtaugh gripped the ancient stones as a figure that had to be Ren gave the order. Flaming arrows arched and flew, Morath soldiers ducking under their shields.

They did not bother to look beneath their feet.

Neither did the witches leading their three towers.

The flaming arrows struck the earth with deadly accuracy, thanks to the Silent Assassins who wielded those bows.

Right atop the fuse lines that flowed directly into the pits they’d dug. Just as the witch towers passed over them.

Blinding flashes broke apart the black sea of the army. Then the mighty boom.

And then a rain of stone, all Morath’s forces whirling to see. Providing the right distraction as Ren, Ilias, and the Silent Assassins raced on foot to the white horses hidden behind a snowdrift.

When the flash cleared, when the smoke was gone, a sigh of relief went down the walkway.

Two of those witch towers had been directly over the pits. Pits that they had filled with the chemical reactors and powders that fueled Rolfe’s firelances, then concealed beneath the earth—waiting for a spark to ignite them.

Those two towers now lay in scattered ruin, their wyverns broken beneath them, soldiers squashed under falling stone.

Yet one still stood, the pit it had been closest to exploding too soon. One of the wyverns who had pulled it had been hit by debris from another tower—and lay either dead or injured.

And that third remaining tower had stopped.

A wicked, low horn sounded from the enemy host, and the army halted, too.

“Thank the rutting gods,” Rolfe said, head bowing.

But Aedion was still staring at the plain—at the figures on horseback galloping to Orynth’s walls. Making sure they all returned.

“How long will that stop them?” Evangeline asked.

Everyone, Darrow included, turned to the girl. No one had an answer. No lie to offer.

So they again faced the army gathered on the plain, its farthest reaches now visible.

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