Page 15 of A Legacy of Storms and Starlight

“I’d hardly call mossa belonging, Zylah.”

It was the second time he’d said her name, and it sent a shiver down her spine. “Moss has many uses. If you must know, I was keeping it for a snack, and to pack inside my cuff so it wouldn’t rub.” She turned away from him, busying herself with looking at the ferns again to hide the flush in her cheeks.

“How did you get the first one open?” He’d taken a step closer as Zylah crouched down to inspect a fern frond, her left hand hovering near her boot and the hilt of her knife. Just in case.

She examined the fern, but she was listening to the sound of his breathing, to how even each breath was. They’d be on the move again soon. “My friend gave me a hairpin.”

“You picked a lock with a hairpin?” he asked. He crouched down beside her, but his gaze was somewhere else, off into the shadows of the forest. Heat radiated from him, and she resisted the urge to shuffle closer, just for the warmth.

Zylah couldn’t see whatever he’d seen—only more trees and shadows, broken up by the odd beam of light here and there.And a few pairs of eyes, her mind whispered. But when she blinked, they were gone. “That’s what I just said, yes.”

“How?” Even crouching, it was ridiculous how much he towered over her.

A twig snapped in the bushes, and her hand instinctively closed on the hilt of her dagger, but Holt seemed unfazed. “By feel and sound. I could hear the pin catching inside the lock. But it broke inside the second one.”

A rabbit hopped out of the bushes, and Holt arched a brow. “You’re tenacious, I’ll give you that.”

She’d been called far worse, she supposed. The owl cried out again, and Holt was on his feet, sword drawn in one graceful, practised movement. Zylah pulled her knife free, and as she stood with her back to him, it wasn’t lost on her just how much she looked like a child beside him, her tiny frame and her small dagger next to him and his enormous sword. Not that it mattered, she knew how to do plenty of damage with what she had.

“Stay together,” Holt said almost inaudibly.

“Where in Pallia’s name do you think I would go?” she muttered.

An arrow whistled through the air, a sound Zylah had heard many times practising with her brother, but before she could step out of the way, Holt had spun out in front of her with preternatural speed, swiping the arrow away with a sword.

A flash of metal caught Zylah’s eye, and she pivoted away just as someone charged at her with a blade. Holt was already occupied with another of their attackers. Zylah held her dagger steady, easily ducking and twisting out of the reach of the sword. Its owner was a beast of a man; where Holt was toned and muscular, this man was brutish, a nasty scar running from his eyebrow across the corner of his right eye and down to his cheek.

Zylah spotted an opening in the brute’s stance, swung around and shoved her dagger into the flesh beneath his ribs. It wasn’t a fatal wound, but it was the only opening she had. With a grunt, she yanked the dagger back out and almost lost her footing backing away from him.

“A tiny knife for a tiny girl. I’ve had whores cut me deeper than that,” he spat, pressing a hand to his wound.

Tiny girl? Zylah clicked her tongue. She wasn’tthatshort, well, maybe. And she’d had the body of a woman since she was thirteen, another reason she’d learnt to hide herself in a crowd. For a time, she’d even considered binding her chest to better disguise her shape.

She weighed up her options. He was striking to kill, not merely to injure her or knock her off her feet. He pressed a hand to his wound and pulled it away to examine the blood, and when his gaze met hers, Zylah knew whoever landed the next blow would be the one to walk away from this. She swallowed back her fear at the thought.

A sword clashed against another behind her, but Zylah didn’t dare turn her back from the brute as she circled him, studying his hideous face for any signs of a tell; the moment before he might swipe at her next.

He lunged forwards with his sword and Zylah spun around him, leaping onto his back and dragging her dagger across his throat. She tried not to think about how easily the blade cut through flesh. Instead, she pushed herself off as he fell to his knees and landed face first amongst the jupe flowers.What a waste. She whispered a quiet prayer to Pallia, her breaths uneven and shaky.

It took her only a moment to spot the third attacker firing arrows from amongst the trees, and she was loath to part with her dagger from this distance. With a glance at Holt, she counted three arrows protruding from his frame.Not a god, he says.

The archer’s attention was on Holt, and Zylah took the opportunity to crouch out of sight, low amongst the ferns as she caught her breath. If she was quick enough… She didn’t think it through, just evanesced herself to the space behind the archer, throwing herself onto his back as she had with the brute. But the archer was swifter, and in one fluid motion, he threw her over his shoulder.

All her breath was knocked out of her as she hit the cold, hard ground, opening her eyes to the archer’s bow slamming down towards her.Shit. There was no time to roll out of the way. She brought her hands up over her eyes, but no impact came. The archer made a choking sound, and when she looked up, vines wrapped tightly around his bow, trapping it between his arms and his body. His mouth hung open as he choked, and hundreds of grub beetles erupted from it.

What in the—?

Zylah didn’t stay to watch. She rolled away and shoved herself to her feet, still trying to catch her breath.

More insects came from the forest and Zylah backed away as they covered the archer entirely, turning his body into a swarming mass of black and brown.By the gods. She stepped back again, slamming into something hard. And warm. A person. She spun around, swiping her dagger, but Holt caught her wrist.

He released her the moment their eyes met. “I’m sorry,” he said, flicking his chin at her wrist where he’d touched her. “I thought you were going to stab me.”

“I was.” Zylah lowered her weapon, wiping it in the snow to hide her trembling as the fight caught up with her.Steady breaths, Zy.Two lives she’d taken now, and a third, sort of. “Why did you wait so long to do that?” she asked, assuming it could only have been magic that had the archer crawling with half the forest over his body. Zylah could barely make out the outline of his frame under the mound of vines and insects that covered it.

“The last part wasn’t me,” Holt said, watching her as she cleaned her blade, his gaze moving from her to the brute, face first amongst the ferns beyond them.

Zylah pushed herself to her feet, tilting her head back to look at him. “But the vines were?”

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