With a grimace, Cord pulled his shirt over his head. Mistin murmured softly while she examined the splinters sticking out of his back like quills. She pulled them out one by one. Cord winced and grunted each time. Gently, Mistin poured water over the wounds and washed away the blood.
Senna stared. She’d never seen Mistin hold a knife, but the girl’s hands had launched several with unerring accuracy. Knives she’d had hidden all over her body. That kind of ease only came from hundreds of hours of practice.
Without warning, a memory washed over Senna like a wave of icy water. An attacker, standing over her and throwing a knife at Reden, a knife that had cut his arm.
Senna’s breath came in short gasps. Her gaze swung to Cord. Scars riddled his body. It was so much like Reden’s body—more like the body of a career soldier than of an untrained but hopeful Guardian. One scar seemed fresher than the others. It was puckered and purple, newly healed.
She remembered a man chasing her on a moonless night. The gag, so tight it had made her lips crack. Her hand shoving the shard of glass into his guts. Hot blood washing over her skin.
Mistin’s voice was a deep alto, easy to mistake for a tenor. Cord’s voice was a bass.
With shaking hands, Senna primed her pistol. When she looked up, Cord was watching her, his expression wary.
Numb, she rose to her feet. “It was you.”
Mistin glanced up. Some of her long black hair had come loose and partially covered her face. She looked so young, so innocent. How could she have done this?
“It was you two I overheard that night at the tree house. You who attacked me.” She pointed a shaking finger at the wound on Cord’s side. “And you I stabbed.”
Silent, he and Mistin rose to their feet.
It shocked her that they didn’t deny it. “Why?” It came out as more of an accusation than a question.
Cord held up his hands. “We never meant to hurt you.”
He had an accent now. She’d heard it before—furtive whispers in the night. She reached towards the nearly healed bruise on her head. “So the stone wasn’t supposed to knock me unconscious?”
His hand fell. “Well, yes, but we couldn’t very well let you sing, now could we?”
“Why?” Her voice betrayed so much hurt Senna wished she could pull the word back into her mouth.
Mistin held very still, as if afraid any sudden movement might scare Senna off. “We were trying to save your life.” Her accent had surfaced just as Cord’s had.
Senna laughed, but there was no humor in it. She aimed her pistol at Cord’s heart.
He studied the gun before his gaze met hers. “You going to shoot me?”
Her hand held steady. “I haven’t decided yet.”
He stood still, waiting.
Grief and anger made her finger tighten on the trigger. But then she remembered the soldier she’d shot before. The smell of gunpowder. The sudden emptiness. Her muscles went soft. She was not a killer. She backed towards the horses and then took their reins in her free hand.
“Mistin?” Cord said, his voice tight.
She closed her eyes as if listening and whispered, “Just let her go.”
Careful to keep her gun trained on Cord, Senna climbed into the saddle, her foot fishing for the opposite stirrup. Suddenly, she noticed the music around her shifting. But that was impossible. Unless…
There are other Witches here, she realized with a start.
She didn’t have time to react. The earth beneath her exploded. Sunny hit the ground hard, pinning her leg beneath his barrel chest. She couldn’t draw a breath—her lungs felt paralyzed. Sunny rolled until his feet were under him and lurched to stand. Senna’s leg was free at last.
She gasped a breath full of dust and coughed. Wind pressed down on her, pinning her to the ground, drowning out all other sounds. A golden flash of horseflesh streaked into the trees.
Joshen had given her that horse. And she’d lost him. Again.
Shaking, Senna listened to the song, took a breath, and began her own. Her song battled with theirs for control of the melody. Slowly, the wind eased away from her. Shaking and bleeding, she pushed herself up.
Mistin stood beside more than a dozen women, their faces twisted with concentration as they battled her songs. They were dressed in long tunics and loose pants—just like Mistin’s. Around their waists were seed belts.
Witches. Witches not of Haven. These were the women Senna had felt before, the women who represented a threat to Haven. Calden’s missing Witches. Senna had sought them out, but instead they’d found her.
She spun the wind around her, battering the other Witches further away and stealing their songs from their lips before they were strong enough to do any good. Using earth song, she directed pressure to build under them, until the ground trembled beneath their feet. The women collapsed, their faces terrified.