His smile makes me feel sick inside. “Women have always been your weakness. First your mother, now Jared’s daughter. You even defend the Tree Girl.” He eases back a fraction, and I take a careful breath, trying hard not to let more skin catch against his blade. “A word of advice: Showing your weaknesses makes you easy prey. We do this my way, on my terms.” He spits the words in my face. “I’m in charge. The very second you do something I don’t like, I will torture the Tree Girl. You know I have ways of breaking a woman and making her beg.”

“How about if you beg first?” Smithson’s voice fills the air a millisecond before he bursts from the trees and slams into the Commander.

CHAPTER TWELVE

LOGAN

The Commander’s sword nicks my throat as he stumbles to the ground beneath Smithson’s weight. I raise my hands and press them against the wound. The rest of my closest friends rush out of the trees. Blood flows over my fingers as Jodi runs toward Smithson while Frankie, Drake, Adam, and Nola charge the guards who surround Willow, their swords raised.

One of the guards with a bow spins and lets an arrow loose. His arrow flies past Nola and buries itself in Drake’s leg. He falls to the ground.

“No!” I yell.

The other guard shoots his arrow at Willow, but he’s too late. She’s already skimming the branches, nothing but a blur in the trees as she moves. Frankie and Adam collide with soldiers. I bend down, yank Smithson and Jodi off the Commander, and yell, “Help me before anyone dies!”

Smithson glares at me while the Commander snarls and struggles to his feet.

“Logan—” Smithson says.

“They aren’t our enemies right now, Smithson. I just made a deal with the Commander.”

Smithson stares at me as if nothing I’m saying is making sense. The clang of swords meeting fills the air behind us while I pull on his arm. “No one needs to die. Help me.”

My words finally seem to reach him, and he lunges toward the melee where Nola, her back to a tree, is dueling with a guard whose movements are slower than hers, but whose brute strength is starting to wear her down, and where Adam and Frankie are fighting for their lives while four guards circle them. A fifth guard is still wasting his time trying to shoot Willow, though she never stays on one branch long enough for his aim to be worth anything.

“Subdue, but don’t kill,” I say as Smithson and I race into the fray, leaving Jodi to catch up to us. He raises the hilt of his sword and slams it into the head of the closest guard, and then kicks the guard’s sword clear as the man falls to the ground in a daze.

I brace my legs as I swing the chain into the nearest guard. He jerks away from the metal lash, but doesn’t fall. Panic is clawing at me. I have to get closer. Hit harder. Stop him. Stop all of them before anyone else gets seriously hurt.

“Stop!” I’m yelling, but no one is listening.

Lowering my shoulder, I duck beneath the guard’s sword arm and crash into him, my shackled fists in front of me like a club. He coughs, gags, and slowly slides to the ground, the life leaving his eyes as he falls. I stare at him in shock. I didn’t hit him hard enough to kill him. I was just trying to get everyone to stop long enough to realize that we’re on the same side.

Long enough to go help Nola before it’s too late.

The guard lands on his stomach, and I see Willow’s arrow protruding from his back. Another arrow streaks through the forest and buries its tip in the back of the guard who shot Drake, and then a third arrow takes out the guard Smithson fought on his way to Nola.

Frankie and Adam are trading blows with two of the remaining guards, their swords moving with the deft grace earned from hours of practice as we traveled across the Wasteland, while Smithson is doing his best to subdue Peter, the blond guard busy fighting Nola.

Blood runs down Smithson’s face, and I stumble over the fallen guard in front of me as Orion and Frankie crash into me.

“Stop!” I yell, shoving Orion away from Frankie. Orion turns on me, and it’s all I can do to dodge his weapon. The chain dangling from my wrists isn’t any help when I can’t move my hands along the length of it to gain any leverage. He raises his sword, and Adam lunges for him.

They go down hard in a tangle of limbs and metal. I kick Orion’s weapon away, but Gregory, the thin guard who walked the tunnels with the Commander, leaps for Adam while he’s down. I lower my shoulder and drive it into him, knocking him off course before he can impale Adam on his sword.

“Don’t kill them!” I say, but still no one listens to me. Adam is parrying Gregory’s sword, blow for blow; Frankie is shoving Orion against the nearest tree, his sword to the guard’s throat; Nola and Smithson have their hands full fighting Peter; and Willow is somewhere up in the trees, waiting for her chance to drop the next guard who steps away from us. “We’re on the same side.”

The Commander’s voice punctures the air. “Stop fighting or she dies!”

The guards stop fighting, but keep their weapons up. My people and I spin around to see the Commander standing near the tree where just moments ago he’d come to a grudging agreement to work with me to bring down James Rowan. In one hand he holds Jodi, anchoring her by his side with a fist in her hair. In the other, he holds his sword to her heart. Blood gleams against his silver blade, and I quickly examine Jodi for injuries, but she isn’t bleeding. Instead, I see Connor leaning against the tree behind the Commander, his hand pressed to a wound in his shoulder.