He turned his horse back.

And if he couldn’t find her?

Farther back. Still farther.

The Valorians had already eaten their way into the rank where she and Javelin had been.

His lungs squeezed shut. Where? he demanded.

The general? his god coyly answered. Allow me to point you the way . . .

Arin’s nerves screamed.

Open your eyes, death said.

Look, my love, and see.

Arin did. He saw, not far away, Javelin standing amid the boil of war. His rider was gone.

Kestrel’s cheek was in the sand. Her mouth was full of it. She coughed and spat, her back and shoulders sinking into the beach, and pushed at the dead body heaped onto her. She tried to lever it off. Her arms gave out. She saw the misting sky. Her horse, close. She pushed again at the officer. His armor made him heavier. She was soaked with his blood. She felt it still pumping, heard the chaos around her. Panic stitched down her spine.

She shoved. The body didn’t budge. She tried harder, felt the weight press her chest. Finally, she screamed.

Something slammed into Arin. He kept his seat, wheeled to see his attacker, saw the Valorian’s grin—and then, too late, the serrated steel along the length of the man’s boot. Arin noticed it right before the Valorian used his foot like a knife and slashed the exposed ribs of Arin’s horse.

The animal’s cry pierced Arin’s ears. He was pitched to the ground.

In war, her father sometimes said, you might live, you might die. But if you panic, death is the only outcome.

She hated him for his coolness. His rules.

But.

The body crushed her.

But . . . the sand.

She tried to see if she could turn onto her belly. Wriggling, she shifted beneath the body. As she strained to turn, she waited for someone to notice her, and attack. She waited for hooves to crush her skull. But Javelin stood solidly, right where he’d been the moment she’d fallen. Cavalry maneuvered around the harmless horse. No one was looking at the ground.

Worming into the sand, she flipped onto her front and began to dig, sweeping the sand away from her as if swimming. She dug her elbows into the trough she’d made and pulled.

She slipped free.

Arin scrambled to his feet. Dodged—just in time—the kick of the serrated boot to his head. With both hands (where was his sword?), he seized the Valorian’s ankle and hauled the man off his horse.

Kestrel’s shaking hands sifted through the sand for her dagger. Her dagger. She must find it. She could not lose it.

When she found the ridge of it beneath a veil of red sand, tears pricked her eyes. She seized its hilt.

Javelin was steady, waiting for her. She wanted to lean against him and press her face into his hide. She wanted to become a horse so that she could thank him in a way he would understand.

She went to mount him—then saw, over the rise of her saddle, Arin.

From the beach, Arin snatched a sword—his? didn’t matter—and was already swiping it down through the air toward the fallen Valorian’s neck when the man surged to his feet, struck Arin’s blade aside with his own, and drove its point toward Arin.

Arin countered, heard the skittering of steel against steel, and felt the vibration, the pressure. He felt the pressure give. The man’s blade sank for an instant.

But it was a trick. In that moment of seeming weakness, the Valorian’s other hand went for his dagger, which he stabbed into a gap where Arin’s armor joined.

Kestrel was stumbling forward on the sand, her legs too sluggish; she couldn’t move fast enough. The Valorian’s back was to her. She could see Arin’s face, the crease between his brows, the inward quality of his expression. And then something shifting: a flare, a recognition.

The Valorian stabbed. Arin cried out.

The dagger bit into his ribs. Pain laced up his side. He struck back, sword dancing harmlessly down the Valorian’s armor, doing no more damage than to cut the laces of the man’s right boot.

“You’re mine,” said the Valorian.

Which was what death always said. Arin, surprised to hear the god’s words come from a human mouth, faltered. He felt strange. He thought, Ah. He thought, Grateful. He welcomed the god’s warning, realized that he’d always wanted to know before it happened. He wouldn’t want to blink too suddenly out of this life.

But he loved this life. He loved the girl in it.

His heart punched hard, rebelled.

Too late. The base of the Valorian’s blade was coming at his head, angled for his neck.

Arin tried to duck. The hilt slammed into his temple.

Darkness bled across his vision. He couldn’t feel his legs. He tried to hear his god, but he heard only silence, and then he heard nothing at all.