A Torch Against the Night Read Online Free Page A

this—just before we kissed. From the taut breath that escapes him, I think he remembers too.
    “There’s hope in life,” he says. “A brave girl once told me that. If something happens to me, don’t fear. You’ll find a way.”
    Before my doubts creep up again, he drops his hand and flits across the depot as lightly as the dust clouds rising from the brick kiln.
    I follow his movements, painfully aware of the flimsiness of this plan. Everything that has happened so far is the result of willpower or sheer, dumb luck. I have no idea how to get safely north, beyond trusting Elias to guide me. I have no sense of what it will take to break into Kauf, beyond hoping that Elias will know what to do. All I have is a voice inside telling me I must save my brother, and Elias’s promise that he will help me do so. The rest is just wishes and hope, the most fragile of things.
    Not enough. It’s not enough.
The wind whips my hair about, colder than it should be this late in the summer. Elias disappears into the courtyard of the storage building. My nerves crackle, and though I inhale deeply, I feel as if I cannot get enough air.
Come on. Come on.
The wait for his signal is excruciating.
    Then I hear it. So quick that I think for a second that I’m mistaken. I
hope
that I am. But the sound comes again.
    Three quick notes. Sharp, sudden, and filled with warning.
    The Commandant has found us.

CHAPTER FOUR
Elias
    M y mother hides her anger with practiced cunning. She wraps it in calm and buries it deep. She tramples the soil on top, puts a gravestone on it, and pretends it’s dead.
    But I see it in her eyes. Smoldering at the fringes, like the corners of paper blackening just before they burst into flame.
    I hate that I share her blood. Would that I could scrub it from my body.
    She stands against the dark, high wall of the city, another shadow in the night but for the silver glint of her mask. Beside her is our escape route, a wooden door so covered in dried vines that it’s impossible to see. Though she holds no weapons in her hands, her message is clear.
If you wish to leave, you go through me.
    Ten hells.
I hope Laia heard my warning whistle. I hope she stays away.
    “You took long enough,” the Commandant says. “I’ve waited hours.”
    She launches herself at me, a long knife appearing so swiftly in her palm that it’s as if it popped out of her skin. I dodge her—barely—before lashing out at her with my scims. She dances away from my attack without bothering to cross blades, then flings a throwing star. It misses me by a hair. Before she reaches for another, I rush her, landing a kick to her chest that sends her sprawling.
    As she scrambles up, I scan the area for soldiers. The city walls are empty, the rooftops around us bare. Not a sound comes from Grandfather’s storage building. Yet I cannot believe that she doesn’t have assassins lurking close by.
    I hear shuffling to my right, and I lift my scims, expecting an arrow or spear. But it’s the Commandant’s horse, tethered to a tree. I recognize the Gens Veturia saddle—one of Grandfather’s stallions.
    “Jumpy.” The Commandant raises a silver eyebrow as she scrambles back to her feet. “Don’t be. I came alone.”
    “And why would you do that?”
    The Commandant flings more throwing stars at me. As I duck, she darts around a tree and out of range of the knives I send hurtling back at her.
    “If you think I need an army to destroy you, boy,” she says, “you are mis
taken
.”
    She flicks opens the neck of her uniform, and I grimace at the sight of the living metal shirt beneath, impenetrable to edged weapons.
    Hel’s shirt.
    “I took it from Helene Aquilla.” The Commandant draws scims and engages my assault with graceful ease. “Before I gave her to a Black Guard for interrogation.”
    “She doesn’t know anything.” I dodge my mother’s blows while she dances around me.
Get her on the defensive. Then a quick blow to her head to knock her