Forged in Frost

Escape

Evelyn turns. The sight of that metal dragon head plunging through the gate is near enough to break her, at this point. She backs toward the castle again, not knowing what else to do or where to turn. Away from the cracking, splintering wood. Back to the only allies that could be alive.

Evelyn bursts back into the main hall, in the middle of an argument, it seems. Leo is in the middle of saying, "I'm telling you, I was here to make sure they were all right, same as you."

"They've breached the gate," Evelyn tells them. "And they've taken the count and countess. They're gone."

Asher, Caius, Leo and Alec turn to look at her. She only looks at Asher.

"What do we do?" she asks him.

He frowns, brow sweating, a cut on his cheek crusted with blood.

"We can try to fight them off," he finally suggests, "but there's only five of us." He shuts his eyes. "We'll all die."

"We can escape through the secret passage and hope they don't see us," Alec suggests.

"We can't just leave the citizens to die alone," Caius says.

"They won't kill all of them," Asher tells him.

Caius faces him, grave. "There are bandits among them. They'll kill everyone. They'll destroy everything."

"Well, we can't exactly kill them all, can we?" Asher snaps. "And they can't kill everyone. There would be no Lockmire to rule with everyone dead. It would be ridiculous."

As they debate this, Evelyn finds herself staring at Leo, seeming too calm, too quiet. He can't be reeling from shock, or eaten up by guilt from earlier. There's a hint of a smirk on the corner of his lip, an expression she caught many times as he played jokes on his friends.

This is a joke to him. Something about this situation is contrived, almost humorous. Their earlier argument, the suspicious looks from Caius, it all comes together now.

"You arranged the capture, didn't you?" Evelyn's soft voice cuts through the men arguing. She never wanted to address Leo again, but in the wake of Ilvara's capture, with the threat of her life in the balance, she summons the courage.

Heads turn to her once more, including Leo's.

"What?" he scoffs. "Gods, you're all so paranoid. I went in trying to help. They had just crashed through the window, and one of them set the fire—"

"How?" Evelyn asks.

"What?"

"How did they set the fire?"

"I don't know. The fireplace—"

"Ilvara doesn't light her fireplace in the summer," Evelyn says.

Leo levels her gaze as if in challenge. "Perhaps a torch—"

"She doesn't keep lit torches in her room. Doesn't like the smoke. She only ever uses candles in there, and only at night. Who needs a candle in the middle of the day?"

"You think I lit the fire," he concludes, as if it's too ridiculous to be plausible.

"That's the only solution," Evelyn says. "You lit the fire, then you locked the door. Both to give them time to escape. And you took your sweet time unlocking the door again, too."

Silence. Sweet, satisfying silence. Leo's long, challenging gaze at Evelyn breaks only when it seems he feels Asher and Caius glaring at him.

"Lockmire was going to lose," Leo says quietly, tilting his body away from them. "They were outnumbered, outmaneuvered."