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sun glancing off metal. A flash of red.
    Make that many flashes of red.
    My heart pounds, and my fingers dig into the bark as a massive flock of crows explodes out of the trees twenty yards east of us and spirals into the sky, screaming their distress.
    “Logan?”
    A large group is traveling through the Wasteland, heading straight for Baalboden. I stare at the eastern trees for a moment, trying to count. Are we dealing with highwaymen? A battalion? Something worse?
    The flashes of sun-kissed metal and red uniforms stretch as far east as I can see.
    We aren’t dealing with highwaymen or a battalion.
    We’re facing an entire army.

Chapter Five
     
    RACHEL
     
    W e run hard, weapons slapping our thighs, underbrush clawing at us, while more birds spill out of the trees to the northeast. Whoever is moving toward the city is traveling fast.
    A thorny bush catches my cloak, and I rip the leather free without pausing. Our people are as good as dead if we can’t reach them first.
    Unless Logan already has a plan in place for something like this.
    I leap a fallen branch and skid around a bend in the trail I’m hoping will get us to Baalboden’s gate before we get cut off. “If we don’t make it in time—”
    “Drake knows what to do.” Logan grabs my hand when I slip on a moss-covered rock. “If anyone attacks, he’ll blow the gate.”
    When we were trapped inside Baalboden’s Wall, surrounded on three sides by fire, we blew up the gate to escape death. How ironic to think we might have to blow it up again and seal ourselves back inside the Wall for the very same reason. Logan, Drake, and Thom spent days lacing explosives taken from the Commander’s personal supply and threading fuses into the gate’s rubble. Some are buried in the slabs of steel and stone that are piled across the opening. Some line the jagged walls on either side.
    If Drake lights the fuse, no one will be able to get inside Baalboden.
    No one will be able to get out, either.
    “They’ll be trapped,” I say as we near the rough seam of land that joins the overgrown Wasteland with the flat stretch of ground between the forest and Baalboden’s western Wall.
    “They’ll leave through the tunnel.”
    “But if you aren’t there to protect them from the Cursed One—”
    “You and I will go to the northern Wasteland, just beyond the city’s perimeter. The tech’s signal is strong enough to protect them even if I’m not underground.” Logan’s voice is breathless. Mine is too. And we still have fifty yards between us and the gate.
    I fall silent as we reach the edge of the Wasteland, directly opposite the western corner of the Wall. I strain to hear something. Birds. Footsteps. The metallic kiss of a sword leaving its sheath.
    Nothing.
    It’s as if the army traveling through the Wasteland has disappeared.
    Or as if they’re lying in wait. Assessing their target. Watching for the perfect moment to attack.
    I figure that perfect moment is going to be the instant Logan and I step out of the tree line.
    A twig snaps somewhere behind us, a loud crack that has Logan reaching for his sword even as I spin around, searching for movement.
    Everything is still.
    “They must be getting into position,” Logan breathes against my ear. “We have to go.”
    I turn back around and stare at the heap of ruined stone that marks the entrance to the city. Gulping in deep breaths of air, I wipe the sweat from my face and nod.
    The gate is fifty yards ahead of us, facing west into the Wasteland. We can move out of the trees, race across the flat land separating us from the corner of the Wall, and then run along it until we reach the entrance. A movement catches my eye, and I see Thom’s wide shoulders beside Drake’s smaller frame as they pace along the top of the Wall beside the opening, guarding the entrance from predators they didn’t really think would come.
    “Let’s go,” I say, and run out of the trees, Logan on my heels.
    We’ve covered half the