Chapter Thirty-Eight #2
“The absence of a sighting doesn’t mean the vassal kings are not present,” Dedrick spat.
“They have not sworn vows yet and this isn’t how we planned for events to go.
I don’t trust them to not go back on their word, which was never good for shit from the start without a binding oath in place, in my opinion. ”
“Are your shadows still not telling you anything on that front?” Malachi asked Jakobi.
The male closed his eyes for a moment and then uttered a vicious string of curses. “Still nothing. When I try to home in on any of the other monarchs, it’s like looking into the Void.”
Kiyun scrubbed a hand along his clean-shaven jawline. “They could be using masking runes. Perhaps they’re attempting to straddle both sides and bow to whichever is victorious to save their own necks in the end.”
“I’d say I’m confident about that,” said Malachi. “It reeks of guilt that they were just at the wedding last night and uttered no warnings of what was to come at dawn. Rishaud would’ve needed a handful of days, at the very least, to pull six separate armies together.”
Kadeesha inhaled a slow breath while cursing the monarchs because she’d handed them such a better alternative. She then mustered the stomach to ask, “What portion of Aether soldiers are among the advancing force?”
Jakobi held her stare. “As infantry? A shit ton.”
Kadeesha didn’t look away. “That’s not usually the numbering convention we use in the Six Kingdoms, but I think I can do the math. What about kongamatos? Have war serpents been spotted in the skies?”
“There’s a squadron of twelve,” Jakobi gritted out.
Dread became a sentient thing breathing cold on her neck at the news that a full thunder was headed toward the palace.
It wasn’t about the kongamatos. Her squadron was well-prepared to meet them in battle since it’d come to that.
But the sheer amount of power it took to actually cloak even a few of the giant beasts who were saturated in staggering magic of their own …
it showed just how strong Rishaud was and how difficult the Ancient king would be to kill.
Malachi held his own against Rishaud once, even wounded him, she reminded herself in order to break free of the dread that wouldn’t serve her well in any way. Fear was a weakness, especially in warfare.
However, she had no hope of quashing the grief that gnawed away at her too.
The low number of kongamato fliers they’d face off against should’ve washed her in relief.
But the fact that there’d be any at all was the very thing that made her stomach lurch.
She was bound to the vow she’d given Malachi regardless, and by extension so were her Nkita, but to pit war serpent against war serpent, flyer against flyer, Aether fae against Aether fae …
those deaths would haunt her every time she closed her eyes.
Just placing her Nkita and their own kongamatos in this position would eternally haunt her.
It was a risk she thought she’d mitigated by turning the vassal kings to their side.
Her stomach churned more violently at her failure and the additional Aether blood that was about to be spilled.
Malachi’s hand brushed against her arm. It was a comforting, intimate gesture that she leaned into and drew strength from, all while marveling at the fact that the many revelations and confessions they’d shared in his bed meant they were really committed to doing this.
Moving forward like a wedded pair of high monarchs in earnest. Despite the dire situation, a sense of solace enveloped her, and this time she didn’t ignore the sense of rightness that stole over her.
She seized it and clung tight, letting it and Malachi’s touch bolster her further.
Whatever devastation the battle brought, she wasn’t facing it alone.
“This is a war I stoked, not you; let me bear the sole blame of whatever Aether lives are lost,” Malachi said quietly against her ear as if he knew what she’d been thinking.
“Your thoughts are clear in the wrinkle of your brow,” Malachi said in answer to the inquisitive look she gave him.
His large hands cupped her cheeks, his thumbs met in the center of her brow and smoothed away those wrinkles.
Then, he dipped his head and kissed her.
It wasn’t the voracious, demanding, hungry kiss that usually set her aflame.
It was thorough and slow and—in typical Malachi fashion—it underscored a point.
“I release you from your oath to fight this coming battle. And in case you need any additional proof of my intentions toward you and our future child, let this be it,” he said against her lips.
“If you desire it, I’ll give you the location where Trystin will be headed.
Take your Nkita, and your war serpents, and our babe, and go be—” His hands still cupping her cheeks flexed.
His jaw ticked as if he was going to say more and forcibly severed whatever it was.
Go be safe with our babe!
The plea that sounded in her mind was more of a tortured, ragged growl that knocked into her with the force of a battering ram.
She sucked in a breath. Looked at Malachi with wide eyes as her Marking burned.
She touched two fingers to it, her head spinning.
Those words hadn’t been some inner voice of her own guessing at what Malachi might be thinking.
She knew they’d been his actual thoughts from the way he gazed back at her with eyes just as wide and startled as hers.
“Is that something else the Markings are known to do?” she whispered.
“It is as tethers between two individuals grow stronger,” Malachi confirmed.
Her head continued to swim from the revelation, but that sense of rightness stayed with her over them becoming more closely, more inextricably, linked.
However, she didn’t have time to wonder at where she and Malachi had started out and where they’d ended up.
She’d allow herself to get all sentimental after the battle.
For now, she looked to Leisha, who stood across the table and held her sister’s gaze, making sure they were still on the same page about the decision Kadeesha had already made and discussed beforehand with her squadron when she’d alerted them to the likelihood that came along with the impending attack.
When Leisha nodded in the affirmative, Kadeesha told Malachi, “I’m not going anywhere, and I do not accept being released from my vow. You held up your end, now I will hold up mine. Me and my Nkita will stay and we will fight.”
“You don’t have to offer that for—”
“It isn’t for you or out of a sense of an owed debt,” she told him.
Okay, maybe it was partly for him because when she thought about him possibly perishing, her heart stopped dead in her chest. But it was also about something far greater.
“Rishaud has formally laid claim to Aether lands and its faefolk. By every recorded law that would be recognized by the folk of the Six Kingdoms, in order to reverse Rishaud’s claim and truly become the Aether queen, I must be on that battlefield.
I must fight and take back the Aether throne, even if I am fighting against the folk of my own court. ”
Malachi nodded in understanding. “Then that’s all there is to say, and I am glad to have our own war serpents on our side.”
The enormous oak doors to the war room groaned open.
Everybody standing around the table pivoted toward them.
Shadows raced to meet whoever was intruding since guards had been positioned outside with strict orders not to let anyone inside.
Alongside Malachi’s assault, his Cadre formed void blades in their hands.
Kadeesha manifested a ball of aether fire and Leisha held a pair of newly acquired battle axes—ones made of the precious onyx and steel alloy that made Apollyon blades so infallible and lethal—that she’d gotten from the palace’s armory.
It was only when they saw who walked in that the warriors in the room stood down: Zayvier, wearing black battle leathers, and Samira, clothed in purple flying leathers, marched inside.
Neither looked happy. Zayvier held his own void blade in his right hand.
It was a gleaming black claymore. He shot seething glares at Malachi, Dedrick, Shionne, Jakobi, and Kiyun.
“You are all out of your minds if you think I’m not fighting this battle and that you’re shuffling me off with Trystin instead.
” The Apollyon male spoke with a reserved tone that was in stark contrast to the death glares he gave Malachi and the others.
And that glare was nearly identical to the one Samira leveled on Kadeesha and Leisha.
Samira held a glittering black shortsword in her hands.
“I am not running off to wherever the Apollyon civilians are headed,” she told Kadeesha.
“I am your third and whenever you go to battle, my sole place is at your side.”
Kadeesha looked her sister over before speaking.
Although any words she might’ve sputtered would’ve immediately gotten clogged in her throat.
Tears pricked her eyes. She’d let them fall later after the battle.
She hadn’t been able to justify carving out the time to make it to the infirmary, but Samira was standing in the war room awake and whole and healed and strong enough to be furiously staring her down and holding weapons.
“Hell yes, your place is beside your sisters,” Leisha grunted.
She didn’t rush toward Samira either and lose it over seeing their sister standing upright.
But the rigid set of Leisha’s shoulders told Kadeesha that the need churned inside her to break down in relief the same as with Kadeesha.
Later. We will survive this battle, she silently promised them all, and reunite properly later.
Just one more vow she meant to uphold.