Chapter 42 Kerym
Kerym
The ship lurched before it broke apart, and it was so fucking lucky he’d been teasing Pellie, standing far too close, for his hammering heart, to her soft body and wide eyes as he crowded her against the railing.
As they fell into the water, he wrapped around her, and somehow—out of sheer damned luck or perhaps just the elements saving their guardians—she got ahold of Soria’s hand.
Kerym dragged the two sisters with him as more ships broke around them. Screaming and metal clangs and roars already filling the iron-tinged air, death folding around them like a blanket choking a flame and coloring the sea a deep red.
“Where the fuck did they come from?” Kerym hissed as he reached one of their friendly ships. He shoved Pellie first and Soria second up the ladder that two of Loche’s soldiers threw their way, before scurrying up as quickly as he could with his hands slipping over the wet rope.
“We don’t know. Out of fucking nowhere!” Loche’s masked man didn’t stay after shooting back the answer, instead sprinting to the stern, where another ship was mooring alongside their vessel.
Tanned Fae with glittering dark eyes and hair in shades of light brown, golden, and raven—like his own—spilled onto the brow they’d just connected to.
“Weapons?” Kerym demanded when another group of soldiers sprinted past them, and as a man pointed to the middle of the ship, where they’d thankfully secured the weapons under a black tarp, he didn’t hesitate, sprinting up there.
“Pellie!” Kerym’s pulse thundered in his ears as an arrow flew by, whistling far too close to his head for his liking, and he nearly fumbled as he filled his arms with daggers and took a long curved sword for himself.
The beautiful but infuriating witch was right behind him, and Kerym pressed a few daggers into her hands, then ran up and pulled Soria to Pellie’s side, forcing blades into her palms also.
“Stay here,” Kerym snarled as he allowed himself a few precious seconds to look around.
It was chaos. Loche’s soldiers in the stern were going to be overwhelmed soon, facing hundreds of men and women to their dozen. The same scene was unfolding all around them—every vessel scrambling as people tried to keep the Oakgards’ Fae off.
Fuck…
There were so many ships, those dark green sails haunting the sea everywhere Kerym looked.
Havlands’ burning vessels floated or sank all around, and somehow the ships with the dark sails—with crests of gilded trees and bushes and flowers decorating their green flags mocking the wind—came from every fucking direction, surrounding their fleet in what seemed like moments.
Almost as if…
“Someone on the inside must have helped them,” Kerym mumbled to himself, but he saw the same realization dawn in Pellie’s and Soria’s light eyes as the women dipped their chins.
He felt like screaming.
Kerym didn’t see any of their friends anywhere. He spun around one more time, the heat of the fire zinging across his skin as he blinked against the smoke traveling on the wind, watching Fae, humans, and shifters alike fall into the depths of the Eiatis Sea—their screams cut off as…
Fuck, the Oakgards’ were somehow breaking the ships with their bare hands, seemingly not caring that their own people tumbled into the dark water with those of Havlands.
Kerym just stared as yet another brow connected with a ship, and as soon as those Oakgards’ got their hands on the wood…
the air was pierced with the sharp snapping of planks, and yet another warship, one of those Rioner had taken great care in creating, shattered, sending every person aboard into the sea.
“We need to get them off the ship!” Kerym turned his head over his shoulder toward Pellie as he started sprinting to the soldiers bravely fighting a losing battle ahead. “Stay the fuck alive! I’ll keep them away, but you don’t hesitate if someone slips through.”
The sisters’ faces were solemn when they nodded, but it wasn’t just the fires burning around them that made their eyes flame as they listened to the death and destruction.
They were angry. Furious. Their rage brimmed to the surface every time they watched an Oakgards’ Fae set their hand on a railing or a mast and bring it down.
Kerym knew his brothers would have scolded him for the grin that pulled at his lips. But he couldn’t fucking help it. He could almost see it. See how these witches—if they had their magic—would take down every last fucking Fae for abusing their powers to kill and maim and ruin.
Damn, Pellie needed to come to her senses soon, because her eyes drove Kerym wild as she let a dagger fly across the sea, driving into the chest of an Oakgards’ Fae who had jumped onto the ship, preparing to take it down.
He had almost reached the stern when a roar of wrath reached his ears. His stomach flipped when their ship heeled for a second, but he didn’t waste any time as it slammed into the sea again—he joined Loche’s soldiers as they cut down Fae after Fae, growling at them not to allow them aboard.
It was impossible to miss Lessia atop Ydren, her silver dress ripped to pieces, a few of the flowers from the crown Merrick had made her still holding on to her golden strands as she directed the wyverns.
She screamed out her anger and pain as the wyverns ripped through enemy ships, and the fucking serpents followed her—slithering through the water, closing their maws around any survivors.
As he blocked a Fae trying to get under his arm, Kerym had time to think that they were damned lucky the terrifying creatures had decided to trust her.
Taking hold of the Fae’s hair, Kerym ignored his widening eyes as he snapped the male’s neck, sending him down to the waters now filled with hissing snakes, causing bubbles to rage all over the surface.
The Oakgards’ Fae had noticed the dangers in the waters by now, and Kerym could tell they had been warned about the wyverns—about Lessia—but those snakes?
It wasn’t only one Oakgards’ Fae that backed away from the creaking brow, or from the railing they seemed to have been so attached to before, but nearly everyone who’d set out to pass over onto their vessel.
This was the best moment they’d get.
“Push them back,” Kerym screamed at Loche’s soldiers.
He was impressed with how quickly the humans reacted, roaring as they formed a wall of people, as Kerym had intended, and started driving the Oakgards’ Fae toward their own ship. Kerym didn’t look as a few of their own and the Oakgards’ Fae fell into the water as they reached the brow.
The sounds of bones crushing and spine-rattling screams mingling with sharp hisses were enough to understand why the water around them boiled with red.
The smell of death filling his nostrils was so familiar he almost turned to check on Thissian.
Kerym screamed as he shoved a Fae trying to stick his jagged blade into his gut over the wooden ledge—but it wasn’t scream of fear or even exhaustion, which he did feel right now, as he couldn’t pull from any of the panicked energy around them.
His cry was filled with the uselessness of this war.
The worry for his friends. The fear that none of them would get out of this alive.
Even when he dared a glance at Lessia again—watching as the wyverns circled her and Ydren, protecting the two of them as they fought for their lives—he realized they were severely outnumbered.
More ships kept sailing in, and he didn’t doubt the vessels carried nearly the entire Oakgards’ population, because the men and women he fought right now… they weren’t young male or female soldiers.
No, the woman with fear rounding her green eyes as one of Loche’s soldiers buried a sword in her throat was no fighter.
Her eyes darted around as she grasped at her broken skin, trying to stop the blood that would drain the life out of her any moment now, and Kerym didn’t know how, but he could tell she was searching for a child, probably one of her own.
Still, they were desperate. And desperation? It would take these Fae a long way.
Kerym was about to take another step onto the brow when something hard slammed into his chest, driving his breath from him. He realized it was part of a mast as it took several humans with it, sending them into the sea, as it shoved Kerym backward until it pinned him against the quarterdeck wall.
As the remaining humans kept fighting, Kerym caught the glittering brown eyes of a tall Fae with long black hair tumbling down his back and his hand on what must be the other part of the mast that now threatened to crush Kerym’s chest.
Kerym couldn’t help it. He grinned at the Oakgards’ Fae, who seemed too fucking pleased with himself, eliciting a snarl in response.
The wood pressed harder against his body, making his bones creak, but as Kerym placed his hands on it…
he could feel it. Somehow, he could sense the essence of this wood.
Taste the magic that the Fae was pulling from it.
Almost see the flickers, the life that this wood, this tree, had once carried.
How it had sacrificed itself for the Fae to travel, to explore—to find new worlds and new magic.
But right now?
The wood was angry.
Kerym choked down a shocked laugh as he felt the primal ripples move from the wood up through his arm. It didn’t want to be used in this way. This… the pain and the fear that the Fae had warped from what had once been a proud tree?
It wasn’t what the magic—the life within the wood—wanted.
“Kerym! No!” Pellie’s scream sliced through the air a second before her dagger flew toward the Fae standing on the ship opposite them, controlling the wood he planned to break Kerym with.
The male’s lips curled up as he ducked under the silver blade.
“Kerym!” There was panic in her tone as she started sprinting his way, and he quickly snapped, “Stop! You do not take another step, beautiful.”
“No,” she sobbed as her sister thankfully had the mind to stop her getting in between Kerym and whoever the fucking Oakgards’ Fae was who seemed almost entertained by Pellie’s terror. “Please! Please! Don’t do this.”
“Bet…” Kerym sucked in whatever air he could as the wood grated against his ribs. “Bet you wished you’d told me you loved me right about now.”
“Kerym,” Pellie screamed, fighting her sister’s arms around her chest. “Please! I do! I do love you! I love you! Do you hear that?”
If this Fae didn’t kill him, Pellie would definitely do it after this, but Kerym couldn’t stop himself from rasping, “I would have come with you, you know. I… I would have followed you anywhere.”
“Come, then!” she cried. “Please! I’m sorry… Please… just come with me.”
“Well…” Kerym threw a quick glance at the Fae, watching his fingers fold around the mast, probably preparing to crack through his rib cage, judging from the increasing pressure. “Can’t deny you now, can I?”
He winked at Pellie, watching the lips he planned to never leave alone part as his own fingers wrapped around the wood.
It was surprisingly easy to shove the large piece off him—sending it flying toward the Oakgards’ male. With a sharp crack, it drove right through the dark-haired Fae’s chest, making him tumble down into the waters as blood spurted around him.
Kerym sprinted forward and placed his hand on the wooden brow.
With another snap that echoed over the sea, the magic in it had it break apart, the cracks weaving back toward the Oakgards’ ship until the Fae there started running, noticing before the humans surrounding Kerym that their ship would soon be no longer.
He didn’t stop to watch. Instead, Kerym spun and with long leaps reached the redheaded witch, pulling her into his arms as he crashed his mouth against hers, savoring the soft sigh escaping into his mouth.
He thought his heart probably had never beat so wildly as when he pulled back and smiled at her. “I love you, too, you know.”
Pellie shared a look with her sister, who rolled her eyes. But as more tears leaked down the former’s cheeks, she threw her arms around Kerym’s neck and kissed him again, her lips hot and needy before they moved to his ear. “I am going to have to punish you for that when I get my magic back.”
Kerym grinned at her. “I think I like the sound of that.”
Then he kissed her once more before declaring, “We need to find the others. I have a feeling I will be quite useful in this war after all.”