75. Kye
75
Kye
T hese women gave me the fucking chills.
They didn’t like me. Of that, I was certain.
They gazed at Maren with adoration, which I could only be grateful for. But when I crossed eyes with any of them, that adoration dropped, and they simply watched me with guarded, predatory stares that raised the hair at the back of my neck.
I’d been raised among enough vultures to know when someone lies in wait for your death, if only to pick your bones for themselves.
It didn’t help that Leal was beside himself with their introduction to our group. I’d placed strict orders upon the members of my entourage. Stay away from the women who looked like they just stepped from a fucking art gallery, don’t ask questions, and don’t talk to them unless you want to wake up with lost memories and a raging headache.
The headache, of course, would come from me.
But that didn’t prevent Leal from drooling in their direction. Which he did.
For their part, the sirens acted as though we didn’t exist, which was fine with me. Infuriating at times, but fine.
We pushed through the snow-laden path, angling ourselves up the frozen incline. The Naiads claimed the helm of our pack, rotating the lead like shining black wolves, and I wondered if they were taking turns melting the snow ahead. They marched on foot, dressed head to toe in that slippery silk, swaths of it wrapped around their arms and necks and up their legs, their skirts cut up the center to make their dresses flare like floor-length coattails behind them. If they were cold, they didn’t complain.
The world was quiet. The sirens were quiet. Maren was quiet.
But the fear that drifted through the air, clinging to my clammy skin and cutting me to the bone, wrenching all color from view and leaving us surrounded by haze and blinding, withering white—that was loud. Loud and white and fucking dark.
Snow began to fall as we reached the top. The Naiads stopped and angled their eyes up into the trees where Calderian sentries hid in the tall limbs. I suffered through the eeriness of it. The preciseness of it. How their bodies sensed the men that, had I not known where to look, I’d never have seen.
Sun and stars and fucking sky, I was happy they were on our side.
I rode to the front as the sentries dropped down to meet us, pointing us down the slope and back up again to where our army hid in wait. My eyes met Maren’s across the landscape so achingly familiar. We broke through the ash wood, five horses and a hundred women on soundless feet, overtaking trees and boulders that she and I had passed once before. And a certain dread curdled in my stomach.
Maren’s voice quietly entered my mind. What are you afraid of?
I sent her a quick glance. I hadn’t realized my thoughts had been solid enough for her to make out.
They weren’t, she said. I can smell it on you.
Fuck, I couldn’t keep anything from this woman.
They can, too. She motioned with her gaze, sending her eyes over the Naiads and back to me.
That’s helpful.
What are you afraid of?
I blew a short breath. I’m not fond of this set-up for combat. The trees are too dense, and they have the high ground. We’re likely to get ourselves pinned.
She followed the direction of my thoughts, surveying the snow and trees. Could we lead them away?
Horses appeared ahead, men standing at attention in black Calderian leather, fur shoulder pads sewn into their coats. Not tending fires, not mending holes in their uniforms, not cooking or eating or laughing. Not even talking. They watched us pass, their faces unsmiling and cold, and I knew they felt whatever I did in these mountains.
They’d seen the numbers of the enemy.
They knew what we walked ourselves into.
A chestnut gelding met us before we reached the center, the first friendly face we’d seen riding over its back. Dimas snaked through the Naiads with hesitance as he came to the five of us.
“Be back before sunlight, my ass, you big, rugged bastard,” Leal shot at him, though his voice held the same note of relief that settled in my belly.
“I was caught up helping families evacuate.”
“A likely story,” Leal sniffed.
“Where are the commanders?” I asked, sending Leal an intolerant glance.
“Ahead,” Dimas turned his horse, leading us through the flocks of soldiers.
“Ever heard the term wet blanket , Laurier?”
I swear I witnessed Lady Selena’s lips curve. Normally, I’d toss insults back at Leal, but today I frowned at my friend, not in the mood for whatever jokes he planned to send my way. “No.”
“It means you’re a big bucket of laughs.”
Aalto, lend me patience.
The sky couldn’t decide if it were blue or white, cloudy or clear. Thin shadows passed overhead. Snow dropped in piles from the gnarled ash trees, giants shaking themselves free, watching us as we slipped from under one to the next on our way to the front.
A valley lay ahead. It might have been a meadow in the spring. A place to run through tall grass among bees and grasshoppers. In the winter, it was simply a wasted patch of earth between peaks. But it was the only thing that separated us from them .
My breath caught when I saw them. Their scarlet scorpion flags, their rows of horses, the way their size and scale teemed like a swarm of blood-red flies overtaking carrion in a field. On our side. Past the mountain border. In Calder.
Why fight here? Maren asked in my head. Why not go back to the fortress, guard ourselves there? This is as open as it can get.
The fortress at Winterlight was built for the mines, not the army. And there are other ways through these mountains. We’d hole ourselves up there and just let them through to attack towns. I met her midnight eyes, framed by thick waves and the black fur I’d secured over her back. We needed to meet them here and cut them off.
She arched her spine, stretching in her saddle, brows laced tight.
I know, I thought, stifling the groan inside my head. My gaze flitted around for a log to rip in half with my sword. That’s why I wanted you to stay behind.
Well, that was never happening.
If things get messy, the fortress is where I want you to go.
Maren scoffed, eyeing the decorated men as we approached.
General Senan and the other commanders surrounded a crudely cut tree stump, a map spread across its grainy surface. He moved aside enough for Aren and me to join them. Maren stayed behind with her Naiads, but I knew she listened to every word that blared across.
“Fill me in,” I said before I even slid from my saddle. Snow crunched, dry and solid under my boots.
Senan flicked a snowflake from his salt-and-pepper hair. “Reports came two days ago that the Rivean army was amassing little by little across this clearing.”
“Any idea what they have? Other than fucking numbers?”
Senan sucked against a wad of Willowood tobacco in his lip, flecks of it coating his teeth. “At least a third of their men are archers. Bolt throwers there.” He pointed to the high ridge, where I could make out lines of ballistas, shadows stark against the snow. “Trebuchets below them. Catapults above.”
“They’ve wheeled their heavy artillery all the way here. It would take days to move them, we should draw them into another more favorable location.”
Senan nodded, turning his head to spit. “We’re looking into the option now,” he said, aiming a finger through the pass Maren and I had carved through. “Trying to decide if they’re intimidating us into doing just that. Luring us into a trap.”
I trekked mentally over the map, Aren hanging over my shoulder. I’d crossed these mountains just weeks ago. I’d garnered a bit more knowledge of the Calderian side of the border than most of the soldiers here.
Where the ash trees didn’t reach the summit, Maren thought at me.
My glaze flickered to the place on the map, a sharp incline overlooking a wide gulch below. Why there?
They’ll think they have the advantage in elevation. But there’s enough of a canyon underneath to protect our army. And this snow is packed thick on top of a weaker layer. We could cause a slide and devastate their forces.
Fuck. She was right.
My hand found my face, stubble scratching as I scrubbed at my jaw and chin. She was right. She was fucking right. She’d triggered an avalanche without even trying when we last crossed these peaks. I could only imagine what a hundred Naiads could achieve.
But that put her at the front of the line. Beyond the front.
I don’t like that idea, Leihani.
No? Which part of war do you like?
Senan spit again, tongue roaming the corners of his teeth. “Do you see something I don’t, Laurier?”
I glanced over my shoulder at her, ten feet from me. Chin tucked into her chest, deep, dark eyes gazed back, a galaxy of stars. She’d come bathed head to toe in silk and fur and coiling mist, and I swear she’d become something wild and eternal. Something forged in iron and pride, something that whispered with cracks of thunder and the promise of death, and I wondered when the girl from the islands had become a warrior unafraid to stare into the eyes of ten thousand men to cut their lives short with the force of her own mettle.
It would work, Kye , she murmured, her voice smooth and liquid against my thoughts.
My brows furrowed as I scanned the map for a better idea, imagining the layout of her plan. She and the Naiads would station themselves high on the mountaintop. The Calderian units would wait at the side, poised as though they were preparing to attack, luring the enemy like bait on a hook. And the Rivean army would never see their fate, as long as the Naiads remained hidden. They’d send their men across the ravine, and the sirens would make a graveyard out of them.
You know it would work.
Senan watched me. Aren watched me. The soldiers and Naiads and horses all fucking watched me. I grasped the edge of the tree stump hard enough to feel the dead wood between my nails, staring a hole into the map.
Kye.
“Laurier?”
The beast in my chest snarled as I shoved off the sun-damned tree stump. They all raised their brows, but I whirled on a foot, my boots breaking the already trampled snow as I cut a line straight to Maren and kept going, grasping hold of her arm as I went. I’m not even sure we were out of earshot when I spun her around against a weeping tree trunk and leaned in.
Standing entirely below my collarbone, she stretched her neck to glare up at me, her armaments poised and ready. “It’s not what we agreed on, but when have we ever agreed? From the day we met, you wanted to row the boat. You didn’t care that I was stronger that day. You fought me for the chance to row.”
“Leihani.”
“And what happened, Kye? Who ended up rowing?”
Leihani.
“I rowed.”
I shifted my weight into my heels, spine straightening, and crossed my arms as I gazed down at her.
I rowed, she repeated.
And war waited in a quiet field of twinkling fresh powder across from us. But the battle existed here. In the flex of her hands. The arc of her chin. The stars that flew from her eyes as she searched mine.
You rowed, I whispered back. The thought unfurled like a feather, so light and soft it caught on the current of our mingled breath.
The tip of her tongue slid from the confines of her mouth, teeth following, sucking in her lower lip as she waited.
I need you angry, I growled, strokes of heat laced in the words.
She gave a rough nod, brows laced together.
“Not like that. Truly, violently angry. I need you to get up the mountain and spend the next few hours fuming yourself into a ball of rage. Hissing and spitting. The way you were when I last held you against a tree and you screamed into my face.”
I edged up to her, my hips pressing in, and brought my forehead down to hers. “Use whatever you need. Imagine Kriska down there. Imagine Thaan down there. Imagine me down there, if it fucking helps you.”
She didn’t laugh. Neither did I. My blood hummed, scalding the confines of my veins as my pulse increased, a low pounding in my ears. I sent my hand to find the base of her scalp, and I ran my fingers to the ends of her hair. “They branded you a witch. Show them this witch has teeth and claws. And fucking fire.”
She bore my stare, and I began to feel the heat of her own. Rising, flickering, fizzling.
“Show them your demons. Every one of your demons but fear. And make sure that when the fight is over, the last thing the enemy hears is their names.”
The air snapped around our heads, tiny bursts of moisture snuffing out in an instant like sparks from a flame. She gave one final fierce nod and lifted to her toes to move away, but I hauled her back with a hand curved under her nape. “And remember what I said. If they catch you. If the worst happens. If you even think of leaving this world for Perpetuum. I will tear this mountain down stone by fucking stone until I reach the center of the world, rip Darkness from the earth by the roots of his fucking hair and barter a deal with the bastard to get you back. Gateways and Guardians and sun and sky be damned. I’ll fucking come for you, Maren. I won’t be happy about it. But I’ll come for you.”
“I know,” she breathed, fog curling from her mouth.
And then I kissed her, because what else could I fucking do but rock my soul into hers and steal the warmth from her mouth once more before we stared into the eyes of our own fates. I took her like a wolf takes a sheep, sharp teeth and ragged growls, but she tangled her fingers into my hair and attacked me with a primal hunger of her own, until I broke away before I lost myself entirely.
Angry, Leihani. I swallowed, tromping back to General Senan through trees and snow, ignoring the snide smiles of every fucking man in the area, and laid my finger on the map. “Here.”