Chapter Forty-Five
Castor Aegaeon
“—are leaving.”
They left.
“Castor!” a voice cried out.
I didn’t respond to the sound of my name echoing across the battlefield. Didn’t breathe. Gods, I couldn’t even move an inch from where I’d watched my brother, my high king, and Skylar, my high queen, vanish from the fight, wondering if they would return.
“Castor.”
A familiar hand clapped my shoulder, spinning me to face him. Dark eyes, the color of the churned earth beneath my boots, stared back at me with the fire of battle blazing within.
“Hey, you’re alive. Thank the gods,” Gunnar said.
I blinked, trying to summon the strength to speak. “Gunnar?”
Our general smiled at me, the only way he could among the carnage and destruction unfolding around us.
“In the flesh. Well, a little bone too, I’m afraid.
” He gestured to his leg, where a long gash was open near his calf.
“But the bastard who got me is already living it up on the other side of the crossing. Probably emptying a barrel of wine all to himself, bragging about how he managed to land a blow against the general of Silver Meadows.”
His rambling somehow snapped me out of my haze, and I leaned down to examine his wound. “You’re limping.”
“I can still beat you in a foot race.”
“Only if I were blind and drunk,” I muttered under my breath. I’d still beaten him that one night he blindfolded me on a dare and—
The familiar buzzing of arrows tipped with iron zinged overhead. Gunnar raised his shield, crouching over me to protect us from the onslaught. “Hold on! And don’t you dare let your gods-damned eyes turn black.”
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The arrows struck the ground, ricocheted off stone, and unfortunately found their targets in the fur or chests of shifters or High Fae at our sides.
Lowering his shield, Gunnar peered up. “Castor, where did Daxton and Skylar go?”
I swallowed, eyes scanning the valley. “I… I don’t know.”
“When are they coming back?”
When. When are they coming back? Such a simple alteration to the thought. Here I was, panicking about whether they were coming back. And here was Gunnar, who beyond any doubt knew they would return to us. It was only a matter of when.
I pulled him into a bloodied embrace, the battle continuing to rage around us as I grounded myself in his unwavering belief.
“Thank you,” I rasped, my throat raw from battle cries and my strength drained from the fight.
Gunnar, somehow sensing my faltering strength, held me firm. “Stay strong, my high prince.”
Gunnar pulled away from the embrace first, rolling his shoulders and lifting his shield as another wave of nalusa falaya emerged from the darkness at Minaeve’s command.
They were phantoms of fear and death, tattered cloaks flowing in an unseen wind as their hollowed eyes framed by skeletal faces scanned the field, looking for their next victim to consume.
Behind them, human soldiers advanced in tight formation, blades gleaming with borrowed courage.
Gunnar grinned like a madman. “Good, I was beginning to think they’d fled.”
I drew my twin swords as a vein of cold thrummed up my arms, gathering in my chest, my magic begging to be unleashed. “I’ll take the left,” I said.
“Sounds like a plan.” Gunnar slammed the butt of his axe against his shield. “I’ll take everything else.”
He charged, and gods… no matter how often I fought beside him, the sight of him in battle was otherworldly.
Even wounded, limping, and bleeding, Gunnar moved like the earth itself had risen to fight.
His axe carved through the head of the first enemy, its body falling limp to the grass.
His shield caught a human soldier’s spear, twisting hard enough to snap the shaft, before his follow-through sent the man sprawling.
I dove into the fray at his left, blades dancing as if they were extensions of my own limbs. A fallen cloaked monster attacked, and I swept low, a shard of ice forming at the tip of my sword as I severed its head from its shoulders. It collapsed, and I stood over the corpse, ready to hold the line.
Gunnar and I fought, back-to-back, step-by-step, refusing to yield our ground. But they kept coming, more of them appearing through magical portals inside those gods-forsaken towers.
Where the fuck was that false queen hiding?
Since her twin, Istar, was killed by the shifter we all thought betrayed us, Minaeve hadn’t been seen on the battlefield.
I was still shocked that Skylar was able to keep that a secret for as long as she did.
“We’re getting boxed in!” Gunnar roared as he sent one of his axes flying into the chest of a charging soldier. “There are too many of them, Castor!”
“Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed. I thought it would be a good time to take a nap!”
Before Gunnar could muster a reply, another wave of enemies slammed into us.
A fallen leaped over my head to attack Gunnar, but thankfully, he caught it with his shield, pulled another axe from his belt, and smashed the blade into its spine.
But there was no gloating, no laughter at his latest kill.
I turned and instantly understood why Gunnar was deathly silent.
We were surrounded.
Human soldiers closed the final gap behind us, shields raised and blades angled at our throats. Fallen creatures crept from the smoke of Skylar’s dying flames on all sides, while garmr’s gnarly claws scraped stone, sets of reddened eyes fixed on us.
Gunnar positioned himself in front of me without hesitation, shield braced, body tense. “Stay behind me, Cas.”
“Really? And let you have all the glory?”
He shifted, and his face came into view. His mouth was set in a faint, easy line, eyes fixed and untroubled. He leaned to the right, keeping most of his weight off the injured leg. “Let me fulfill my duty, my prince.”
My stomach dropped as a premonition swallowed my sight, turning my world black.
There was blood, so much blood, and Gunnar—
“It won’t be you,” Gunnar said as I blinked my eyes free of magic. “I’ll be your shield. And I’ll see you later, at the crossing, my friend.”
“No!” I hurled the word into the world, into fate, to the forsaken gods who believed they could take him from me.
My magic roared to life as a frost surged across the ground, racing outward in jagged, crystalline veins.
Fallen shrieked, and humans cried as ice crawled over them, freezing them in place.
Human soldiers stumbled as the ground slicked beneath them, ice crawling up their limbs like a phantom entity as it sank into their chests and froze their hearts where they stood.
Gunnar turned in shock. “Castor!”
But I could barely hear him, my limbs shaking as I fought to stay upright.
“Here!” Before I could think, a small vial was pressed to my lips. “Drink the rest of this, you fool, or else we will both be dining at the crossing.”
Immediately my limbs regained their strength, and my vision cleared.
A loud shriek sounded through the rising smoke as a giant roc swooped low, talons outstretched as it tore the frozen figures of our enemies to pieces. Followed by multiple bears and snarling wolves eager to spill blood.
“Good.” Gunnar stepped forward on his bad leg and stumbled. “Shit. I was worried that would be a problem.”
I hooked my arm under Gunnar to help support his weight. “It’s time to move!”
Gods, he was built like solid stone.
Gritting my teeth, I forced my legs to move as Gilen continued with his annihilation of the enemies surrounding us. A stronghold of human allies led by Princess Réalta helped to clear the way.
Gunnar’s grip slipped from me as I carried him across the field. His breaths became ragged as his heart slowed to a dangerous crawl as we neared the forest where our healers were waiting.
“Hold on, Gunnar.”
An eerie, high-pitched scream tore through the edge of the forest as a massive predator as black as the night leaped from the brush. Ivory talons eviscerated the flesh of our enemies into ribbons as blood spewed out like a waterfall at the base of a cliff.
And there goes my appetite for the next century.
Shifting mid-leap, Shaw landed in his human form with a snarl. His body was beaten, battered, and bleeding. But his eyes held a fire only shifters could muster.
“You two look like shit,” Shaw said.
“Feel like it… too,” Gunnar managed to mutter.
Zola materialized beside him, stepping out of the shadow cast by a fallen pine. Her midnight eyes blazed as she threw a dagger with terrifying grace straight into the skull of a mage that survived Shaw’s attack.
“The tree line. Now!” Zola roared, eyes falling to Gunnar. “Healers are waiting and Rhea will cover our flank.”
Together, Shaw and Zola helped me guide Gunnar through the fray.
Zola darted forward and back, cutting down threats before they even reached us while arrows soared overhead to protect us from behind.
Shaw shifted back into his panther form, calling to his pack to help clear the way.
By the time the trees swallowed us, the world shifted into a different type of chaos.
Wounded were littering the forest floor, with healers rushing from patient to patient, trying to help those they could.
The earthy pines were coated with the scent of crushed herbs and bitter medicines.
But beneath it lingered the coppery scent of blood and sweat, heavy with the weight of death and battle.
A male High Fae, dressed in Crimson City colors, rushed forward, lifting Gunnar from our arms. “We’ve got him.”
“Make sure you do,” I said with a low growl in my chest.
Shaw shifted back on two legs, chest heaving. “Castor!” Gods above, his eyes—too knowing—snapped to meet mine. “Where is Skylar?” he asked with a tremor in his voice.
The feisty redhead she-wolf joined him, her piercing stare almost as terrifying as Minaeve’s. “Castor… we can’t sense our alpha. Where the fuck is she?”
“I don’t know where they are,” I said, forcing my voice to keep steady. “But they’ll be back.”
Shaw searched my face, desperate for answers. While Rhea stormed off, spewing a stream of curse words in her wake.
“We must hold the line.” I gripped Shaw’s shoulder and then Zola’s. “Dax and Sky will come back. But until then, we must keep fighting.”
Zola nodded, shadows clinging to her like a second skin.
Shaw exhaled slowly, his hardened resolve returning. “Then we hold the line. Until they return.”