Chapter 26 #2
We’re quiet as we ready for battle. I don my armor and help Thea do the same, the act strangely sensual and intimate.
I sweep her three warriors’ braids over her shoulder so that I can buckle her breastplate across her shoulders, smiling at the style that she and Dessa now share.
Sisters in battle and love. I finish and place a kiss at her nape before I pull the braids back, letting them fall down her back in fiery ribbons.
She turns to face me, and I suck in a sharp breath.
“What?” she asks, running her hands self-consciously over the form-fitting armor, made of a mix of iron and dragon scales—some of the last in existence.
My mother had several gowns made of them and we repurposed them for Thea and Soren’s armor.
Dragon scales are nearly impenetrable and though Thea protested when I’d first told the smith to have the dresses stripped, I told her that I’d have nothing less protecting my wife and her familiar on the battlefield.
“Is it not right?” she asks, worry in her voice. “Dessa said—”
“It’s perfect,” I whisper, the urge to drop to my knees and worship the Maker in disguise she surely is nearly overwhelming me.
My throat goes dry and, damn me, my cock shoots hard.
She looks…sexy. Great fucking Makers, she looks sexier than I’ve ever seen.
The black scales shimmering ever so slightly, hair bright as fire, eyes burning with fierce determination. A true warrior queen. My warrior queen.
“You look…fiercely alluring.” She rolls her eyes, but I pinch her chin, tilting her head back until she meets my gaze.
“I am in no way joking, Thea.” I grab her wrist and guide her hand to my aching cock, helping her to palm me through my leathers.
“Feel that? Harder than any ice you can conjure, love. Hard as fucking stone from one look at you in this armor.”
She swallows hard and bites her lip.
“Let’s make short work of this,” she says, voice breathy and rough. “I have many, many things I’d like to do to you this evening, Commander…”
I nearly growl at the thought, of celebrating a victory with her this eve in so many deliciously wicked ways…
“As my queen commands.” I kiss her swiftly and step away before I lose all power to walk out of this tent.
She gasps quietly and I know that she’s realizing how many times I said the words even before she knew the truth of who I was, that I was calling her my queen as a true king, that I was already hers in so many ways.
I give her a knowing smile and kiss her softly before turning to gather my weapons.
We ride to a clearing where we’ll meet the Alliance’s forces. We leave the horses and walk the last few hundred yards, but when we step out into the field and I see them across the expanse, I stutter step, momentarily stunned by what I’m feeling.
“Killian?”
“Something’s…wrong with them, with their stolen Gifts.
” I can feel them, but their energies feel dark and twisted.
Angry. It’s as if the Gifts know that they’ve been stolen and are fighting against their captors.
I feel as if I’m tainting my own soul just by sensing them, my own Gift recoiling as if to get away from the sick, unnatural imposters.
“The energy feels…” I trail off, shaking my head and gritting my teeth.
I can see Dessa give me a worried glance from the corner of my eye, and then share a look with Thea.
“Are you alright?” Thea asks.
“Yes,” I assure her. “Yes, I’m fine. Let’s get this done, shall we?
” I send up a quick prayer to Brienne as is customary before every battle, but I beg the Maker of war for extra protection and swiftness today, to let our arrows fly true and our blades strike home.
Dessa barks out orders to the men and they fall into formation like the well-oiled killing machine they are.
She nods to me and nocks an arrow, waiting for my command to raise her bow and let her arrow fly with the other archers.
She’s nervous about what she will witness here today—what she will do. She took life on the tundra, but this will be far, far different and we both know it. That was a desperate act of defiance and love. This is planned, deliberate killing.
This is war.
“Steady, love,” I say quietly. “Steady.”
“You can’t think of them as people,” Dessa tells her softly.
“I know that sounds cold, but it’s the best way to get past what you must do.
You must only think of them as the enemy.
Think of the evil they serve and the harm they may cause.
You mustn’t think of each individual soul, but the whole of the army as a beast to be slain. ” She hikes a shoulder.
Thea lets out a long, slow breath, and though I know how hard doing that will be for her, she nods.
A moment later, ice erupts from her palm, taking the shape of a hilt and cross guard, lengthening into a thick, wickedly sharp blade.
I quirk a dark brow when I spy the dragon carved on the pommel, wings outstretched: a perfect match of my own, sculpted in ice.
“I’ve been practicing.” She shrugs and winks at me.
We stand for a few moments, the sound of a thousand soldiers waiting to see if Noxum comes for them this day echoing around us.
Low breathing; the shuffling of feet; the metallic ringing of steel pulling free from scabbards.
The snow is thick beneath my boots, great drifts of it piled around the clearing, and icicles hang from the trees like crystals.
Thea inhales deeply, and I can see how calming the winter makes her, how it calls to her. I glance upward.
“Looks like snow.”
“Not until after the battle,” she says, and I can feel her Gift surging and swelling, moving through the gate in my walls that I always keep open for her now. She’s keeping the storm at bay to aid us, and doing it as almost an afterthought. This woman is fucking incredible.
I shift on the small rise of packed snow that Thea created for us to watch and assist from until we’re needed in the thick of the battle.
I’m normally on the front lines, despite much grumbling from, well, practically everyone, really, but today I agreed to remain back with Thea.
The first true battle for any warrior is a difficult thing, and I’ll be by my wife’s side to help her face it however she needs.
“So…does someone sound a horn or bang a drum signaling us to begin or…?”
I chuckle low at that and meet Dessa’s eyes.
“The mountains do not move.”
She nods and grins. “And the dragons do not yield.”
Thea quirks a brow.
“Well, isn’t that just adorable...”
“Fly!” Dessa yells, giving the order for her archers to make the first strike.
They raise their bows in perfect unison and loose their arrows.
As they sail toward their targets, I roar to the men and the lines of Duskthorne and Tithmoore soldiers rush forward together, blades and axes and war hammers drawn and ready.
The other side runs to meet them, their own cries and cheers joining the sounds of stomping boots and crunching snow.
Thea stares, wide eyed and frozen, and I can only imagine what it must look like to her. Chaos. Terror. A bit of excitement.
Soren shifts beside her, leaning his body against hers and I see her swallow hard, relaxing and pulling strength from her familiar.
I send a silent thanks to the cat and watch as our arrows rain down, hitting targets.
Screams ripple through the field and though Thea winces, she stands tall and strong.
The white snow is soon painted red with blood as the first lines clash in a brutal collision that seems to echo through the entire world.
The ringing of metal upon metal fills my mind as swords meet, screams and cries of pain and anger and fear, and the sounds of ripping flesh and crunching bone join the cacophony: the sounds of battle.
A line of their own archers fires back and Dessa cries warning, the same warning echoing throughout the ranks. Those that carry shields raise them, the others putting their faith in the Makers to keep them safe as they continue on, keeping both hands free for fighting.
Thea throws her free hand upward and a wave of ice strikes their arrows, not thick enough to encase them like at the tundra, but enough to knock them from their paths, all of them flying harmlessly into the woods as she sweeps the wave to the side.
Soren gives a chuff of what I believe to be approval, his icy blue eyes watching intently, the gold ring seeming to shine like the sun as he scans the battle for any signs of danger to his bonded.
That feeling of unease and wrongness suddenly flares in my chest as I feel one of the abomination’s twisted Gifts rise.
I tense, readying myself for that awful, stolen power to touch my own, wondering if it might make me physically ill.
My stomach roils as the power meets my wall—and sails right fucking through it.
“No,” I gasp, blinking in shock as I see roots surge upward, bursting free from the earth below my men in a spray of snow and dirt and blood.
Screams of pain and surprise and fear ring out as more roots break through the frozen earth, hurtling bodies across the field as if they’re nothing more than pebbles.
“What the hells?” Thea whips her head to me, worry and confusion in her eyes. “Killian!? How…?”
“I can’t block them,” I grate, putting all of my power into fortifying my wall, on somehow stopping these twisted Gifts from getting by.
I can see the one who wielded the roots, standing behind a group of what are most assuredly guards, there to protect him from the battle so he can attack with his power.
My stomach sinks when I see two more standing beside him.
“Their stolen Gifts are so twisted that my own can’t block them. ”
“Oh fuck,” Dessa grits, nocking another arrow and letting it fly.
“The ones behind the guards,” I yell. “Get to the ones behind the guards!” I point to two men and one woman standing behind a line of soldiers, their skin nearly as white as the snow around them, dark circles beneath their eyes.
Do their bodies not take well to the stolen power?
The order to go after the abominations rushes through the lines of my men, mixing with the clashing of blades and screams of pain.
The smell of blood permeates the air and Thea watches, eyes still wide and shoulders tense.
Her eyes scan the lines and then her sword disappears, seeming to fold in upon itself before daggers of ice form in its place.
She closes her eyes for a heartbeat before opening them, a fiery determination burning there as she sends them flying across the field, the speed unbelievable, her precision uncanny.
They slide into enemy necks and eyes, into gaps in golden armor to stick between ribs.
Bodies fall and she continues her attacks, but I’m mostly useless.
There are a few true Gifteds among them, and I keep them blocked for all I’m worth, but these abominations. ..
Thea sends larger blades sailing over the heads of the soldiers towards the abominations, but they hit some kind of invisible wall, bouncing off and sailing back into the fray.
“One of them has some kind of shielding in place,” she pants, sweat sheening her brow. I grind my teeth, fury rising. I’ll shred the shield with cold steel if I have to.
“Stay here!” I call and take off into the melee, praying to Brienne for safety and telling Noxum to fuck right off.