21. Phazikai
Phazikai
Winter was a difficult time of year to be at war.
In ordinary circumstances, war tended to be seasonal, starting up after the fields were planted and coming to a pause when the fields needed to be harvested.
These weren’t ordinary circumstances, though.
Raven Court hated us, and every year they failed to humble us, the brutality of the warfare increased.
The death toll was in the tens of thousands, and though many of them had been mortal, many of them had not.
The Third Battalion was mostly heavy infantry, supported by archers and a nimble scouting unit mounted on riding stags, and we tailed the main body of the army by a day so that we could have a broken trail.
We merged into the staging camp as the sun crept closer toward the horizon—closer to the famed city of Phazikai.
The Jewel of the West had never fallen, but that didn’t mean it never would.
Alluin’s maneuver with the cities of Norsandios and Ysvai had worked brilliantly, and we’d gotten within striking distance of Phazikai while Raven Court’s armies and intelligence had been in shambles.
Phazikai was the greatest city in Raven Court.
If we could capture it and the crown prince who ruled it, the war would surely be won.
My neck had been aching all day, a numb, deadened sort of feeling that left me shivering.
I rubbed at it as I rode into the camp to say hi to Alluin.
As little as I liked moving units through snow and over rough ground, I was usually better about the cold.
It wasn’t as if monsters had a war season.
I’d been out in all sorts of conditions over the centuries.
Camp seemed oddly tense as I got my mount settled.
I picked up a few pieces of gossip along the way—that one of the spies we’d sent into Raven Court had gotten caught, that the crown prince had sent a Court-sealed emissary to Dain, that Captain Kaeden Ulahana had vowed herself into service of the youngest Xirangyl prince.
The last gave me enough pause that I gave up on trying to get my chilled throat to warm and paid attention.
Usually, I tried to grant my sister the grace of giving her the space she so clearly desired, but not when people were implying she was a traitor.
A few sharp questions later, I’d straightened out the story.
Kaeden had sworn herself to the soulmate of the youngest Xirangyl prince, one Lillian Brouwer, a young mortal swordswoman who’d been under her command.
It was that same mortal who’d been caught out as a spy, and who’d been sent back to the Stag Army bound by the seal of Raven Court with a message that could only be uttered to my prince and high commander.
Nobody seemed to know what had been said inside that tent.
Fae ears were keen, but Dain was a powerful glamor mage, and he was no fool.
He’d surely cast silence outside the tent of the high command, keeping Lillian’s words trapped inside, and those who’d been with him either knew to hold their tongues or had been bound to silence.
I couldn’t shake the sense of unease as I passed out the orders that I be notified immediately if something were to happen with my sister and made my way at last towards Alluin’s tent.
The late afternoon sun was already growing close to the horizon with Midwinter only days away, and the chill descending on the camp made me shiver.
I picked up my pace, eager to see Lu again and to find some hot dinner.
The soft sound of heavy breathing made me pause outside his tent flap. I hesitated for a moment—what if he was pleasuring himself? Or, worse, had someone else in there with him?
Then I heard him take a shuddering, harsh breath, and I realized he was crying.
“Lu?” I asked, my heart in my throat. He didn’t respond, but I’d never possessed the instincts of a truly polite person, even when I’d been trying my damndest to be respectable.
I unhooked the tent flap and shoved my way inside, ignoring the way my armor caught on the canvas.
He didn’t even have his lamp unshielded.
I had to squint as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. “Lu? What’s wrong? Are you—?”
He looked up at me, expression drawn. Tears stained his face.
“Zhi,” Alluin whispered, and fell apart.
I was lunging for him before his panic even registered, his pent-up agony tearing across my throat and his breathing turning to harsh hyperventilation. I arrested myself before I grabbed him, was in full fucking armor, couldn’t touch him without burning him.
Alluin’s knees hit the ground, fingers digging into his thighs as he started to rock in place, his face a rictus of pain as he sobbed—wracking, awful sobs, like a mother whose child had just been slaughtered in front of her.
I dropped to my knees next to him, uncaring of the pain of impact. “Alluin, Alluin, talk to me,” I begged, the words clawing at my throat. I tore at the clasps of my armor, desperate to help. “I need you. Don’t do this, Lu—”
His face was a mask of agonizing grief and terror. Every harsh breath left his whole body heaving. Tears cut across his cheeks, falling from unblinking eyes. He didn’t even act like he could see me, hyperventilating with his gaze fixed on the middle distance.
I got my gauntlets and gloves off. Cast my helmet away so he could see my face.
And grabbed him by the face to flood him with my allure geas.
Alluin’s body went stiff in a hard jerk and the vicious pain in my throat vanished, leaving me dizzy with relief.
He sucked in a breath of air and shuddered.
With a whimpering sob, the tension in his body melted away, leaving him trembling and sprawled on the ground.
“Zhi,” he moaned with the endless grief of a dove.
“Shh, shh,” I said, easing him to the floor, straddling his waist in full plate armor with my sweaty hair dangling down. “You’re alright, Lu. You’re alright. I’m here.”
Tears kept spilling down his face, but his eyes stayed on me, soft and yearning. “He’s going to kill them,” he rasped. “They— They— Oh, gods. He’s going to kill them. He’s going to kill them all.”
Gently, I swept my thumbs across his cheeks, pulling back some of my allure geas, trying to give him only enough that it would keep him from falling into that place of awful panic. “Who is, Lu? Tell me.”
Sorrow tensed his face again, brows tight and lifted and his mouth tight. Alluin grabbed me by the wrists and started shaking. “C-can’t— I can’t, he bound me, bound us—bound us—bound us all—”
“Shh, sh-sh-sh,” I said, desperation rising in me. “Shh, that’s alright, you don’t have to tell me, just breathe, Alluin. Just breathe, alright? Breathe for me.”
He nodded and squeezed his eyes shut, another pair of tears escaping from beneath each eyelid. Alluin breathed for me, matching his pace to mine.
Even though I wanted to cry with him, I kept my breathing steady and slow, focusing on casting my allure geas, keeping it clean of my desire so that the only thing he would feel would be his own affection for me magnified to the point where even his grief didn’t matter, not when he could focus on me.
I didn’t need him to tell me what had happened. There was only one person in the camp who could bind the General of the First Army. Only one who wore the signet ring of Stag Court. Only one person to whom Alluin owed his duty and to whom his loyalty was absolute.
Raven Court had thrown down their gauntlet, and Dain’s answer was beyond bearing.
Perhaps the details didn’t matter, but I knew them anyway.
The whole camp had told me, after all, all my gossipy friends filling my ears with it.
Raven Court’s high commander must have found the betrayal of his brother’s soulmate to be an unbearable insult and had sent her back to us not just with a message, but with a deadly challenge.
And our Dain—our remarkable, powerful, honorable prince—had not only picked up that gauntlet, but had forbidden anyone who’d heard the challenge to speak of it.
Not just forbidden, I thought grimly. Court-sealed them to silence. He wouldn’t have trusted anything less, not if his answer is so brutal as to leave Alluin this heartbroken.
After a few minutes, Alluin shuddered and started nuzzling my hand, his breathing going from labored to easy.
“It feels so good,” he said dreamily, exhaustion in every line of his body but his expression softly adoring, face relaxed and lips parted.
His wet lashes parted and Alluin gazed up at me with naked affection, muzzy and yearning.
“Gods, you feel so good. You should…touch me.”
“I am touching you,” I murmured back.
His head tilted back to bare his throat as he started breathing harder.
I could see the shape of Stag Court’s signet stamped at the top of his neck where it met his jaw, the antlers a ruddy burn on his smooth brown skin.
The binding spell, I thought distantly, my focus on Alluin’s face and the measure of my magic.
“Zhi. You should touch me,” Alluin breathed, taking my hand and trailing my fingers down his powerful chest towards his groin.
My heart broke, the pain of being wanted for my allure such familiar agony. “No, Lu,” I said gently, the corners of my mouth tugging back as I turned my hand to capture his with mine, lacing our fingers together. “Not like this. Not because of my allure geas.”
Alluin let out a low moan of protest and pressed his face against my palm. “Don’t stop,” he said, sounding like he might cry again. “I can’t bear it. I can’t— I—”
“Am I stopping?” I asked gently. “I’m here. I know.”
He nodded again, his pupils blown and a look of such raw want on his face that I couldn’t help dropping my face closer towards his.
How often had I wanted him to look at me like that?
How many times had I fantasized about him asking me to touch him—had dreamed about it, my subconscious haunted by how badly I craved him?
“I love you so much,” Alluin said in a rasp, a single tear tracking down his face. “I want you so badly.”
“I know,” I said, keeping my voice soft. Then, hesitantly, I replied, “I love you, too. I want you, too.”
Hope suffused his expression, chasing away the shadows. “You do?” he asked, looking at me like a man in love, every affection he held for me multiplied a thousandfold by my allure.
“Of course I do.” I picked up his hand and pressed a courtly kiss to his knuckles. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
His lashes fluttered. “Could you kiss me?” Alluin asked in a raw voice. “Just this once?”
My chest constricted, but how could I deny him?
My Alluin, my shield-love, my friend and companion, heartbroken and bound to silence and drowning in my allure.
“As you desire,” I said, the thickness of my sorrow in my voice, but I knew Alluin wouldn’t hear it, not when he was like this.
I settled myself over him, taking my weight on one elbow.
He moaned when I ran my nose along his, arching up into the contact. I had to close my eyes, heart shattering into pieces. “Zhi,” Alluin whimpered.
“Sleep for me, shaeulo. Sleep until morning,” I murmured, and pressed my mouth to his.
Alluin made a low keen of need as our mouths met.
He kissed me back like he’d been dying to do it, lips parting and tongue brushing along the seam of my mouth.
Tears stung my eyes as I gave him what he wanted, too needy and too foolish and too desperately in love to do anything else.
Our tongues met and the taste of him flooded me with heat, leaving my heart aching and groin throbbing.
I moved my mouth with his, kissed him to sleep, and tried not to cry when Alluin went lax beneath me.
I had to stay there, trembling, for a long moment while I reined myself in.
There wasn’t time for me to fall apart. Something awful was coming—something so agonizing that being told it and then bound not to speak of it felt like dying.
Alluin slept quietly on the floor, shadows under his eyes and tears staining his face.
I put a blanket over my arms so I wouldn’t scald him with my armor and gently picked him up, shifting him from the cold ground to the thick down of his bedroll.
He made a soft sound of protest, like a sick child, but he softened again when I pressed my lips to his temple.
“Sleep,” I whispered, my brow creased in pain. “Sleep.”
I sat with Alluin for almost an hour as he slept, my eyes unfocused as I stroked his hair, leaving my allure unleashed but not trying to cast, letting Alluin feel the gentlest version of the obsession I wielded. Maybe he could dream of me instead of the horrors that awaited us.
In the harshness of the morning light, staring down at the red ruin of Phazikai with the stench of an abattoir in my nostrils, the black shadow of despair settled onto my shoulders. There was nothing I could have done to stop it. Nothing I could do to change it. And Dain…
Dain was gone.