Chapter 20
Twenty
Limerick
Someone was vomiting over the side of the boat, the choked sound making more than a few other Boellium conscripts turn a sickly green color. The party in the middle of Eaglehoth last night had been hedonistic, to say the least.
The food and the wine had flowed freely, everyone having their fill and more as the band had played lively music and a bonfire roared in the center of town, keeping everyone warm well into the early hours of the morning.
I’d sat on a log beside Hayle and Avalon, Vox off to the side by himself, somehow alone even when surrounded by sycophants.
The Combat round yesterday had been foreplay.
He’d been pure grace and beauty, and even though he’d beaten me, held his sword to my chest, my blood had run so hot, it singed my veins.
I hadn’t really even been thinking as I’d stalked him to his room and kissed him.
I’d just wanted to beat him in something, even if it was with my mouth instead of my sword.
And despite his surprise, he’d kissed me back. Everything that had happened afterwards just felt like a fever dream.
Hayle was still holding Avalon to his chest now as we sailed back to Boemouthe.
He seemed to always be touching her, at least if he could.
She was cradling the injured raven in her arms, a bandage wrapped around his injured wing so he couldn’t fly and damage it more.
As she baby-talked at the large black bird with his beady little eyes, he fluffed up and cooed pathetically in return.
He was definitely milking its injury for all it was worth.
I sat beside Iker on the deck and looked out over the ocean. “Find out anything interesting?” I asked quietly, and he nodded. Iker had been using his time in Eaglehoth to undertake his very favorite hobby. Spying.
“The Upper Lines like to talk, and there are rumblings of dissent coming from the Sixth Line. They should be next.”
I nodded. I didn’t know how I could extract Avalon from Boellium—not to mention Vox and Hayle—without raising suspicion, but I knew that she had to come with me to Doend for this whole campaign to be a success. We couldn’t keep having tournaments as a cover.
“I’ll figure out something,” I told him, resting my head back against the railing as I listened to the soothing sounds of someone from the Eleventh Line losing their lunch into the murky waters of the Alutian Sea.
The birds were flocking in the sky, and I tilted my head. That seemed… wrong.
I looked over at Hayle to find him also watching the birds. He stood, slowly moving toward me, and Avalon trailed behind him, the raven in her arms.
“That isn’t right,” Hayle murmured. “There shouldn’t be that many birds this far from land. If there was a school of fish or something, they’d be circling. They look… panicked?”
Quarry squawked and flapped his good wing, but Avalon just held him tighter. “You’re in no shape to find out what’s wrong, so don’t even start,” she told him softly, before looking at Hayle. “Can you connect with any of the wild birds?”
Hayle scrunched his face in concentration, and I saw the exact moment he connected. Saw the moment he knew what was happening, because his face went pale. “Boellium’s under attack. Vox!” he yelled, and Vox appeared at our side. “Boellium is burning. We need to get back there fast.”
Vox didn’t ask questions, didn’t argue. Wind suddenly whipped around us, filling the sails. We skimmed across the ocean, and I wondered how much was sailing and how much was just Vox Vylan picking up the boat and floating us home. The display of his strength was both awe-inspiring and terrifying.
We rounded the cove, and there in the bay were my ships, on fire and sinking. My men. My soldiers. My eyes went to Iker, who looked as shocked as I did.
Fuck. We’d been made. “Someone ratted us out.”
I looked between the four people around me, lingering on Vox. He glared back, daring me to voice my suspicions out loud. It had to be him. He was the one with the most to lose.
But still, it didn’t sit right, so I kept my mouth shut. There was a time for accusations, and it wasn’t now.
I turned to Iker. “We need a count. I need to know where my men are. We need to…” My words trailed off as Boellium came into view.
The college itself was on fire.
“Fuck…” I breathed, and the voices of the other conscripts on the ship rose up, their desperate panic overriding any training.
Iker was already gone, giving the boat’s crew instructions. Vox stared at the burning impassively, like he was watching dancers perform at a gala, rather than a building that had stood for thousands of years burning to the ground.
Shaking his head, he looked around at the conscripts on the boat.
“Get into formation,” he shouted. He started organizing the conscripts on the boat by their strengths, which told me he knew a lot more about every single person at Boellium than he’d let on.
He partnered the Upper and Lower Lines together, those who were weaker in hand-to-hand combat but strong in magic with those who were opposite.
When he stopped in front of Hayle, his eyes were burning. “You have one job, Taeme. You know what it is.”
I knew what it was too. Avalon stood staring at the flames, her hand clasped tightly in Acacia’s. She would be his priority, regardless of what Vox had said.
When he got to me, he just nodded. I wasn’t going to take orders from a Vylan, and I had my own mission. I needed to find my men. I needed to know what had happened.
I hid the ship from the people on the shore, and as we unloaded silently onto rowboats, the sounds of war were like a hot poker drifting down my spine. Screams and shouting, the scent of smoke and burning flesh—it all painted a grim picture that we couldn’t see. What the fuck was happening?
Delphine Lunderov directed the currents to put us into a cove near the back side of the college. I tried to pick up the thoughts of the conscripts inside the walls, but I was either blocked or their thoughts were too chaotic to latch onto.
Vox alighted first. “You know what to do. Fight if you can. If it looks hopeless, there’s no shame in retreat. Live to fight another day, conscripts of Boellium.”
The small groups split off, and I cloaked them all in defensive magic. Unless they were being looked at directly, they wouldn’t be seen.
Vox nodded at me as he started off out front, and we climbed the rocky outcropping toward the guard gate at the rear of Boellium’s outer wall behind him, Iker and I in the center, either side of Avalon and Acacia, and Hayle and his hounds bringing up the rear.
We slipped through the gate, down along a track so thin that my shoulders brushed both the stone outer wall and the side of the food hall.
We didn’t find a single other person as we worked our way around the wall, which was worrying, but I couldn’t understand just how bad of a sign it was until we made it to the courtyard.
Blood stained the cobblestones of Boellium War College. In the center of the courtyard was a pike.
On the end of the pike was Master Proxius’s head.
Acacia leaned to the side and threw up, while Avalon whimpered.
Vox just looked back at me, and I saw in his eyes what we already knew.
The Second Line had been discovered, and Proxius had paid the price.
“You have to go. Back to the boat. Back to wherever the fuck you came from. Take Avalon with you.”
I hesitated, but it was Avalon who spoke. “Like fuck. My friends are in there. My family. I’m not running away.” She squeezed the hand of a deathly pale Acacia. “Are we sure this is the First Line?”
As if he’d heard his cue, Stanlus—the right-hand man to the Baron of the First Line and leader of his personal guard—walked through the courtyard, dragging someone I recognized as a member of the Eleventh Line by the hair.
“How many of your charges will you sacrifice for an imposter, Svenna?” Stanlus lifted the girl to her feet and placed a knife at her throat.
“What is the life of one false Heir worth? A hundred of your kin? A thousand? Because the Dawn Army is on its way west as we speak, and someone will talk. How much innocent blood runs through the corridors of Boellium first rests on your shoulders.”
When he shifted, I saw Svenna. She was bleeding from dozens of small slashes in her skin, having clearly been tortured.
She swayed on her knees, but her eyes were fierce.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Stanlus, you psycho.
And even if I did, we both know you won’t leave anyone below the Sixth Line alive here today.
You have your orders, you sadistic fuck. ”
Stanlus smiled. “You’re right.” He sliced the girl’s head clean off, and someone screamed. Vox stumbled out from our hiding place, and I grabbed Avalon’s arm as she tried to launch out after him. She couldn’t show herself.
She struggled against my chest, but I put a hand over her mouth. “Hush. You can only make it worse.”
I watched as Vox pulled on the mantle of Heir like a comfortable coat. “What the fuck is going on here? Why is Master Proxius’s head on a fucking spike?”
“Ah, the little traitor prince has returned. Do you see that, Svenna? All your bravado was for nothing.”
Vox gave the man a cool look. “Watch who you call a traitor, Stanlus, or I’ll take your fucking tongue. I asked a question, and I am your Heir!” he shouted, and it echoed around the courtyard. “What is going on here?”
“We got intel that the Second Line had arisen, and the Heir is here in Boellium, raising an army. Including you, my Heir,” Stanlus taunted.
Vox laughed in his face. Full-bellied laughter echoed after the screams of the Eleventh Line. “The Second Line? What the actual fuck, Stanlus? Are you believing children’s bedtime stories now?”
“Rovan is hardly my daddy, you little shit. He heard you conspiring in the woods at the tournament.”
Fucking Eugene Rovan. “I hate that prick,” Avalon muttered behind my hand.
“Conspiring to what? Overthrow my own power? Surely you can see how insane that sounds, Stanlus, even with your limited intellect. Eugene Rovan is a spineless shit with the brainpower of a chicken, who lies more often than he jerks off his tiny dick. Maybe you should have questioned him more thoroughly as he was sucking your cock.”
Stanlus glared. “The Baron didn’t think he was lying.”
Fuck.
The crunch of leaves behind me had me spinning, but it was just Lucio and Shay. They looked… rough.
“Report,” Hayle whispered.
“There are too many. Dozens dead, mostly Lower Lines,” Shay rasped, her voice shaky.
She cast a look at Lucio, who looked like he was in shock.
“Some from your Line have also fallen. The ships in the harbor were all sunk; I don’t know numbers.
The Dawn Army soldiers are rounding up the Lower Line conscripts, smoking them out from the bowels and either murdering those who resist in the stairwell or herding them into the atrium.
It’s bad.” She licked her lips. “Stanlus knows. We couldn’t stop him. ”
Lucio wrapped an arm around Shay, pulling her closer. “We did what we could.”
Acacia launched toward them, gripping their shirts. “Viana? The Twelfth Line? My friends?”
Shay held Acacia’s wrist gently. “I don’t know. They aren’t in the atrium, but I haven’t been downstairs.”
Avalon made a choking noise, and I knew what we had to do. Vox was still out there, antagonizing Stanlus. Either Iker and I abandoned Boellium to its fate, taking Avalon with us, or we reset.
I grabbed Avalon’s hands. “We have to go back.”
She was shaking her head. “I don’t know how. I’ve never done it on purpose before. I don’t know what I’m doing.” She sounded frantic. “Grief triggers it, and I don’t have any control.”
I looked over my shoulder at Vox, wondering if she wouldn’t have to wait long for one of her paramours to die and set it off anyway.
“You didn’t even know you had the power until now.
With knowledge comes control. You can do this—I believe in you, Avalon Halhed.
You are powerful beyond imagination.” I squeezed her hands tightly.
“Do what?” Lucio asked, but we all ignored him.
Hayle stepped up to her. “You can do this, baby. Vox’s life depends on it. Viana’s life. Lierick’s life. You’ve got this.”
She shook her head vigorously, her eyes pleading with Hayle. “What if I go back too far? What if we never meet? What if I never come to Boellium?”
He pulled her out of my arms and kissed her hard. “Avalon Halhed, you are my Soul Tie. I will find you in every single lifetime. I love you. I believe in you unconditionally. You can do this.”
A shout from behind us in the small corridor had Hayle tensing. “We’ve got a group of them,” someone growled. “Get over here, by order of the Baron of the First Line.”
“Or what?” Shay yelled back, and I could hear them fighting.
Hayle kissed Avalon again. “You can save us, Avie. I believe in you.” Then he was off, throwing himself into the fray. I didn’t look over at the fight, the sounds of steel clanging bringing more and more soldiers.
This was it. This was the moment that would make or break us. I gripped Avalon’s face, her skin feeling cool and clammy beneath my fingertips.
“He’s right. We can do this. Together. Just like foresight, okay?
” Fuck, I hoped I wasn’t lying out my ass, because I only knew the theory behind this.
“Pull all the emotions in the air into yourself. The grief. The fear. The anger. Pull it into yourself and push it into that barren desert in your chest, until it feels like you’re going to explode. Then just let go,” I said softly.
Someone grunted in pain, and she tried to look, but I held her face tightly.
“Don’t worry about that. It won’t matter in a minute.
Concentrate on me. Just me. Feel the pull, Avie.
And then think of an anchor moment. A time when you felt safe.
Happy. That is your return point. Focus on that and only that. ”
She closed her eyes, and I felt all the hairs lift on my arms. She was doing it.
Yes. My own fear bubbled up in my chest, but I pushed it back down. I had to believe that the Goddess knew what she was doing, that this was part of the plan. That she’d take us back to where we needed to be.
Light burst from Avalon’s chest, spinning around us like the stars had fallen to earth and gotten trapped, dragging down more and more stars until the power pushing against my chest felt like it would burn me alive.
I looked past her face as reality literally just melted away like tinder in a bonfire.
More and more lights, until the whole world was gone, and just Hayle, Vox, and I remained.
And then they disappeared too, fading away like a dream just before you woke.
It was just me and Avalon, in a world that no longer existed.
Her eyes snapped open, and I smiled down at her.
“Good girl.”
Then I was gone too.