Chapter 15 Trew #2
Hurt flashed across her face before anger replaced it. “Since when do you flinch from a simple touch?”
Since I’d learned what it felt like to want someone else’s hands on me instead.
“Go search the border and return with an assessment,” I said. “Take a sizable battalion with you.”
With a huff, she left, but I only half paid attention to where I should be. I could not make myself fully return to my body.
At my urging, Gavelle hopped closer, the bundle of fraewort I’d prepared and infused with magic secure under the band strapped to his chest. He approached her with the delicate care of a lover. First, he smoothed a strand of golden hair away from her face with his beak.
I had him tuck the healing pouch into her upper tunic pocket, his wing brushing against her neck in a caress. Through our bond, I felt the softness of her skin, the warmth of her breath, the way she instinctively sought comfort even in sleep.
She was beautiful. Strong. Dangerous in ways even I didn’t fully understand.
As Gavelle took flight and soared from the cave, I blinked, returning my focus to the present. The pyre still smoldered, and soot fell around me like gray snow.
I stood there for a very long time, watching until the coals had faded to gray.
Kira strode over to stand by my side. This woman had always been perceptive, especially when it came to threats to what she thought belonged to her. She stood too close. Watched me too often. And every time she looked at Isi, her mouth tightened.
I’d never touched her, but Kira still kept hoping I’d change my mind.
In sixteen years of ruling, no one has ever made me forget my duty.
Until Isi.
“I saw at least fifty Skathe near the southern ley line, though they retreated fast when they saw us,” Kira reported, her voice carefully controlled.
I nodded, forcing myself to focus on her words instead of the woman sleeping on another plane far from here. “What was their formation?”
“Scattered hunting parties, but coordinated, like the group we saw near Briarfen. I don’t like how organized they seem.
” Kira’s eyes blazed with anger. Her grief always turned outward, seeking targets for her rage.
Mine turned inward, becoming a weight I carried alone.
“We need to hit them soon, before their leader’s able to organize them further. ”
The ley lines were cracking under Skathe pressure, our defensive spells weakening with each assault. I should be planning our counterattack with all my focus, marshaling every resource we had. But even as we talked tactics and strategy, part of my mind remained with one certain sleeping woman.
I couldn’t stop, couldn’t make myself pull away from the connection that let me seek her, protect her, ensure she survived whatever the trials threw at her next. It was madness and my sole weakness.
I sent Gavelle higher, telling him to watch while I forced my attention back to the immediate threat. The Skathe had to be dealt with before they could gather for a full assault on another village.
“Show me,” I told Kira, and followed her away from what was left of Myrelle and the smoldering pyre, advancing toward the border with the battalion she’d commanded to fall into place around us.
Three hours later, I’d set our retaliation in motion, though I wasn’t sure it would do any more than the last. Our usual tactics weren’t yielding the same results now that they’d become organized under a leader.
Returning to Myrelle, I walked among the ruins and allowed myself to slip back into Gavelle’s mind.
Isi’s group had found Fara’s body.
Damn. I should’ve followed her into the woods. Instead, I’d given in to weakness, and I’d lost another.
Isi and her group walked around her torn corpse, covering it with wet branches and broad leaves.
Jaxon’s jaw trembled with barely controlled emotion.
Maddox made a sharp, sarcastic comment that earned him glares from everyone else.
And tears streamed down Isi’s face, mixing with the rain that had started falling again.
My people had to endure this. Had to face death and loss and the brutal reality of what bonding meant. Not every magic-wielder could form the connection. Those who could found their abilities amplified, refined, made deadly.
The rain fell harder, both at Myrelle and on the alternate plane, there turning the ground slick and treacherous.
A hunter’s shriek echoing through the jungle—the one who’d claimed Fara.
Isi’s group cried out and bolted, scattering.
“Stay together,” Isi shouted, aiming for her closest friends who slammed through the dense vegetation, outdistancing her. She favored her arm. Her back. I wanted to make her tell me who’d hurt her.
So I could kill them.
But with a fever, she wouldn’t be able to keep up with her group.
Gavelle dove after them, his wings tucked tight as he plummeted their way. He spread his feathers at the last second, screeching as he snapped at their faces, driving them back toward each other. Toward Isi. Otherwise, they’d spread so far apart they’d never find each other again.
“What’s changed?” Kira asked beside me, her voice nudging against my connection to Gavelle. “We’ve destroyed each small group that dared challenge even a village half this size for years. Not today.”
I blinked, returning to Myrelle, finding Kira beside me, a glare that had nothing to do with what had happened here creasing her face.
“We’ll destroy their leader.”
“Good,” she snapped. “Glad to see you’re paying attention. Where’s your mind been today?”
I. Said. Nothing. Only drilled her gaze until she darted her own away.
She sucked in a breath and ducked her head. “Sorry.”
Pivoting, I called to the troops. “We’re leaving. Mount and fly for the aerie.”
As I strode toward Lakast, I slid back into Gavelle’s mind, watching through his eyes as Isi plunged down a muddy incline, slipping and nearly falling as she clutched her injured arm to her chest.
She was alone. In hostile territory.
And the creature who’d claimed Fara moved through the trees like liquid shadows, its body long, flexible, jagged.
Bone-plate mandibles split its jaw into a tri-sectioned mouth lined with rows of needle-sharp teeth.
Its limbs bent at impossible angles, its joints dislocating and reforming with each step.
Six eyes clustered on its elongated skull, each one tracking Isi’s movement.
This was a supreme, magical predator who almost always caught its prey.
A rendering stalker, one of the trials’ most lethal weapons.
Terror flooded my system as it galloped after her, down the slope, gaining speed as it tightened the distance between it and her.
Hearing it crashing behind her, Isi stopped and spun, a pathetic stick raised in her hands as defense.
“Mine,” I growled, the word detonating inside me, instinct and fury forging into a single, burning need to protect.
As I leaped onto Lakast’s back, my dragon responded to the threat in my voice with a bone-rattling snarl. His wings stretched wide, the membrane snapping taut as he took flight.
My group launched skyward in formation, dragons climbing through the rain-heavy air.
But I was no longer with them. I plunged into Gavelle’s mind as the stalker lunged, my muscles coiling in response.
The predator in him flexed, ready to strike.
I let instinct take over, every fiber of his being, every reflex, aimed to protect her.
Gavelle shrieked as I triggered the shift, his body twisting and bulking mid-air. Muscles. Fangs. Rage.
His mass expanded, bones stretching and reforming with wet, tearing sounds. Feathers dissolved into muscle and fur, his wings becoming powerful limbs. His delicate frame bulked outward, growing, growing. Transforming.
I felt every sensation as if it were my own body going through the change, from the burning stretch of ligaments to the crack of reforming joints, to the surge of predatory hunger that came with the firecat’s form.
Agony and ecstasy blended together as cinderhawk became its alternate form, an apex predator.
Pain didn’t matter. Nothing did except reaching her. She was mine to protect. Mine to claim when I was ready to do so.
The great cat rose, not born, but summoned, ancient and terrifying.
Through his enhanced senses, I could smell Isi’s fear, hear her rapid heartbeat, and feel the heat of her blood calling to his ancient instincts. The scent of her drove the cat wild with protective fury.
The stalker lunged.
And I leapt, death and fury and flame.