Chapter 89
CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE
I thought that my father’s reign had taught me everything I needed to know about the brutality and unfairness of death and battle.
I was wrong.
This war was on another level, with men younger than I was dying in numbers I could hardly process. Every other day, I rode to the battlefront, watching the wounded men be carried away.
Then there was Rowan, holding their hands and tending their wounds and training the assistants for the healers.
Every night, she came back spattered in blood and exhausted. And every day, she woke early and went straight back to the healers.
They had long since stopped complaining about having women help them, partly because they realized how much help the women could give, but mostly because everyone was stretched to their limit and they had no other choice.
My only consolation was that this would be over soon.
It felt like an eternity before we finally got word that Crane and Lynx were mobilized on the other side of the lines. They came in with a targeted assault, decimating Iiro’s forces from the other side.
His attack was weakening surprisingly fast.
Almost too fast, truth be told. For a man who started a war, he wasn’t fighting it with the vigor I had been expecting.
Then again, he may not have been prepared for Lynx to step in as well as Crane. Something about that felt false, but I hadn’t been able to come up with a better explanation.
I should have trusted that instinct. I should have thought harder about it.
I should have done a lot of things, but I didn’t quite realize the magnitude of my mistakes until the day the messenger arrived.
I was surveying the camp, mentally tallying the supplies we would need to secure before the week’s end, when Pavel approached me.
“There’s a man outside the camp to see you,” he told me uncertainly.
“Send him in,” I ordered.
Pavel hesitated. “He says he needs to speak with you in private.”
I glanced over to where Rowan was unflinchingly stitching a wound in a man’s chest, deciding it wasn’t the best time to interrupt her. Besides, this was...suspicious, to say the least.
Kirill was watching over her, as he always did without complaint, so I left her to find out who this man was and what he wanted.
I recognized him immediately as an Elk soldier. My fingers were already twitching toward my sabers when he raised his hands in front of him.
“Sir Theodore sent me with a message,” he said quietly.
“About what?” I asked, hearing the steel behind my words.
He met my gaze evenly, begrudgingly raising my respect for him. “Wolf has betrayed you.”
Cold dread seeped through my body. Nils.
I wanted to accuse the man of lying, but hadn’t I known something had felt off from the moment Crane sent the bird?
I thought about Nils’s response when I asked if we could count on his forces. You know we would not let that insult stand . So, so carefully worded to sound like he was referring to the insult of my father’s murder.
But this was all about Rowan.
He had been ready to see her executed, no matter the war it would bring from Lochlann. The man cared for nothing more than his own pride, his own vengeance for the casualties of a war that had happened before my wife was even born.
Where was all his storms-damned honor now?
I took a sharp breath through my nose, trying to calm my racing thoughts. It didn’t matter anymore. It only mattered what he had done, and what price I would pay for trusting him.
What price my clan would pay.
The man continued. “Their forces, along with Elk’s, march toward Bear as we speak.”
“He’s both alerting me of an invasion and facilitating it?” I asked, suspicion lacing my tone.
“Iiro still controls Elk’s forces, and Sir Theodore’s attempts to sway him have been...unsuccessful.”
“If Iiro controls Elk’s forces, why are you here?” I asked. “Betraying him?”
The man lifted his chin. “Because I am loyal to Sir Theodore. And to your wife.”
That last part gave me pause, given the earnestness with which he said it.
“What possible loyalty could you have toward a Lochlannian princess?” I demanded.
And storms help this man if it had anything to do with her relationship with Korhonan.
Once again, he met my eyes without hesitation. “Your wife saved my life during the Unclanned attack. I had never shown her a single shred of kindness, and she picked up a dead man’s sword and killed a man who was about to kill me.”
He sounded sincere, and that certainly sounded like Rowan.
Taking him at his word was dangerous, though.
If we abandoned the front here, Iiro could overwhelm Bear from the southwest. But if the man was telling the truth and forces were coming from the southeastern border, they could march straight for the estate.
If they captured that, the war was over for Bear, and there was no hope of victory for the other clans without us.
Worse still, we had no allies on that side. Lynx and Crane were trapped fighting on the other side of this battle.
Bison remained completely neutral in this conflict, and Lochlann, even if I was willing to call for their aid and King Logan was willing to give it, would take weeks to arrive through the tunnels.
Even with the defenses of the estate, it would be a slaughter if we didn’t bring in extra forces.
Still, we couldn’t move everyone from the line here without adding the substantial line of troops Iiro had on this end to that attack.
Hell, even if we did move most of our troops there, if Wolf and Elk attacked together, they would easily overwhelm the castle.
If the man was telling the truth.
He examined my features, then slowly reached toward his jacket. “I’m only going for a note,” he said.
I nodded, and he pulled out a folded piece of parchment, handing it over to me. The handwriting was familiar from all the letters Korhonan had written Rowan.
For everything I had ever thought about him, I didn’t honestly believe he would betray anyone on this level, or...as much as I hated to admit it, put Rowan in any kind of danger.
He did love her, and I couldn’t actually bring myself to hate him for that right now. Not when I read his note.
It was a hastily sketched map with X’s drawn for where the troops were, something any soldier learned how to do, and then a single line of words.
He wants revenge on both of you.
That explained why he was warning me, aside from just basic decency. Rowan was a direct target of this attack, which I could have guessed. But having it confirmed…
I took several tense breaths through my nose, then turned my attention back to the man.
It was specific wording.
Iiro never would have attacked if he hadn’t wanted us dead, and Korhonan would not have risked sending his man into my camp to tell me something I already knew. He hadn’t said, Iiro wants you dead , though.
He wants revenge .
Furious clouds of red edged out my vision. That damned well made two of us, especially when I finally pried out of the officer the things Iiro had ordered done to the innocent villagers along the border, just to make an example of them. Samu would have been a mercy compared to what the pretend-king had done.
And now he wanted to get his hands on my wife.
My heart beat an unsteady staccato in my ears, my breaths coming too fast in my chest. The feeling was so foreign that it took me entirely too long to identify it.
Panic .
Because if Wolf had betrayed us, then Bear would fall. Even the fortified estate would not hold up against that kind of assault.
And Iiro wanted my wife—my endlessly brave and infinitely reckless lemmikki, who would die before backing down from his threat, who would meet him with her head held high, stare him down the same way she had Ava and the whip that nearly killed her.
Even when we were outnumbered and outmaneuvered, she would face him down with all the fierceness she possessed. And just like I had been in that throne room, I would be powerless to stop him from exacting every inch of the vengeance he wanted so badly on her perfect body.
Hell, knowing him, he would make me watch as she screamed. He was already volatile where she was concerned, already crueler than he ever let people see, and his failed plan at the Obsidian Palace had pushed him too far.
Far enough that his eternally loyal brother had betrayed him for the sake of warning us. What had he done to make Korhonan scared enough for Rowan to reach out to me?
I blinked, and all I could see was snow stained crimson with blood. Pouring from the gashes on her back. The slice wound on her neck. All the times I hadn’t been fast enough to save her, and this time – this time, there wasn’t even a chance.
No .
Maybe I would die and maybe my clan would fall with me, but he could not have her. Not my lemmikki.
Not while there was still breath in my body to keep her safe.
“I assume you’re returning to him, to report?” I asked the messenger, who had been standing silently to allow me to process his news.
He nodded, brow furrowed.
My brain worked furiously, weighing the very few options I had before landing on the only possible choice. The only way to keep her from paying the price of my mistakes.
I looked at the Elk soldier, reluctantly deciding to trust a man I had done nothing but despise for the better part of a decade.
“Then I need you to give him a message as well.”