Chapter 48
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
I pray this gets to you. The king’s power dwindles. Strike soon.
“Absolutely not,” I snapped, as Evony trailed me through the muddy avenues of camp, now only a mile south of the walls of Aedrialis. “We agreed you’d keep to the back of the lines and remain with Tempest.”
Though the mare wasn’t up to the standards of the agrippa in our homestead in Aedrialis, she was fierce, and I was confident she wouldn’t let a single person hurt her rider.
“And should I signal you, you ride back to Khasimir. That was the plan. That was the agreement, Evony. The only reason you are here with us is because you agreed to it.”
“That horse is psychotic!” she shouted after me, reaching for my arm.
I stopped, sliding into the mud, turning to her. “I don’t care if you think she’s psychotic. I trust her to keep you safe, so you’ll stay with her.”
“I want to fight with you,” Evony pleaded, a pathetic mask of desperation forcing her lips down.
“I told you I’m going to keep you safe—”
“Then what has been the point of all this?” she snapped, her temper flaring.
I swallowed, glancing around the bustling camp. “Calm down, Ev—”
“I’m serious! What has been the point of training me? You, Nerissa, Vulcan, Ezrich… Am I not good enough? I want to help. I’m going to help.” The muscle in her jaw twitched as she dug her heels into the ground.
My powers blinked awake at my rising anger, and I did my best to leash them, resisting the smoldering glow forming in my eyes.
“I can see you’re upset,” I tried, forcing a gentleness into my voice.
“Oh, did your Bellator powers tell you that?” she snapped, her fists shooting to her hips as she raised her eyebrows.
“The point of it,” I said quietly, stepping up to her, “is to keep you fucking safe. To ensure you can protect yourself. Not to blatantly put you in more danger. You are sixteen years old. I’m not allowing you to march to war.”
“You’re not my fucking mum.”
“Morwyn would skewer me alive if she knew I sent you to war.”
She opened her mouth to protest.
I held up a hand, “We’re done.” I stalked off as she hurled a colorful array of curses at me.
My fingers tugged the back of Nerissa’s armor-enforced leather vest, tightening the laces in our dark tent.
Tiberius’s hooves slammed onto the ground outside, followed by the wild flap of Aquila’s wings, shuddering the walls of our tent.
“No changes,” Nerissa murmured, eyeing the flaps of the tent as Aquila spoke to her.
I nodded in agreement. Our caeluma had scouted the city for the last two days.
And though we knew Saros’s shield was strong, we tested our magic at its barriers anyway, with no luck.
Our powers bucked against it, but we’d at least been able to determine the border of the shield.
When Nerissa and Aquila sent blasts of white flames against it, the light seemed to bounce off the shield, illuminating its edges.
Word had spread that Lord Pavel’s ships had saved Stynguard from Dark King Daimos’s forces, and Saros’s soldiers now marched south. Our window to take Aedrialis shrank rapidly.
“The night before always sucks,” she muttered as she began twisting two tight braids down the side of her head.
“I know,” I replied, thinking of that last night on the Lake of Light with Bayne. I’d been sick with nerves, and he’d given me what I’d needed. And now, where was he? I squashed the thoughts before they could take me down a path I wasn’t ready to travel.
Nerissa’s Ravindra eyes slid to me as if she knew.
“We keep to the plan,” she murmured. “Aedrialis. Nivis. Lotrennia.”
I nodded, turning so she could do the laces on my own vest as I strapped the gauntlets over my forearms.
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay with Ronan tonight?” I asked, keenly aware of how close I flew to her flames.
Nerissa straightened, cracking her neck and rolling her shoulders. “I’ll see him at dawn.”
Lightning cracked in the skies, its flash illuminating the shadows of the neighboring tents against the walls of our own. Nerissa frowned, sheathing her blades.
“Not good for flying,” she murmured. “Maybe Vienah can get that under control.”
I nodded my agreement. “Thank the gods for sending us a water witch.”
My head snapped up at the swish of the tent flap. Kresida appeared a moment later, the few lit tapers shining off the wet stripe of black paint against her dark skin. Her eyes slid to Nerissa.
“Commander,” she murmured, Nerissa’s previous title rolling off her lips in assured confidence. Kresida held a small vial of paint and nodded to the ex-War Slayer.
Nerissa had stiffened, but her emerald eyes slid from the ebony paint to the matching wolf skull on Kresida’s shoulder. I nodded to the two of them before stepping outside.
The deafening boom of air canons echoed below where Tiberius and I circled the gathering Rising forces in the early hours of the morning. Thousands of troops lined the fields south of Aedrialis, ready to march on the city as soon as its shield fell.
We banked, heading toward the fleet Astraeus had called to arms. My head cocked as I spied eighty ships lining the coast of Sultira, all flying the same flag, a V outlined with the snaking heads of the Hydra.
The same had replaced the Marisarma flag that flew atop Astraeus’s massive ship. V for Votruvia.
A blast of white light shot forth as Aquila signaled the second coordinated rubelline air cannon attack. I braced myself as forty glowing, red balls pummeled the invisible shield around Aedrialis, the wind around it rippling in a wave of magic.
Fuck.
My stomach dipped. The shield held.
We continued circling, and I spied Vienah in the leathers she so despised at the stern of the Hydra.
Astraeus’s blue coat flashed, and I pulled my gaze toward the forces on land.
Ronan sat atop his own agrippa, a steadfast stallion I’d picked for him.
He wore plain, silver armor we’d scraped up from the old keep at Khasimir.
Carina stood at the front lines alongside Kresida, with Drystan in his own armor twenty yards away. He glanced up, nodding a greeting as we passed.
Vulcan adjusted his seat behind me. Despite my protests, he and the mother hen we rode atop refused any other post I suggested for the elf.
Another flash from above and a third volley of cannons echoed from below, banging against the city’s unyielding barrier.
“How many more rubellines do we have?”
“Three more volleys worth,” Vulcan called as the wind whipped around us.
Ti circled behind our troops when a blur of small, dark figures caught my eye from the mountains.
“Are those—”
“Yes,” Vulcan growled from behind me.
Ti, can you—
Already on it.
I glanced behind to see Aquila dive, the surrounding troops clearing the field to make room for his landing near Ronan, no doubt to communicate the arrival of Evony’s strange friends.
Tiberius picked up his speed and soared toward the creatures gathering at the mouth of a cave near the foothills. Ti’s hooves hammered down as we landed a short distance away.
Gork stood at the front of the group, his peg leg clacking against the stony ground as he shuffled ahead and frantically pointed south.
I slid off Ti’s back and stepped up to Gork. “What is it? Why are you here?”
Gork mumbled something in his own language, pointing again to the south.
“I don’t know what you’re saying.” I shook my head as another flash of white light illuminated the morning sky, and the resounding canons thundered into the shield.
Gork became frantic, gesturing with his little clawed hands and pounding his makeshift spear on the ground.
“Can you draw it?” I asked, pointing to his spear. I knelt on the ground and used my finger to draw a circle with two intersecting arrows in it, not sure why the unknown symbol always seemed to come to mind.
Gork stilled as he watched me, quickly smudging my drawing with his hairy bare feet and marking up the dirt with his spear.
“Aedrialis,” I said aloud, as he drew a circle with a large, spear-like structure in the middle.
“Us, yes, I see…”
He continued with little ships in the sea and dots of troops to the south. Ten arrows swooped up from below, followed by what looked to be a skull. Death.
“Troops,” I breathed. “Saros’s troops from the south? From Rellenor?”
Vulcan’s mouth drew a thin line as I turned to him.
“Ten thousand, you think?” he asked Gork, lowering his bow.
Gork nodded grimly before turning back to his clan of beasts.
“How did they catch up so quickly? They must have had eyes on Skyscape Pass,” I said, shaking my head.
Gork stopped and began shouting at us, arguing.
“You didn’t let anyone else through, did you?” I said more than asked, understanding his defensiveness. “Thank you for the warning, Gork,” I called after him before leaping onto Tiberius’s to soar back to Aedrialis.
“If the shield’s not down by now,” Vulcan murmured, “we’ll have to turn all our attention to the south. They’ll be on us in a day.”
The energy in the war tent was as restless as my powers as we stood around the same damn table, arguing over what the hell we were going to do.
“Do we know how many rubelline canons Astraeus has left?” Ronan asked the grim group.
“He’s on his way, so you can ask him yourself,” I muttered as I paced like a caged animal behind the line of commanders. I yanked on that bit of air connecting me to the pirate so hard it nearly knocked the wind out of me, and my breath escaped in a cough.
Nerissa’s eyes glowed green against the line of paint Kresida had applied.
They’d found Vulcan at some point, as the same line stretched across his face.
The three War Slayers bent over the map as they murmured to each other.
Carina stood on the opposite side, quiet and pensive as if working out some riddle.
The tent flaps blew open as Vienah hurried in, stepping to my side.
“I heard what happened,” she said, grabbing for my hand. “Ten thousand?”
I nodded grimly as Astraeus, Raek, and four of his men stepped inside. Similar war paint donned the pirate lord’s face, except five dark lines stretched down from the thick band across his forehead, as if someone had slid their hand down the front of his face. The same marked his crew.
“Astraeus!” a no-name general shouted at him. “What the hell is happening with your canons?”
Astraeus’s gaze darkened as he took in the large man’s sneer, but he turned to Ronan, ignoring him entirely.
“We have a problem,” Astraeus said, stepping up to the table.
“No shit,” Ronan replied, straightening. “The rubellines aren’t working.”
“The rubellines,” Astraeus seethed, “are fine.” He rubbed a hand over his short beard. “Saros’s shield is just thick.”
“What’s our problem then?” Ronan demanded.
“Not what, but who,” Astraeus purred, moving faster than I’d ever seen him and placing the sharp edge of his blade against Vienah’s thin neck.