Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Rankor
“Ow!” Kent flinched as the palm of my hand connected with his cheek in an unforgiving slap that left a sting against the tip of my fingers. “What the fuck?”
I grinned, shrugging innocently. “I saw a bug.”
Lie.
But I was bored. And Kent was still moping.
So, it seemed necessary to bring some levity to our little group.
We’d been traveling for a couple of days now, through the brisk winter air. The scenery had all started to bleed together, and I was miserably tired of seeing nothing but dirt roads and dying forests covered in patches of still-melting ice.
Kressida’s high-pitched giggles behind us assured me that at least one of my companions had found the humor in my little prank.
Kent, however, looked less than impressed. His glare was deadly as he reached over and shoved me so hard that my horse gave an unhappy snort as I struggled to maintain my balance.
“Don’t do that again,” he warned, jabbing a finger towards me.
“Please do it again,” Kreyana begged.
I sent her an encouraging grin over my shoulder when Kent turned his attention back to the road in front of us.
I would most definitely be doing it again.
Kreyana’s laughter was joined by a few chuckles from the band of soldiers we’d gathered during our travels.
Initially, we had planned to send all of the eager men we gathered ahead of us to Nikolai’s estate, but at some point, we had decided to allow a few to ride with us as we made our way towards my brother and the princesses.
That decision had been easy to make after we’d faced the first of those undead monsters from the Underworld.
A group of the freakish creatures had attacked us a few nights ago while we were camping, and damn, I still couldn’t get the rotten smell of them out of my nose.
I’d faced plenty of Ciclopia’s beasts during my life, but these were something else entirely.
It was as if they had been rotting from the inside out.
Some had barely had any skin covering their faces, and they were practically impossible to kill.
It had taken both Kent and me working together in perfect tandem to defeat the three who had attacked us that night. I’d taken one look at him when the battle was done, while we were both sweating, panting messes, and knew we'd both come to the same realization: we needed help.
Antoni had been the first to volunteer to come with us.
We’d met the blacksmith on the outskirts of the town of Eileen.
Although he was a decade older than I, with gray streaks in his unevenly cut dark hair, his strength was pretty remarkable.
His shoulders were broad, his arms thick from the work of forging weapons.
Kent and I agreed that his powers as a Fire Elemental could definitely come in handy.
After Antoni, Patrek had joined our group. He was child-like compared to Antoni, thin and short, but he was an impressively powerful Detonator and I liked the idea of having someone nearby who could blow up our enemies.
Last was Michone, a young woman with hair that hung in beautifully elaborate braids down the expanse of her back.
She’d been working in a tavern as a sort of enforcer for anyone who tried to cheat at the card games.
I took one look at her brandishing those long swords she kept strapped across her back and took an instant liking to her.
Then, I saw her use her abilities as a Healer to stitch up one of the fools who’d gotten bested in a bar fight and invited her to join us.
A badass with a healing ability was an easy addition to their team.
The only thing I was missing now was a woman to curl against me at night.
Michone was easy enough on the eyes, but she scared me a little bit, truthfully.
She had a quiet kind of intensity that left me on edge.
Not that that mattered. If the heated looks she sent Kent across the fire at night were any indication, she had set her sights on my friend.
I’d been plenty clear with him on multiple occasions that if he wanted to invite her to his tent, I had no problem playing nursemaid to the twins for the night.
He hadn’t taken me up on that offer yet, but I supposed it was just a matter of time.
“Are we close?” Kent asked, raising a hand to his brow as he squinted into the distance.
The day was thankfully a little warmer than the past few weeks. Spring was on its way slowly but surely. Still, I blew air into my palms to bring some feeling back to the tips of my fingers.
I looked ahead, struggling to remember the path I’d taken the last time I had traveled these roads.
“There.” I pointed to the small dirt path that breaks away to the right of the main road.
Kent nodded, pulling on his reins to direct his horse towards the path. It was still a long way to the house, but I could already see it in the distance. Gods, it felt like an eternity had passed since I'd dropped off Elaijah here.
After our mother died, I’d left Elaijah here under the care of our Uncle Clydric, not realizing the old man was going to kick the bucket too only a few months later.
I started preparing to bring my brother to court shortly afterwards, only to start receiving several letters from him in which he insisted he was more than old enough to take care of the land by himself.
It had made me nervous to leave him there, but I trusted him.
It seemed I'd made the right decision.
The property did look surprisingly well-maintained.
I examined it all as we trotted forward, humming appreciatively.
The fence holding the sheep in the pen looked like it had recently been rebuilt.
The porch had been cleaned of all the old barrels and crates our Uncle had left discarded.
It even looked like the front door had been painted a nice cherry color.
“Is that him?” Kent inclined his head to the left, and I jerked my attention to where he pointed, grinning wide when I spotted the nearby shepherd in the field.
My horse stomped its foot unhappily as I threw myself off him with very little warning, sprinting towards my brother with a boisterous roar.
Wild bleats sounded as the sheep hurried away when I lurched over the fence and tackled Elaijah, wrapping my younger brother in a sweeping hug that lifted the boy from his feet. Elaijah made a garbled sound of shock before gearing up and slamming his fist repeatedly into my gut.
There was a shocking amount of strength in the blow.
“Oof!” I doubled over, pressing a hand to my stomach as I struggled to catch my breath. “Who taught you to punch like that?”
Finding his footing, Elaijah stared down at me, eyes growing wide at first with confusion, then pure joy.
“You did, asshole!” He ripped me back towards him, and I accepted his crushing hug, holding him close before pulling back and looking him over.
“Damn.” I whistled appreciatively, lifting my brows as I noticed the swell of muscles lining his shoulders and arms. Muscles that had definitely not been there the last time I’d seen him.
Not to mention he’d grown half a foot.
Fuck, was he taller than me?
Elaijah rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, a blush creeping into his cheeks.
How did this even happen? It hadn’t been that long since I’d last seen him.
“Did you start lifting your sheep?” I wondered aloud, scratching at the back of my head.
He chuckled, gaze flickering to the beasts. “Well… yeah. Kind of, at least.”
His brow furrowed as his eyes shifted over my shoulder to the ragtag group of misfits waiting for us several yards back. His lips pinched in understanding and he released his breath in a rush, resting his hands on his hips.
“So,” he murmured. “I suspect you’re here to try to make me leave my sheep again?”
I threw him a sympathetic grin as I tossed an arm over his shoulder and started leading him towards the house. I knew how much he loved this little life he had built for himself, and I hated that I had to tear him away from his home.
Again.
“Would it help if I told you I brought you some new friends to replace them?”
His sideways glare lacked any real malice. “What makes you think I’ll like your friends?”
“Well, you like me,” I reminded him, holding a hand to my chest. “They also like me. And I like them. That all adds up, don’t you think?”
The math made sense to me, at least.
I’d expected Elaijah to put up more of a fight about leaving the farm.
In preparation, I’d even planned out a rather long, rather convincing speech filled with reasons about how reckless and unsafe it would be for him to stay here on his own.
I’d practiced it over and over in my head during the trek from Kent’s cottage to Elaijah’s farm. I was damn proud of that speech.
And I hadn’t needed it at all.
In fact, I had barely even finished telling Elaijah about the battle at the castle before my brother had stood up and begun packing his things into a small leather satchel.
Then he’d been the one to march back out to Kent and the others and announce that we’d better get going before we waste any more daylight.
And so we were off, continuing north towards the princesses’ school.
Elaijah and I talked for hours as we rode, but eventually even that conversation died out, and I was back to feeling utterly cold and mentally exhausted from traveling so intensely.
Kent seemed just as worn down. I couldn’t help but notice the way he’d started to hang his head as we rode.
Lately, he hadn’t been speaking much either, sometimes no more than a few words at a time.
Although maybe he simply felt exhausted from constantly using his magic to numb the pangs of grief that his sisters felt.
I wasn't sure how much good that would do them in the long run.
The twins weren’t much younger than we had been when the Great War started. Grief had found us regardless of our ages.
“Do you feel ready for it?” I asked him.
Kent turned towards me with raised brows.
“The war,” I clarified, visions of battle flashing in my mind. Bodies falling. Ground soggy with blood. Pain too deep to bear.
It seemed to be the only thing I could think about lately.
Kent ran his tongue over his teeth, shifting as he subtly glanced over his shoulder to check that our siblings weren’t close enough to overhear this conversation. “Not at all. Do you?”
I thought for a long moment as a wind sent a rustling through the nearby trees. “I didn’t think any war could be worse than the Great War.”
My horse whinnied, shaking out its mane. Even the beasts were anxious about what was to come.
“This one will be,” Kent agreed, finishing my thought. “This is a war of Gods. It’s unfathomable.”
“You know, back then, during the Great War, I ran into battle with hopes of glory. I know better now. I know that even victory has consequences.”
I’d been so young then. Young and idealistic. War and battle had seemed serious and frightening, of course, but there had also been this hope for infamy on the other side of it. I’d gone to bed each night dreaming of my name going down in history.
After a while, though, those dreams faded into something darker. Visions of terror and bloodshed started to fill them.
How many more nightmares would plague me when this is over?
Heavy hoofbeats sounded behind us, and I stiffened, turning to where Elaijah now charged towards me with urgency.
“There!” Elaijah pointed towards the woods to our left. “Monsters.”
I followed the line of his finger with narrowed eyes, unsheathing my sword as I did. I’d been periodically scanning the tree lines, an old habit, and had seen nothing myself, but I’d learned a long time ago to trust my brother’s instincts. If Elaijah suspected that danger was imminent, then it was.
Guess it was time already to add a new nightmare to my collection.
I glanced toward Kent, and we nodded in time with one another, both understanding our given roles. Pulling on his reins, he broke away, quickly gathering Antoni, Michone, and Patrek into a formation in front of his sisters.
“Get back with the twins,” I ordered Elaijah, moving ahead of him.
Sure enough, a body emerged from the woods, crawling towards us on all fours at an impossible pace.
It was a gruesome-looking thing. Even from this distance, I could make out the splattering of dark, decaying flesh across its brow. Torn clothes exposed bits of its chest and thigh. My upper lip curled back in disgust as I watched it open its jaw in an inhuman scream.
Elaijah grumbled something in response to my command, but I didn’t bother listening. I had already focused on the enemy. Adrenaline coursed through me, racing through my eager muscles as I pushed myself off my horse and adjusted my grip on my weapon.
Behind me, Michone unsheathed one of the two blades she kept across her back while Antoni brought two balls of burning flames to his fingertips.
“I really don’t like the look of these things,” Patrek grumbled, pulling a long, feathered arrow from the quiver strapped behind him.
Michone fell back a few paces, keeping the twins and Elaijah behind her while Antoni moved to flank my side, his eyes as carefully trained on the tree line as my own.
“You got this?” Kent asked on my left.
A loud pop sounded as I eagerly cracked my knuckles, a happy grin spreading on my features.
These creatures might be ugly and dangerous, but at least they helped break up the monotony of this trip and temporarily quieted the existential dread in my mind.
“Oh, yeah.” I bounced onto the balls of my feet, feeling almost giddy. “I got this.”
I didn’t hesitate. Sending energy down through the muscles in my thighs and calves, I pulled on the magical strength from my Godly ancestor to push me into an unforgiving sprint.
Wind ripped past me, pulling my long hair out from where I had tied it back.
I took measured breaths, in through my nose, out through my mouth as I forced myself faster and faster, building momentum to—
Another creature emerged from the trees.
Then another.
My steps slowed.
Shit, there were even more waiting in the shadows.
I groaned as I took in each and every pair of hungry eyes that simultaneously locked onto me from within the woods.
For a moment, everything stilled as I skidded to a halt.
And then, before I could even look back to warn the others, they pounced.
Dozens of monsters rushed forward towards me, hands outstretched like needy claws as the roar of their hungry cries sounded out in a deafening roar.
Fuck me.
I turned on my heels, arms flailing as I sprinted back in the direction I came from.
“I don’t got this!”