Chapter 61 Ahnna
Ahnna
Ahnna caught hold of Aren’s sword hand as she slammed into her brother and yanked the blade away from James’s throat.
She and Aren rolled, nearly falling into the water, but Ahnna ended up on top. “No!”
Her brother blinked in shock. “Ahnna?”
“Did you eat?” she screamed the question. “Did you eat the bread?”
“What? I…No, no bread.”
There was no time for relief. Ahnna’s attention snapped to the soldiers pinning the struggling James. He was alive, but she couldn’t see his neck. Couldn’t see how deep the blade had cut.
“Let him go!” she barked at them, and whether it was shock at her return or old habit, they instantly obeyed.
James pushed himself upright, glaring at the soldiers as he wiped away the blood from his throat.
He’s still alive. Thank God and the stars, he’s still alive.
Aren’s whisper caught her attention. “You’re alive. How are you alive?”
She ignored her brother and looked to Lara. Her sister-in-law’s blue eyes were the only pair in the whole mix of this chaos that seemed sharp. “Katarina is in league with Alexandra. The grain is laced with poison.”
Lara didn’t question her. Didn’t make Ahnna offer proof. She only shouted, “Everyone who ate, puke it up. The rest of you, get on the water and call in reinforcements. We need to sink that ship!”
Shocked or not, their people were trained, and no one hesitated. Warriors flung themselves into boats and horns sounded, calling everyone within earshot to battle, while those who’d eaten stuck fingers down their throats. She prayed it would work. Prayed that it would be enough to keep them alive.
She scrambled up the slope to James. His throat was covered with blood. “How badly are you hurt?”
“He can hit,” James croaked, lifting his hand to his jaw. Ahnna fell to her knees, half in his lap as she looked at the nasty cut that had dug deep just shy of his jugular. Twisting around, she screamed at Aren, “You idiot! You almost killed him!”
“I’d like an explanation for why you don’t want him dead!” Aren retorted. “You owe me a few explanations, Ahnna!”
“Go fuck yourself!” Her heart was thundering so fast that she felt like she was going to be sick. Only for a far larger threat than her brother to appear on the scene.
Bronwyn was striding toward them, sword in hand and murder in her gaze.
Staggering to her feet, Ahnna reached to her side for a weapon but came up empty. Moving in front of James, she squared her feet. “Bronwyn, I don’t want to fight you. Just—”
Bronwyn’s sword slashed through the air, only to collide against Lara’s blade with enough force that sparks flew.
“Stand down.” Lara’s voice was low, but it held total authority. “You don’t get to pick this fight.”
“This is my fight as much as anyone’s,” Bronwyn shouted, her blade scraping down Lara’s as she tried to deflect it, but Lara reached out with shocking speed, her left hand closing on her sister’s wrist.
“Then you’ll have to fight me first.”
The two sisters stared down each other, and in her periphery, Ahnna saw Aren draw his weapon.
But then Taryn was pushing through the crowd.
Seawater dripping from her sodden clothes, she caught hold of Bronwyn’s shoulders, murmuring urgently into her ear.
Slowly, Bronwyn lowered her weapon, but the anger remained.
“I thought you were better than this, Ahnna,” she snapped.
“I thought you knew what loyalty meant, but for all your claims, you only ever put yourself first.”
Ahnna took a step toward her friend, reaching out a hand. “Bronwyn, if you’d only listen—”
“I don’t care to hear how you’re justifying all that you’ve done.” Bronwyn caught hold of Taryn’s arm, bodily pulling her down to one of the canoes pulled up on the beach.
Grief and guilt pooled in Ahnna’s core, and all around her, she felt the weight of condemnation, because they believed her to be the cause of all of this. “I didn’t kill Edward.”
“Ahnna,” Aren said, wiping a hand over his face. “I know what Edward threatened—”
“She’s innocent.” James’s voice cut the air.
“And she has suffered far beyond the point where most would have lain down and died to try to stop those who’d see everyone in this kingdom dead.
The only reason any of you will live to see another day is because of Ahnna, so you will show her the respect she is due. ”
Her chest tightened, and despite knowing that no one here would understand, Ahnna turned and fell to her knees before James. Flinging her arms around him, she clung to him, still afraid that she was going to blink and find him dead on the ground.
Except this time, she hadn’t been too late.
“How are you still alive?” she whispered, ignoring the mutters behind her. “The cove is red with blood. The sharks killed everyone.”
James’s arms closed around her back, holding her close. “I stayed still.”
“That doesn’t work in a frenzy.” All logic screamed that he should be dead, because the cove’s water was entirely crimson, only pieces washing against the shore.
James shrugged, then touched his right cheekbone with a wince, seeming more concerned with his rapidly swelling eye than the fact he was nearly eaten. “A big shark with scars and a missing eye came right up to me and had a good look, but it went after an Amaridian instead.”
Ahnna went still, and the muttering behind her went silent.
Heart in her throat, Ahnna turned her face to look at her brother. Aren’s face was drained of color. “I saw her earlier. I recognized the scars on her sides.”
Ahnna nodded, her chest so tight it made it hard to speak. “If you won’t trust me, I hope you’ll trust a guardian.”
The murmurs burst out among those watching, but Aren only looked away.
“What are you talking about?” James’s breath was warm against her ear. “What is so important about the shark?”
Her lips parted, but the words caught in her throat and all she managed was, “That shark is a guardian. One of the oldest in Ithicana.”
“What does that mean?”
Ahnna couldn’t get the words out, so it was Lara who answered. “There is a myth that if the guardians show a person mercy, it means the person is loyal to Ithicana.”
“I see,” James said, but Ahnna barely heard him, her memory filled with another moment in which Ithicana’s guardians had offered salvation. Of how she’d raged then against putting stock in myths but now desperately clung to the spark of hope it planted in her heart.
Lara knelt next to them, her skilled gaze taking in James’s throat. “That needs stitches.” Then her focus moved to Ahnna. “I know there is a lot to tell, but what do we need to know right now to salvage this situation?”
Coughing to clear the lump in her throat, Ahnna said, “Alexandra is behind Edward’s murder.
She inflicted those injuries on herself as part of her scheme to frame me.
Her reasons are myriad, but what matters is that her goal is the bridge and she and Katarina are working together.
All the grain is full of poison, and the ship that delivered up north already struck its blow.
” She blinked away the memory of the bridge full of bodies of her people.
“Aster is dead. He told me before he died that he sent soldiers by foot and ship to try to stop everyone from eating the poison, but I…I don’t know if they made it in time. ”
Aren swore, but Lara’s eyes only darkened as she climbed to her feet. She snatched hold of the shirt of one of the Amaridians and dragged him up. “Did you know the bread you were feeding us was poisoned?”
He struggled, trying to get away, but she only produced a knife, which she pressed to his throat. “Half my people on this beach are going to die because they ate your poison. Did you know?”
“They won’t!” he squealed. “The sample grain they gave you was good, I swear it! No one here will die from it! Please let me live!”
Lara only gave a snort of disgust and dragged her blade across his throat.
She shoved him into the water, then gave one of the wounded Amaridians a sharp kick that sent him rolling off the rocks into the sea with a splash.
His screams cut off a heartbeat later, only to be replaced by more screams as Lara systematically shoved the Amaridian survivors into the water.
Lara then took a horn from Lia and blew a series of notes. Commands to attack. Commands to show no mercy.
A ragged breath pulled from her, and Ahnna sagged against James, only now realizing how much she’d feared that they wouldn’t believe her. How much she’d feared her family would condemn her for all the tragedy that had befallen them.
Vaguely she was aware of sounds of battle in the distance. Explosions, screams, and the clashes of weapons, her people boarding and taking control of the other ship before it could flee back to Katarina.
She should get up. Should fight.
James ran a hand down her spine. “Let your people have this fight.” He rested his cheek against hers, lips brushing her ear. “You did it, love. You saved them.”
Saving her people had been Ahnna’s goal. It had driven her through fear and pain and suffering, because no part of her had been willing to give in while her people’s lives were on the line.
She’d not saved them all, and the weight of those losses would haunt her forever, but Ahnna set aside her grief, because the war had only just begun.
Shoving emotion behind walls and embracing the soldier within her, Ahnna climbed to her feet and started up a path through the trees until she reached the cliffs overlooking the seas.
The other ship was listing in the water, a large hole in its hull and its decks swarming with Ithicanians.
The Amaridians were on their knees in surrender.
Aren stopped next to Ahnna’s elbow. “That grain would have become bread that fed every person in Ithicana,” he said softly. “Not just soldiers, but innocents. Children.”
“That sort of evil deserves no mercy,” she replied, her heart hardening. “Kill them all.”
“Lia, ring the dinner bell,” Aren ordered. “Let Amarid feed the fish.”