Chapter 25
Chapter
Twenty-Five
THE COMMANDER
W ar.
No matter how hard my feet hit the ground at impossible speeds or how fast the world blurred around me, the word rattled in my brain.
Those measly Serpents should have thanked us for ridding them of Fabrian, the most useless, ruthless, and wasteful Clan heir they’d had in generations.
But no.
They wanted revenge.
More Serpent spies and scouts on the Blood Brotherhood border could only mean one thing–an upcoming attack, grander than the skirmish we’d already had with them in the valley separating us from the Defector Lands.
So Zandyr had obliterated Edrion, the Serpents general, in a cloud of blood and sinew. His powers had just manifested, they were still hard to control. He’d done them a favor, as far as I was concerned. Sylvester had seen more battles than Edrion.
Nobody could deny the situation was dire and growing more dangerous by the day.
“Even if it comes to a Clan war, the Serpents are outnumbered, outmanned, and outarmed,” Calyx had complained from his palaver portal.
The rest of us had gathered in the Capital earlier today, but our biggest and brawniest was still recuperating from that heinous wound he’d sustained on Sanctua Sirena.
Even sitting in a chair instead of laying down had given his skin a strange green pallor.
“Perhaps,” I said, drumming my fingers on the ceremonial table, carved by generations we’d all forgotten the names of, but which had raised this Clan into the fiercest in all of Malhaven. “But the Serpents have something we lack–huge fucking snakes.”
Elysia scoffed to my right. “They can’t be that big.”
“No. They’re bigger.”
I’d seen them with my own disbelieving eyes.
Massive beasts, with heads as big as carriages, front fangs tall as men, and bodies long enough to coil on top of hills and engulf them whole.
The Clan Council had long forbidden magicked creatures in Clan battles, but the Serpents had defied the rules. The magistrates, so eager to seal our fates with the Protectorate’s in ungodly marriages, had yet to sanction the Serpents.
Or admit they even had those huge fucking snakes to begin with.
“Why isn’t the Clan Council taking a stance?” Zandyr’s voice cut through the dimly-lit room from the head of the table.
He shouldn’t have, but he blamed himself for this entire debacle.
His blade had sliced Fabrian in two.
His pride and conscience had pushed him to claim Evie’s hand.
But the responsibility was not his to bear. We’d followed him to Sanctua Sirena and nobody could have predicted the massacre which had taken Alaric’s life.
Not even I.
“There’s something rotten within the magistrates’ ranks,” Soryn said bitterly, with that same clipped tone he always had when that big brain of his couldn’t solve a puzzle. “And I can’t find the head of the beast to behead it.”
Magistrate corruption or not, this issue went deeper.
I doubted a magistrate had bothered to sick The Mountain on The Huntress.
No, no. That disease had sprung from the Protectorate itself.
“Those snakes can swallow battalions whole. We need to be prepared.” Zandyr drummed his fingers on the edge of the table as if he wanted to pierce it.
Something.
Anything.
I knew the feeling well. Of trying to contain the urge to kill.
It had taken the entirety of my control not to evaporate The Mountain when I’d seen his hands on her beautiful neck.
The same neck which I’d tasted–soft and yet defiant at the same time–and now haunted my every waking moment.
“I’ve built some new weapons which could shred three grown men in less than a second.” Calyx shrugged. “I can build ones that destroy huge reptiles. It’s not like I have anything better to do right now.”
He grimaced at his own leg, extended at an unnatural angle and still wrapped in gauze. Gods knew what wound lay underneath if it had managed to halt one of the best Blood Brotherhood warriors.
“I’ll find the cure,” Elysia said with an unnerving intensity. “Even if I have to dig the entirety of Malhaven to do it.”
“I know, Viper,” Calyx said, releasing a long sigh. “I’m just…not used to sitting in one place for too long.”
“Your priority is to recuperate,” Zandyr said, voice leaving no room for argument. “Heal and then you can kill all the Serpents who dare come at you.”
Finally, a corner of Calyx’s mouth ticked up. “They are a stupid, prideful bunch, aren’t they?”
“They’re also powerful. And rich,” I said. “Zandyr is right. We need to be prepared. Our Clan and the Veghearas are in danger.”
“Look who’s suddenly grown soft over the Vegheara brats he used to complain about,” Elysia sing-songed.
The Huntress was still a brat. A mouthy brat I couldn’t stop thinking about.
I fisted my palms underneath the table.
This was not the time and place to keep fretting about her, like I’d been doing since I’d tasted her. Had her scent envelop me and her legs coil around my hips.
That way led to madness.
“Just because you’ve managed to dodge the marriage contract so far doesn’t mean that responsibility won’t hunt you down,” I said, more tersely than I’d wanted.
Even from miles away, The Huntress tested my patience. Her essence unbalanced me in a way I was not used to and never thought possible.
The only thing keeping me seated and focused on talk of the unavoidable war was knowing she was safe in my city.
“I simply don’t know where my beloved betrothed is. Can’t blame a girl for that.” Elysia shrugged and sighed dramatically. “I should have just gutted him with a dagger back at the wedding and been done with it.”
My gaze met Calyx’s in the palaver portal. I raised my brows, a silent question about the dagger I’d left in his care after the massacre. The one which had killed Alaric.
Calyx shook his head as a reply.
Godsdammit.
I needed answers and I needed them fast.
That dagger could change the fate of the war.
I stared at the pile of weapons gathered in the center of the table, a tradition of old usually reserved for the moments after battle. But it felt like we were under constant attack.
The Serpents.
The Clan Council.
Protectorate members trying to abduct my Huntress.
And that didn’t even include the Northern Clans being a bigger pain in my ribs than usual.
“Say what you want, Viper, our fates are now linked to that family.” I steepled my fingers, still staring at the candlelight dancing on the blades, slashes of light jumping all around us. “If the Veghearas fall, our Clan will be next.”
And I’d meant every word.
I already had my suspicions that the connection between Zandyr and Evie burned deeper than either of them acknowledged. If I was right–and damn it, I was getting sick and tired of always being right when it came to problems–if the Lost Daughter fell, The Dragon would follow.
Losing our heir and leader would plunge the Blood Brotherhood into chaos.
Eldryan and Zavoya might have worn the crowns, but the responsibility of holding the Clan reins would fall onto the Blood Brotherhood Elite.
Onto me.
As the Commander, I would lead the army in Zandyr’s wake.
I didn’t envy his position and did not want it.
I’d joined the Blood Brotherhood to protect my people, not to rule a Clan I had not inherited.
My attention needed to remain on this side of the border. The one the Northern Clans still insisted I’d betrayed when I’d uprooted generations of traditions to align my city to the Blood Brotherhood.
Grim thoughts of war echoed behind me as I raced to the only place where I found peace, as twisted as it was.
Home.
The world came back into focus with a violent tug as I stopped running. My bones rattled as they rearranged themselves, scratching my skin and muscles from the inside.
I allowed myself one single shuddered breath as I stared at the lip of the crater.
The place I’d been born to rule and protect.
Solkar’s Reach.
Where the Sun god had reached his mighty hand and tore the earth when the mortals had displeased him, revealing the blazing veins flowing underneath us. The legends said his palm came down with a fiery vengeance, scorching everything in its wake, as a reminder not to toy with the gods.
I didn’t want to anger any god–especially one who could reach out and yank my people into the sky–but I believed in the lesser known myths.
The ones my mother whispered to me before bed, about Solkar sending a great fireball that blazed for a thousand days and a thousand nights, wiping the wretchedness from this place.
The crater’s lip was raised outwardly, the shards of earth turned to razor-sharp glass before I was even a glimmer in my ancestors’ minds.
But the blazing veins…those were true.
I stepped in the small space hidden between the shards, one hand latching onto the glassy rock carefully. I’d learned long ago the rocks willful and didn’t hesitate to cut those who didn’t respect them.
Before me, the lands of my ancestors spread out, farther than even I could see.
A sunken circle brimming with life, danger, and duty.
A city built on the ruins left behind by the gods.
One that had survived and thrived under my rule. But the cost of it still weighed on my chest, with each day that passed, each breath that I still had the good fortune to inhale. Or curse.
I hadn’t quite decided.
Nor had I decided whether the legacy of Solkar’s wrath was a gift or a plague.
The veins the legends warned against were real.
And they were made of magic.
Ancient, powerful, untamable.
With my sparking eyes, I could see the lines spidering through the crater, like deep, pulsating purple wounds.
Very few of my people and even fewer outsiders could witness the phenomenon beating through my realm, but many benefitted from it.
Too many.
But sacrifices had to be made for the greater good–which had become for the good of the Blood Brotherhood in the past years.
I would have rather recited that old chant a million and one times, every day, for the rest of my life, than to turn my city back into what I’d saved it from. A heart bled by greed, that’s what it had become.
No matter what anyone else said, I knew what had happened.
And the Northern Clans had too much to say. They never shut up, did they?
Many rumors had been started about my state of mind, potential spells cast upon me by evil forces, and even one that I’d been replaced by a very convincing replica and the real Commander was wasting away in a dungeon guarded by dragons.
That last one had even drawn out a smile from me. At least they still viewed me as fearsome enough that only dragons could entomb me.
The truth was I’d seen the reality with my own eyes.
Heard my mother’s tearful pleas, which still echoed in my ears.
Never again, for as long as I lived.
A harsh sting erupted in my palm. I yanked my arm back from the rock, only to see a nasty gash and a long trickle of blood oozing from it.
It had been years since the crater had left its mark on me in any way. In anger, I must have squeezed too tight, too eager, like a youngling on his first wilderness outing–another thing I had outlawed for good and would never be seen again in Solkar’s Reach.
My power rushed through me, flitting between bones, sinew, and blood, and stitched the wound. I flexed my fingers, watching as the stone lit up in a purple hue and gulped the spatter of blood I’d left on it.
Then came the hum.
Even after twenty-five years in this realm, the sound still unnerved me.
It sounded like a great beast opening its mouth and asking for its next sacrifice.
Magic always had a cost. The crater simply demanded a bigger one.
But the hum…it was different this time.
I narrowed my gaze at the crater.
It usually sounded lower. Deeper.
As if the magic called out from the depths of Malhaven, too submerged to fully surface.
Now it was more shrill.
Closer to the surface.
Louder.
I stepped back from between the shards, palms fisted.
Not a second later, I was running again, everything around me bleeding away. The stars, the shards, the former clearing where she’d been assaulted, now felled to the ground so that no one would ever think to use my lands to attack again, they all turned into one big smudge.
But one which I could keep track of.
The magic in Solkar’s Reach had given me the spark in my sight and the fire in my veins, and I used them both.
Tracks to my left, but those were too faint to have come from an outsider. I had constant scouts on the borders, but they’d been trained to leave marks only our ranks could recognize.
A pack of servals had sniffed too close to the border, then promptly scurried away east, leaving fur hairs caught between the thorny shrubs.
I’d almost rounded the lip halfway when I noticed them.
Boot marks.
At least three dozen of them, all gathered around the shards.
I halted with a groan, my body aching from having to defy nature and rearrange the bones twice in such a short amount of time. I shook the tremors away and crouched low.
Heavy boots, spikes on their heels to escalate the treacherous ice.
The Mountain Clan had visited. They’d always been the most reckless, confusing being brash with brave.
They were also the most violent. Drops of blood lay peppered between the footprints, too many to have been made from mere scratches.
My eyes sparked as I leaned close enough to the ground that my breaths disturbed the thin coat of dry dirt.
It wasn’t human blood, at least.
A small creature whose only mistake had been wandering in the wrong place at the worst time.
My gaze followed the drops, which increased the closer they got to the largest shard, which stood up straight, like it was threatening the sky itself for being dug from the ground and forced to stand at attention for all eternity.
My jaw clenched as I rose and stared at the display in front of me.
A grizzly spatter of blood had caked onto its slick surface. The crater wouldn’t have accepted such an offering–it didn’t like swallowing the innocent, that was no danger.
But the Northern Clans trying to sacrifice blood for the crater’s powers was a risk graver than the fools imagined.
Bigger than the Clans.
Grander than the entirety of Malhaven.
And it could ruin us all.