Chapter Twelve
Terrea carried her swiftly east and Gealach had fallen far behind on the journey, unable to keep up with the ferocious pace. The she-dragon was flying like Beira’s wind was behind her, feeling the desperation of her Dùileach to reach Balnain in time.
Adarian had to be okay. Sorcha had to be okay.
This went further than simply protecting his family—if Fiorean had sanctioned the massacre of innocent Dùileach across the territory, then he had truly betrayed her. The last shred of hope Aemyra hadn’t realized she had been clinging to, snapped.
The mark on her palm burned, urging her to turn north, to fly directly to àird Lasair. Gritting her teeth, she stayed the course. Once Balnain was secured from either dragon fire or insurgent supporters of the Savior, then she would go.
Terrea growled her approval from underneath her.
Rage filled them both, tinting Aemyra’s vision red and filling her mouth with the taste of iron. Despite her stiff fingers, they ached to hold her sword. To punish, to kill, to wipe Fiorean and Alfred from Erisocia for good. The promise mark seared as if in agreement.
When Balnain came into view hours later, Aemyra found no relief at the sight awaiting them. The massacre at the hamlet hadn’t been an isolated incident.
Incensed supporters of the Savior had risen up against Balnain, while Covenanters attacked from the river. The army camp was burning and three vessels flying the Savior’s pennant were anchored in the water, the sound of cannon fire loud in Aemyra’s ears.
It had been a mistake to leave the river town with so little protection.
“I can’t keep misjudging things like this,” Aemyra whispered as she leaned over Terrea’s wing joint to look below.
The haphazard layout was not suited to fighting, and Aemyra could see that most of her forces had been driven out of the camp and into the town toward the river. Where the Covenanters were waiting for them.
Aemyra cursed herself to Hela. Adarian was down there, as were Eilidh and Sorcha, and she had left them unprotected.
Riya’s phoenix warriors were airborne, held in claws, the soft skin of their thighs and arms protected by golden cuffs as they shot flaming arrows into the scrum of insurgents.
Many of the townsfolk were attempting to swim away from the flames engulfing the camp, and were being targeted by the Covenanters now rowing ashore in longboats.
It was chaos.
Terrea loosed a wild roar that rippled the surface of the water. Relieved shouts met Aemyra’s ears and a deafening cry went up for the queen. She felt nothing but dread that these people expected her to save them. Nevertheless, Aemyra angled her dragon toward the river.
She dared not risk burning her own people by firing on the town, but the last Covenanter longboats would never make it to shore.
Terrea needed no encouragement. Tucking her wings, she made a steep dive to the river.
Aemyra’s thighs slipped against her scales and she clutched the onyx neck spikes more tightly.
The sensation of searing flame made Aemyra choke as she felt fire ripple through the throat of her beathach.
At the last moment, Terrea pulled out of her dive, soaring across the water’s surface, and incinerated a line of longboats.
With a powerful flap of her dark wings, Terrea made it back into the sky before the volley of arrows could hit her. She twisted, her spiked tail thrashing in the air as she balanced herself, turning to attack again.
Aemyra dared not break her dragon’s focus, trusting in Terrea’s instincts.
The muddy riverbank was overrun with townsfolk, soldiers, Covenanters, and Chosen insurgents. But Aemyra clung desperately to her dragon as they looped back toward the warships.
Eyes watering as the sun reflected off the water, Aemyra didn’t see it until it was almost too late. An enormous crossbow, loaded and pointing directly at Terrea’s heart.
“Move!” she screamed aloud and through the Bond.
But Terrea was heavy, and too close to the ship. She turned her head and Aemyra was forced to duck behind her spikes to cover herself as the crossbow released with a sickening twang.
Pain lanced through the Bond, a dragon’s roar escaping Aemyra’s lips.
Terrea’s wings faltered, serpentine neck shaking to dislodge the bolt from her scales. Leaning forward, Aemyra could see that it had just grazed Terrea, knocking a few scales loose and leaving a line of red in her skin.
“You’ll be okay,” she muttered, struggling to take a full breath. “You’ll be fine, just land on one of the hills and I’ll get Laoise and Adarian to help burn the rest of the—”
Terrea turned toward the Covenanters’ warships again.
“No, Terrea!” Aemyra shouted over the roar of the incensed she-dragon, pounding on the onyx scales.
But her beathach didn’t listen. Humans had dared to strike her, and now they would taste dragon fire. With an enraged roar, Terrea lunged for the ship with flames and claws, savoring the screams of dying men as they cooked in their armor or flung themselves into the water only to be boiled alive.
Terrea pushed into the air as the ship exploded, but she had clearly misjudged the shock wave from whatever incendiary materials they had been carrying belowdecks. Aemyra felt her dragon lurch underneath her and she lost her grip.
Hands grasping on thin air, she slipped from the back of her dragon, plummeting through the sky, until the river knocked the breath from her.
Soon, too soon, the riverbed hit her back and Aemyra felt a rib crack. She had fallen into the water, but perilously close to the shore.
Weapons weighing her down, Aemyra forced her limbs to stroke for the surface. As she emerged, blinking water from her eyes, she could see Terrea setting fire to the last warship.
The river was red with blood and churning with surviving Covenanters desperate to reach the shore.
Clawing her way up the riverbank with them, Aemyra scanned the ranks of her army.
Maeve’s forces seemed to be beating the insurgent supporters of the Savior out of the streets toward the river.
The sight of them made Aemyra falter. These were not soldiers. They wore simple homespun clothing, and most fought with pickaxes or hoes instead of real weapons.
The priests had promised them salvation, but they hadn’t stood a chance against her army.
Fury pounding through her blood like a pulse, Aemyra got to her feet. At least two hundred Covenanters had made it ashore, and with the camp burning, they had quickly gained the upper hand.
The black armor and the Savior’s pendant around every neck made them easily identifiable.
Draevan liked to call them brainless lackeys.
But they were brainless lackeys who knew how to swing a sword.
“Great Mother spare us,” Aemyra muttered, drawing Fearsolais.
Wishing she had access to her magic, Aemyra jumped over splintered wood until her boots met squelching mud.
Scanning the faces for any sign of her brother, Aemyra spotted Laoise re-forming the lines to defend the riverbank. When the phoenix warriors circled overhead, the Covenanters hesitated.
“Send them to their Savior,” Aemyra spat through gritted teeth.
Riya loosed a chilling war cry and sent a stream of flaming arrows to pepper the advancing lines.
Remembering the faces of the dead in the village, Aemyra cut down every person who brandished a weapon against her. Covenanter or not, they had killed innocent people on Fiorean’s orders.
Between swings, Aemyra cast glances across the increasingly muddy bank but failed to find her twin anywhere.
The Covenanters’ pendants repelled whatever magical advantage her Dùileach still had, and the lines were barely holding.
Locking eyes with one burly Covenanter, Aemyra launched herself at him.
“Your Grace!” Laoise called out. “They wield both agents!”
Aemyra didn’t listen. It wouldn’t make any difference, Brigid had kept her magic smothered for so many months she was almost used to it.
The Covenanter sneered and shoved a gauntlet-covered fist into a pouch.
A clay pot was produced, the man abandoning all attempts to attack as he uncorked it. So Aemyra slid Fearsolais through the crack in his armor just as he threw it to the ground.
Droplets of the rejection agent landed on her skin, peppering several Dùileach fighting around her.
They fell to their knees, writhing in pain, but Aemyra did not falter. The Covenanter died with her blade buried in his chest, and she shoved her fist into his pocket to retrieve a precious vial of the binding agent.
“You will never extinguish Dùileach magic,” she growled.
Aemyra wove through the men, Fearsolais’s hilt growing slippery with blood as she stabbed and parried, breath burning in her lungs.
But unlike the panic that overwhelmed her at night, this pain gave Aemyra a sense of satisfaction. She hurt because she was fighting for her people. Without her, they would die. So she would not stop.
“Clea!” Aemyra called out to her air guard as the petite woman fought her way toward the queen alongside Laoise.
Mud sucking at her feet, Aemyra stumbled into them.
“Where is Adarian?” she asked.
Laoise’s ocher cheeks paled and she looked wildly around as if only now realizing he was gone. Aemyra’s blood ran cold.
“He w-was—” Laoise stammered. “He was behind me a moment ago, on top of that overturned boat.”
Looking over her shoulder, Aemyra saw it, yellow paint flecking off the rotted wood.
It was only a few meters away and yet it might as well have been miles for the number of fighting soldiers that stood in the way.
Clasping the petite Clea by the shoulder, Aemyra said, “Draevan and Gealach will arrive soon, and the Covenanters have nowhere to go. Hold fast.”
The women exchanged determined looks even as more townspeople sprinted past them into the cool waters of the Forc. Their years of praying to Cliodna were about to be put to the test.
“Adarian!” Aemyra called out.
Consumed by searching for a head of auburn hair, she took a shield to the face and the world burst into bright white light.
Blinking the stars away, Aemyra whirled to the side and thrust her dagger into the soldier’s back.
It was far from a mortal blow, but with the dirt coating his skin, an infection would take him quickly.
Aemyra left him in the mud.
Stepping over bodies and stumbling across the riverbank, Aemyra finally reached the boat.
“Adarian!” she yelled again, searching through the chaos for the face she knew as well as her own.
Panic choked up her throat and she let out a desperate sob.
Her legs seizing with the effort of wading through mud, Aemyra prayed that Draevan and Gealach would arrive soon. Phoenixes struck from the skies, plucking eyeballs out with beaks and talons, and Terrea had burned everything still floating.
On Brigid’s light, if I don’t find him…
Aemyra pounded her fist on the rotten boat in frustration.
“Adarian!” she screamed again, feeling her throat crack with the effort.
“Aems?” a weak voice replied. “Down here.”
Wading into the water, Aemyra looked through the broken slats to find Adarian barely visible in the shadows.
“Thank Cailleach,” Aemyra breathed, reaching through the splintered wood for her twin.
Adarian groaned as she pulled him from the sucking mud. “I’m going to put you on a leash. Every time you leave, things go to shit,” he croaked.
A weak laugh escaped Aemyra as she helped her brother out of the broken boat.
“I hit the back of my head,” Adarian muttered, leaning heavily on her.
“You don’t say. You’ve got one eye looking at me and the other looking for me.”
Sitting him down in the shallows of the riverbank, using the boat as cover, she examined his head.
The wound was shallow enough, but bleeding profusely.
“It’s always the fucking head wounds,” Aemyra muttered, tearing off a strip of her shirt.
Adarian was blinking like the sun was bothering him as she hastily scooped up clean water from the river to wash the wound.
His words were slurred. “I climbed up to get a better shot. Was too heavy.”
The bow was stuck on a wooden plank, arrows scattered underneath the boat. Most of them broken.
“At least you didn’t splinter your skull,” Aemyra said.
She took stock of the battle still raging around them. The Covenanters’ ranks were thinning, but Aemyra’s soldiers were also tiring from fighting in the mud.
“You need to stay here, and stay awake,” she said, slapping Adarian’s cheek lightly.
He shoved her hand away as the sound of leathery wings met Aemyra’s ears. Her spirits lifted: Gealach was finally here.
They were going to win.
Turning, Aemyra peered eagerly into the golden light of the sun as their father’s dragon approached, the rays filtering through his pale wing membranes.
Terrea craned her neck around, scenting the air, and uttered a soft call Aemyra had never heard her make before.
At least never with Gealach.
Chest tight, Aemyra lifted a hand to her eyes and looked more closely at the advancing dragon.
The wingspan was too short, the membranes free from burn scars.
The dragon wasn’t green, it was blue.
Fiorean and Aervor were here.