Chapter Twenty-Four
Dildain rose like a weed choked by the towering pines.
Steeling herself, she connected to Terrea’s consciousness.
Her dragon was warring against her instinct to rip and tear, twitching her head and snorting loudly as they descended.
With watering eyes, such was the speed of Terrea’s flight, Aemyra saw the bridge was empty.
The priests had taken the princesses inside.
“I can’t waste any more time,” Aemyra said, remembering how she herself had begged to be spared. If Fiorean had only been a few seconds later…
Praying that she wasn’t about to fall to her death, Aemyra swung one leg over Terrea’s back and began rappelling down the spikes. The muscles in her arms were straining under her own weight, until she was dangling, level with Terrea’s gently swaying belly.
Fingers cramping, Aemyra clung on as shouts went up from the town, a sparse handful of soldiers scrambling for weapons. Unable to move her hands from the spikes, Aemyra trusted in her armor and prayed to Beira that any arrow would go wide.
Terrea slowed as much as she dared, gliding right over the crumbling wall, arrows whizzing past without making impact. When the narrow bridge was almost beneath them, Aemyra let go.
Her stomach swooped as she plunged through the air, ankles barking in protest as she landed, rolling on impact with a clatter of armor.
Terrea’s left wing clipped one of the turrets, slate raining down upon the soldiers on the ground. The volley of arrows stopped abruptly.
“Well, that was hardly inconspicuous,” Aemyra muttered to herself as the door to the turret swung open to reveal three Covenanters with weapons drawn.
The first died with a hasty swipe of her sword.
The next let out a shrieking cry as he raised an axe. She took him out with a slash to his thigh, and then gave a swift stab through the neck of the third with her dagger.
When the small group lay bleeding on the bridge, Aemyra entered the turret.
There was no one here.
Her boots were loud on the wooden boards as she descended the stairs, her dragon roaring high above. She could hear shouting far below, the panicked cries of priests and clansmen scurrying for the exit, not knowing there would be a host of cavalry at the gates any moment.
Palming the hilt of Fearsolais, the promise mark rubbing against the carved runes, Aemyra put Riya’s mind-stilling to the test.
“They are just men in black robes. They hold no power over you,” she told herself.
Knowing she would have felt far safer with her magic, despite the dragon literally shrieking outside the walls, Aemyra found the first door. It was unlocked, and held only a desk full of scrolls of parchment.
Aemyra continued downward, heart pounding to the point of pain. The second door revealed a sagging bedchamber, the third a storage closet. Descending the second flight of stairs, she heard urgent voices and slowed her footsteps.
Peering around an open door, she saw a spacious drawing room. The large windows on the far wall and expensive furnishings should have given the room an airy feel.
Instead, Aemyra choked on incense and nearly dropped Fearsolais as the panic engulfed her. There was a sharp prickle of fear in her gut, a hot sting in her veins making her ready to run.
Eyes wide, she searched the room for Alfred and felt momentary relief when he wasn’t there.
Instead, six priests were exchanging hushed words and hurried glances.
“Bring them to heel. We will barter them for our lives,” the oldest said, his eyes on the window.
The priests had Maggie, Elizabeth, and a third young woman on their knees. There was no sign of Charlotte. One priest was making circles around them, wafting the incense holder, and another was reading from the Tùr.
A third held a wooden paddle.
Aemyra felt as though all the air was sucked from the room and her sword trembled in her hand.
Three women praying silently was hardly cause for alarm, but a ring of bruises looped around Elizabeth’s neck, her forget-me-not eyes bloodshot. Maggie’s dress was torn and her shoulders were shaking as the priest stalked behind them.
From the doorway, she watched as three more priests hastily packed belongings.
“Remove their rebellious nature and bring them back to your ways, Savior, we pray,” the priest chanted, tripping over his words in his hurry. “May their tender hearts ever be true to the cause of righteousness as they seek penance for their transgressions.”
As the third priest’s eyes gleamed and he raised the wooden paddle, Aemyra read between the lines. Maggie and Elizabeth had tried to escape, and now they were being beaten into submission.
To be used as human shields for the very men who professed to protect innocents.
Before the paddle could make contact, Aemyra threw the door wide open, hinges rattling against the faded wallpaper.
“Going somewhere, boys?” she asked.
The chanting ceased, every priest turning as she advanced into the room, and the abuser dropped the paddle with a dull thud.
“Many who worship the Savior think our Goddess rituals are barbaric,” she drawled, lazily spinning her sword around her wrist. “We drink blood, make offerings of ourselves, slaughter animals…but this is a level of sadistic I have never witnessed before.”
The three women finally raised their heads from the dirty carpet. Their hands were not bound, but Aemyra had experienced the manipulation of these priests herself.
Maggie’s brown eyes looked into Aemyra’s green. Even though there was relief lighting their depths, anger churned still.
Good. The princesses would need a little fire to get through this.
“Demon woman,” one priest hissed. “If you kill us we will be martyred for the Savior’s cause, an honor far beyond anything you could hope to achieve with your infernal magic.”
Aemyra lifted one eyebrow. “Well, I shan’t deny you said honor any longer.”
The priest didn’t even have time to protest before she sprinted forward and plunged Fearsolais through his chest, the steel sliding across ribs. With a tug that strained her shoulders, she pulled the sword free as Elizabeth began screaming.
Already on edge, Aemyra fought to keep her composure.
“I know you love the sound of your own voice, but could you kindly stop shrieking like a ban-sìth?” she snapped at Elizabeth as the priests began to run. “You’re scaring them away.”
These men were no fighters, and Aemyra side-stepped them, easily blocking the door.
One priest held out his pendant as if it would ward her off, and she laughed. “Your Savior can’t help you now.”
Outnumbered six to one, Aemyra knew she wouldn’t make it to the end of the fight unscathed, but she had been scrapping in the lower town of àird Lasair for years.
The first priest fell before she lunged at the second and slid her blade through his neck with the same swipe. The last managed a valiant punch to her face, but he died before he could strike her again.
Wiping her nose on the back of her hand, it came away bloody.
“At least it isn’t broken,” she muttered, pointing the tip of Fearsolais at the priest now cowering on the floor behind his pendant.
“The Savior doth not converse with demons. My soul shall be saved and I shall be welcomed into his ha—”
Unfortunately, Terrea did not share his opinion.
Having been restrained throughout the battle, the smell of blood and Aemyra’s own rage coursing through the Bond was too much.
Terrea’s claws smashed through the windows, raining glass across the stained carpet, and she sank her teeth into the priest.
Now all three women were screaming.
With an enraged snort and an impressive spray of blood, Terrea withdrew from the window and threw the body in chunks to the ground far below.
“Tell your Savior I say hello,” Aemyra said, peering out the window to see Adarian’s cavalry thundering down the hill, Riya’s phoenixes soaring above.
With a shake of her head to dislodge shards of glass stuck between her scales, Terrea unfurled her wings to assist the phoenixes from the sky.
Aemyra turned her back on the shattered window and came to her senses.
There were still Covenanters and soldiers in the manor.
Sheathing Fearsolais between her shoulder blades, she moved the heavy pieces of furniture to barricade the door.
Shoulders straining and thighs burning, Aemyra decided to wait it out until her army took the town.
After healing the wounded and facing down nine men single-handedly, Aemyra didn’t know how much fight she had left in her before she collapsed.
Chest heaving, Aemyra slowly turned back to the women.
“Well, now I know why Nael always calls your dragon The Terror,” Maggie said weakly.
They had risen from their knees sometime during the fight, but now stood rigidly, spines erect.
“I’m not going to harm you,” Aemyra said, hearing how idiotic those words sounded after what they had witnessed her do.
“You just slaughtered them all!” Elizabeth said.
Ignoring her, Aemyra pointed to the stranger standing between them. “Who’s this?”
“Catriona Leuthanach,” Maggie replied, looping one arm around the woman’s narrow waist.
Aemyra’s eyebrows raised at this development. “And where, pray tell, is your father?”
Catriona met Aemyra’s gaze unflinchingly. The full skirts of her lilac gown were immaculately pressed, her strawberry-blond hair coiffed and gathered at the nape of her neck. Compared to the princesses’ bedraggled appearance, she was the picture of grace.
“Your father is a wanted traitor, but if you tell me where he is I will spare you,” Aemyra said.
Catriona paled further, but she did not speak.
“Is that all you’re good for? Murdering?” Elizabeth asked, lips thin. “Have you no compassion?”