Chapter Forty-Two
Aemyra almost collapsed at the sight of Sorcha behind enemy lines, and Draevan’s hold on Dorchadas tightened.
“What is the meaning of this?” Aemyra growled.
But Sorcha was glaring at Fiorean, her gaze warm as a winter chill.
“It seems I need to have a word with my general about who she trusts to let into her private tent,” Draevan drawled.
There had been a spy in her camp after all.
With access to Maeve, Sorcha had known all of Aemyra’s plans and passed them to Alfred. The layout of Balnain, how long the dragons would be gone for, when the Balnain fleet would arrive in Edinbane…
All of those people slaughtered because of Sorcha.
“You have sided with the True Religion?” Aemyra asked, unable to believe it. “Look at what they are doing!”
“Look at what you have done!” Sorcha levied back at her, gesturing to the corpse-strewn beach, the blood-soaked sand.
“I made offerings, I prayed, I kept the lights burning, and never once did Brigid answer me. I am not like you. The Goddesses have never been kind to me. Why should I show them favor when they have given me nothing?”
Aemyra shook her head, Sorcha’s comments about the non-Dùileach now making sense. She no longer trusted in the Goddesses.
There was a commotion behind them.
“I am the general. Let me through!”
Soldiers stumbled as Maeve pushed her way to the front and ground to a halt. Her eyes flitted between the Daercathians on one side and her lover standing beside Covenanters.
“What is this?” Maeve asked, blood draining from her face.
Draevan’s lip curled.
Aemyra dared not take her eyes off Sorcha. “Why side with them? You were imprisoned by Alfred for weeks.”
Sorcha sneered. “I was captured by the prince standing beside you. Athair Alfred was the only one who showed me kindness during my imprisonment.”
Maeve actually stumbled backward as the realization hit both of them like a punch to the gut.
“Alfred turned you against me while you were still in the cells,” Aemyra whispered.
Sorcha let out a vindictive laugh. “You did that all on your own when you decided to let me rot in a dungeon instead of coming to my rescue. Your own mother sat beside me, freezing and coughing into the night, certain her daughter would come.”
Aemyra’s old wounds opened up immediately, the idea of her mother languishing forgotten in a dungeon too much to bear.
“I did not know she was alive,” Aemyra said, breathing through the spike of panic.
“But you knew I was!”
“Alfred dragged you out to the loch and tried to kill you beside Orlagh!”
“Sir Nairn wielded that blade, not the Athair,” Sorcha cried. “I do not want another Daercathian to sit on that golden throne. I will not watch as non-Dùileach blood is spilled to give more power to those who do not deserve it,” Sorcha said spitefully.
“You didn’t even give me a chance,” Aemyra replied, voice cracking.
Part of her already-shattered heart broke further as she looked at Sorcha’s stony face. A jilted lover, spurned and willing to go to whatever lengths to take revenge, a priest whispering half-truths into her ear to manipulate her into altering the course of a war.
“So you conspired to help the Covenanters infiltrate my territory, in the hopes of what? Killing me? Putting Alfred on the throne?” Aemyra asked.
Maeve’s quiet voice cut through the tension. “What of me?”
Heads turned in her direction.
“I am Dùileach, I worship the Goddesses devoutly. You know what the Chosen are capable of. You told me yourself what you suffered in the dun—”
Maeve stopped at the look on Sorcha’s face, and Aemyra knew instantly it hadn’t been the priests.
The barkeep flinched, anger hardening her features. “You don’t know what those Dùileach guards did to me in those cells. You have no idea.”
Laird Lorna had the audacity to pat Sorcha’s arm pityingly.
Aemyra swallowed her words, wanting Sorcha to know that she might have more empathy for her than she knew, but it would be futile.
Immediately vowing to conduct a thorough investigation of every caisteal guard who had previously worked under Sir Nairn, Aemyra continued, “The Chosen are no better, Sorcha. Trust me.”
Sorcha’s dark eyes were full of loathing. “I wouldn’t trust you to find a drunk in a tavern. You lied to me for years, and I almost lost my life because of it.”
Adarian thumbed his hatchet. “You should have killed her in the street the night we left.”
It was about the most shocking thing her brother had ever said.
Sorcha didn’t even seem fazed.
Had their reconciliation been a lie? Had her relationship with Maeve been nothing more than a manipulation? Aemyra didn’t recognize this woman at all.
“What was your plan, Sorcha?” Maeve asked, a last, desperate plea to understand.
Finally, Sorcha looked at her. Without a shred of love in her eyes. “The Chosen offer true equality for the non-Dùileach, and an opportunity to rise in a world of peace.”
Aemyra laughed as she spread her arms wide, gesturing to the lines of clansmen behind them, armed to the teeth.
“Certainly looks like it.”
Laird Lorna took one step toward Draevan. “I’ll admit the Chosen’s methods are extreme, but with any Daercathian on the throne we see no end to the bloodshed.”
Aemyra almost smiled. If the Laird of Edinbane thought threatening Draevan’s daughter was a good idea, she was about to learn otherwise.
Draevan took a swaggering step forward until Dorchadas was pointing directly at Lorna’s chest. “If you see bloodshed, it begins with your own.”
Sorcha interrupted. “No it doesn’t.”
The laird paled, but Sorcha’s furious gaze was on Fiorean.
“It begins with his.”
The hairs on Aemyra’s neck stood up.
Sorcha had never forgiven either of them, had been using Maeve for months, and she wasn’t just here to side with the Chosen. She was here to end the Daercathian line.
Before Aemyra had a chance to react, Sorcha parted her cloak and raised a crossbow, pointing it directly at Fiorean’s chest.
“NO!” A terrified scream ripped up Aemyra’s throat, and she desperately summoned a flame to incinerate the arrow. But she was too slow.
The bolt loosed from the crossbow with a twang, Fiorean’s chest completely vulnerable.
But before the bolt could make impact, a blurred shadow wearing onyx armor threw himself against Fiorean, knocking the king out of the way.
The bolt pierced Draevan’s armor like it was made from butter, the arrow instantly spearing his heart.
Draevan hit the ground with a crash, and Sorcha’s shocked face paled when Gealach screeched.
Time seemed to slow down as Fiorean regained his footing, eyes on Draevan, dead at his feet. The bolt that had been meant for him sticking out of his chest.
Aemyra was frozen, a sharp sting in her veins and a ringing in her ears.
Sorcha was fumbling to reload the crossbow as Gealach descended from the sky in a flash of emerald scales and snapped his jaws around the body of the woman who had killed his Bonded Dùileach.
Covenanters scrambled out of the dragon’s range as Gealach tore Sorcha to pieces, shaking his head mercilessly from side to side until entrails and limbs were scattered all around them.
Then he dropped the last bloody pieces to the ground and fired them with a furious jerk of his head in a flush of amber flames that consumed forty fleeing men.
Aemyra felt as though she was poised on the brink of a decision that would alter her fate.
Gealach growled deep in his throat and turned toward the lines of Covenanters still bordering the city. Most of the Sutherland soldiers had retreated behind the walls.
Aemyra raised her arm slowly, wreathing it in coiling flame. The deep well of magic inside her surging effortlessly to her touch, pliable, malleable, and willing to destroy in the name of a Goddess.
She looked up from her father’s body, rage written on every line of her face.
The Covenanters who beheld her paled visibly.
“You are all about to learn what happens when you march against Clan Daercathian,” Aemyra said.
Raising her hands in front of her, she felt Aervor and Terrea land on the dunes behind the enemy, the earth trembling as their claws touched down.
Aemyra summoned every dreg of magic, every crackling ember that Brigid had blessed her with, and felt it respond.
She had lived in fear of losing someone she loved for months, had suffocated her own magic as if it could hurt those she loved most. It hadn’t mattered. Her fear hadn’t spared her any pain or loss. It had only ever made everything worse.
Faced with her very worst fear, Aemyra found that she wasn’t afraid anymore.
She was unbearably angry.
“You are the light, Aemyra.”
Fiorean’s voice met her ears above the roars of a dragon.
“Shine for us,” Adarian added, his voice cracking as he tried to keep his own grief at bay.
Aemyra felt their words settle within her soul.
The feeling grew, magic swirling under her skin as she felt her blood alight with sparking embers.
Shine for us…
Words uttered first by Orlagh, then taken up by Fiorean and her twin.
So she would.
Flames erupted from Aemyra.
This fire was not made of light and heat, these flames were summoned to consume and destroy. Laird Lorna spread her arms wide, as if embracing the inevitable.
“We are as eternal as the Savior’s grace. You cannot kill our faith.”
Aemyra looked her in the eye. “Watch me.”
Then she loosed her magic, delicious heat snaking up her spine.
Hundreds of soldiers collapsed, their blood boiling as Aemyra’s fire peeled the flesh from their bones, spurts of red exploding from their eye sockets.
Quick as wisps, the phoenixes and their Dùileach rescued the priestesses from the walls before they could be flung to their deaths.
As the firestorm erupting from the dragons grew, the remaining lines of Covenanters soon realized that their pendant was not impervious to dragon fire.
Beside her, Fiorean and Adarian wielded their considerable gifts, burning the soldiers who had refused the offer of surrender.
Where the queen walked, soldiers fled and Covenanters fell.
Adarian’s magic faltered first and he began dry heaving as his power reserves completely dried up. Fiorean stanched his flow of fire before he was drained, standing with his sword raised by his wife’s side.
Aemyra’s fire was never-ending. She was the flame in the night, the sword in the darkness.
Sorcha was wrong. She was the only person fit to rule Tìr Teine, save Fiorean himself, no matter what others might believe.
When every Covenanter in range was dead and the barren sand covered with ash, Aemyra finally extinguished her magic.
The air was thick with smoke as the moon began to rise, flames licking up from husks of charred bodies scattered across the dunes.
Aemyra didn’t feel a bit sorry for it as she fell to her knees beside her father’s body. Draevan’s auburn hair was spilling across the sand, and Aemyra used her sleeve to wipe a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth.
Adarian came to kneel on the other side, tears dripping onto Draevan’s armor as Aemyra laid her hand flat against their father’s chest.
The bolt had struck Draevan directly in the heart. He had died instantly.
Aemyra felt empty. There was no burning of tears behind her eyes, no lump in her throat. Just an overwhelming numbness.
As though she was simply unable to process that her father, the formidable Prince of Penryth, was truly gone from this world.
Gealach was using his teeth to rip fleeing Covenanters apart limb from limb as they sprinted for the city, his roars of grief renting the sky. For once the emerald dragon was more bloodthirsty than Terrea. The she-dragon allowed the male his riot.
A rippling pain shuddered through Aemyra’s torso again, and she hissed through her teeth.
“Aemyra?” Fiorean asked, bending down toward her in concern.
“It’s nothing. I just sustained a few minor injures during the battle.
We need to call off the dragons before they lose all sense and destroy the city.
There needs to be someone left to farm these lands, and a port to trade from.
My people won’t like starving any more than they like war,” she managed to choke out.
Terrea sensed Aemyra’s intent through the Bond and rose from where she was razing the field behind the city, nightshade wings flapping into the sky.
Aemyra found her husband watching her with a concerned expression.
“You are the Guardian of Tìr Teine,” she whispered as her father’s body grew cold. “Guard it.”
Fiorean nodded jerkily and rose to his feet, making for his cobalt dragon.
Shrugging off her queenly persona, Aemyra buried her face into Draevan’s bloodied neck as nothing more than a daughter.
She had lost too much for her throne. It had cost her every parent she had ever known.
Eventually, Aervor had sated his taste for blood enough that he listened to Fiorean and took to the skies with Terrea.
But there was no one left to call off Gealach.
Aemyra lifted her head from her father’s body and watched as the green dragon annihilated anything and everything in his path. His emerald scales thick with rivers of blood, he roared his loss into the sky like he could purge himself of the pain.
The same pain echoed within Aemyra as grief squeezed her from the inside out.
With a shaking hand, she closed the eyes that mirrored her own for good.
As the enraged roars of three dragons screamed the might of fire, one of Brigid’s most devout worshippers passed into her embrace.
Draevan Daercathian had finally shown Tìr Teine the kind of man he truly was.