15. Maren
Maren
“AITNE,” Kye bellowed.
He grasped my shoulders, the small of my back, holding me up.
I coughed all over him in return, painting his black jacket with frothy scarlet.
Air burned as it rushed into my back, seeking to fill my lung.
Blood filled it instead, heavy like sludge.
My breath rattled, gurgled. It blazed inside my chest, eating me from the inside, the weight of it threatening to drag me under.
Panic thrashed as I realized I was drowning.
Golden eyes darted between me and the drawing wolves, Kye’s sword still tight in his hand, lips peeled back in a silent growl that I’d only seen a handful of times.
A splash at my hip, and Aitne sank to her knees in the slush. “I’m here.”
He didn’t have time to respond as the first man rushed him. Steel clattered, a loud ringing in my ears. Sword to sword, Kye threw the soldier back with a shove, then stepped over us both to advance on the line.
Behind me, feet slapped against mud as the Naiads swarmed in, their shadows cast me into cold.
Or maybe the cold was coming from the inside.
Because my chest suddenly moved like frost, hard and frozen. And I realized, with waning focus, how thirsty I’d become in a matter of seconds.
I’d lost sight of Kye.
He’d cut ahead, into the fray. And I couldn’t see him.
Alarm washed me in a sheet of cold. I pushed up, but a second set of hands forced me back down.
“Don’t move,” Aitne ordered.
But I don’t think I could actually stop. I staggered upright, eyes searching in terror.
The vision of Kye with a sword through his chest raided my thoughts. Kye falling. Kye lying broken in the snow.
Kye! I think I screamed it. Kye!
Let them work, Leihani, came a tight reply.
If it soothed me to hear, the relief was nominal. It had happened before, too fast to stop. Too fast to even anticipate. Like wind or rain or lightning. One moment Kye was alive.
The next he was gone.
A strange pull from behind my ribs, a liquid suction, and heat streaked down my spine.
Three healers stood beside me now, calling blood from my wound. The weighted promise of drowning receded, but as the winter air took its place, my lungs flamed with each gasp for oxygen.
I dropped.
“Get her cordae back here,” Nori growled down the line. She turned to face me, her voice flat. “Maren.” As though she were dealing with a child.
It should have enraged me. But the metallic screech of steel lancing down a separate blade was louder than her disparaging tone. I tried to track the sound, tried to trace how far away it had strayed.
He dropped into a crouch as a blade swerved clean over his head.
The ground beneath my legs gave a subtle quake. The hair on my arms lifted.
And a second Rivean came around Kye’s side, the soldier’s arm arcing as steel narrowly missed Kye’s throat. Kye rolled to the left, dodging out of the man’s path.
Heat. Fire. Smoke. It was inside me. Outside me. It dragged within my breaths, clouded my vision, barricaded my thoughts. A calming hand lay across my shoulder. I shoved whoever it was aside.
A third slammed into him, sparks flying as their steel clashed, but Kye parried quickly enough that he missed that one, too.
The sky cracked wide with darkness, clouds billowing so tight they threw the world into night. That taste of ozone prickled in my nose, oil over wet stone. Olinne—Olinne was the one holding me in place. She pulled in close, murmuring comfort into my ears.
But the fourth.
The fourth man didn’t miss.
KYE, I shouted.
Ahead, in the center of the oncoming mass of soldiers, a white vein snapped from the skies, lighting the entire mountainside. Thunder crashed in the same moment, sound that crossed all barriers, lancing down my bones, piercing through my heart.
Again. And again. The strikes hit erratically, static knives aimed at the earth. Screams showered in the distance, formations of red dissolving into chaos, dispersing in all directions like a cloud of dust.
“Leihani, stop. I’m okay.”
Kye was suddenly close. His arms wrapped around my head, pulling my face into his chest. I breathed in his warmth, and though it burned against my thorax, I pulled it in deep, the fur across his shoulders thick between my fingertips.
Power shuttered from my blood, suddenly weak within my reach. The sun flickered overhead. “Eyes open,” Kye murmured into my ear. “I’m here. Stay here with me.”
“You left,” I choked. “I called and you didn’t answer.”
“I didn’t leave.”
Hands against my back, but I barely felt them. The burn faded as Aitne stitched the wound together with new skin, though each breath remained tight and sore.
The lightning strikes had stopped, but somewhere across the frozen peaks, thunder rumbled. The Rivean army had retreated just enough to hide under the trees, but I knew they weren’t gone.
My knees wobbled. Sleep knocked at the back of my skull, demanding to take the lead after healing me.
I forced my eyes open as Kye lifted me into the air, a sudden, nauseating lurch against the cold.
The Naiads pressed forward, shielding him as he hurried in the direction we’d come. Back to Calder’s army.
“Don’t leave me,” I forced out.
Kye turned sideways to step around a rock. “I’m not going anywhere.” He slipped, catching himself just as fast, though the jolt snapped my eyes open.
But that’s not what I meant. Kye was here as a commander. He’d been brought to fight. I hadn’t. I’d all but bullied my way into this battle, a place he hadn’t even wanted me to begin with.
Calder didn’t need or want my presence in these mountains. But it required his. Would he set me somewhere safe just to turn and run back?
A Rivean cut through the trees, sword missing Kye’s nose by inches as he jerked us backward, hauling me close to his chest. I struck out an arm, calling to the man’s blood, heating every artery.
My strength was flagging. So I forced every ounce of spare power into the thermal expansion of his blood.
The man exploded. Wet, pink dust burst across the snow.
Kye snapped his gaping mouth shut as he strode around the rosy cloud. “Leihani,” he sighed. “When things settle, we should probably discuss your negotiation skills.”
“Yeah, well, you’re welcome, by the way.” A warm trickle escaped my nose, and I wiped it away in a red smear.
Kolibri waited with the other horses under a canopy of ashwood where we’d left them.
Her ears perked as we approached. Kye snatched her bridle from a nearby branch, lifting me into her saddle.
Naiads followed, their backs to us as they kept their focus outward, watching for the enemy.
Aitne brushed past Kye to lean in close, ignoring Kolibri’s nicker of agitation as she smoothed her fingers across my closed wound. “How’s it feel, my Queen?”
My brows pinched. “Just a bit tight.” Fatigue wore at me now, surfacing around the edges of my mind, prodding for a weak point in my faculties.
Aitne studied me, her mouth thin. “Are you all right to ride?”
“I’ll join her,” Selena said. The siren floated between two Juilean Naiads to Kolibri’s side.
I pulled away. Straightened. Forced myself to wake up. “No.”
Her brows lifted, eyes widening at my tone. Around her, the other Naiads reacted the same, surprise flitting through the gathered faces near me. A twinge of guilt, one I couldn’t force myself to drive away. Not under the weight of heat that coiled in the air around me when I looked at her.
Her voice snaked through my head, apology thick in her words. The Fates marked Nikolaos for dead.
Kye cleared his throat, hoisting himself onto Kolibri and drawing me in close. “Aren, Dimas, and Leal are across that canyon. They’ll be heading this way now, I’m sure.”
If they’re alive went unsaid. But we heard it in his tone.
For a moment, the world was quiet. I’d expected the fight to follow us.
To hear the clatter of steel or the gasps of men choking on their last breaths.
But the afternoon sun shimmered across the tiny crystals in the snow.
Mountain trees stood still, the soft fog that spooled from our mouths the only movement in sight.
Even the wind lay subdued, turning its ear to the sky to listen for sound.
It felt easy. Too easy. They’d outnumbered us, hundreds to one. Yet they’d fallen back from a few mere lightning strikes. One arm holding me upright, Kye’s narrowed eyes searched the far trees, his opposite hand hovering over his sheathed sword.
Someone inhaled sharply, and our heads lurched toward the noise.
To Olinne. Shock lined the whites of her eyes, and she stood arrested in mid-turn, as if she’d just noticed the person next to her.
Cebrinne.