Chapter 36
The Darkness We Unleash
Damien
We attack at dawn. The moment the silver light breaks the horizon, we execute the plan to take back Zephrine.
This war, this battle, is not like those in Eloise’s Earth history where armies line up and face off against each other, head-to-head.
We arrive quietly, infiltrate the cities that have already been burned and pillaged by silver coats, and attack.
It’s easy at first. The New Stygarde soldiers occupying what remains of these villages have become fat and lazy, feasting like kings while villagers starve at their mercy. We are an unwanted morning surprise. I order my men to end them in their beds.
But the ones we miss, the soldiers who wake before they meet our swords, have a surprise for us as well.
“Sunlight weapons!” Warbill screams as he takes out a shade at my side. “All of them! Not just the elves.”
I dodge an ax that sizzles as it grazes my skin. With a whirl and slice, I send the soldier’s head rolling. Warbill and I are back-to-back, surrounded by silver coats, the shine from their weapons heating our faces. “Could be worse,” I say to Warbill. “Could be arrows.”
“Hilarious, my king. Any idea how we get out of this?” he grunts as he meets our attackers, blade against blade.
“I have a theory.” I coax the shadows to lasso a soldier’s ankle and yank them off-balance.
He shifts into shadow to avoid the fall, and his sunlight weapon clatters to the ground.
When he forms again, I slice him in half.
“They can’t maintain their hold on their sunlight weapon when they shift!
” I yell to him. “Elven magic is incompatible with the shadow network.”
“Bravo, my king.”
Warbill catches on right away with no further explanation.
Working together, we force each soldier into their shadow form.
These shades have spent their entire lives using the shadows and have only recently been handed sunlight weapons.
It’s child’s play to trigger their instincts to shift.
Once they’re disarmed, we end them. We do it again and again and again.
But just as I begin to think we have the upper hand, the archers arrive—this time, a unit of elves from the north. Our new strategy won’t work on this set.
“Take cover,” I call to my unit. We break into shadow and hide behind or under anything we can find when a deluge of arrows carves bright as lightning through the dark sky, a cascade of deadly shooting stars.
One of our men has nowhere to hide. There’s no place left.
Too many of us. Not enough cover. He stares at the incoming arrows, face going impassive as if he’s accepted the inevitable.
I want to scream. But then I see something on the horizon.
Eloise is there.
With a roar that rattles my bones, her dragon sends a stream of fire that engulfs the arching arrows. When the dragon fire stops, the arrows keep coming, but our man is showered by nothing but ash.
“Huzzah, dragon!” Warbill cheers as he surfs the darkness across the space between us and our enemies, a sword in each hand. He lops the heads off two elves before I’ve even reached the battle.
My muscles ache, but I keep going. Bodies fall to my right, to my left.
I crawl over them, shake the blood from my hands.
By the time we can say with certainty that we’ve secured the area, I’m panting hard and splattered with the blood of my enemies.
Eloise circles the sky above me twice, then swoops down to land in the center of the village.
Voices ring out, my men crowding around her, slapping her hands, and crying out their thanks. I have to push through them to get to my mate.
“Please tell me that most of that isn’t yours,” she says to me. I look down at my bloodstained skin.
“Not enough of it to matter,” I confirm.
“Good, because I’m afraid the fight isn’t over.”
My brow sinks. “Where?”
“The mountain dwellers are struggling to take back the area around Bolvet. Their units aren’t as strong. Many have fallen.”
“Is the way to Bolvet clear?” I have to look over Phantom’s head to see her sitting on the beast’s back, her spine as straight as a queen on her throne.
One of our men staggers backward when Phantom’s head comes around.
My mate is intimidating, a force of nature if ever there was one.
The corner of my mouth tugs up in pride,
“It’s clear. Undaku’s team has it secured.”
“I’m on my way.” I send word down the shadows, and my men return to me one by one, columns of darkness coalescing into a band of umbrae.
“Do you have a report from the Borderlands?”
“Going now,” she says. She turns the dragon between us and, with a flap of Phantom’s wings, she’s gone.
“Bolvet,” Warbill says, sounding exhausted.
“Can you make it, old man?”
“For my village? If they succeed in killing me, they will have to grind my bones to keep my corpse from fighting.”
We both share a dark laugh and then shadoweave north, praying we reach the mountain dwellers in time.
Eloise
“This doesn’t make sense. Where are all the elves?” I ask Phantom. We’re soaring above the northwestern Borderlands. Fields of stubble where red wheat once grew before the harvest stretch out like scattered hay beneath us.
We saw plenty of elves, darling. Fried their arrows to ash.
“Not enough, though. Entrydal has a vast army of soldiers and hunters. I don’t think we ever got a proper count, but most of the bodies today were shades. Why are they holding back?”
Phantom doesn’t answer. My ancestors are powerful practitioners of magic, but they aren’t warriors.
In fact, my great-grandfather, Henry Harcourt, was a photographer, well-known for his pacifism.
When Henry went on safari to shoot animals, it was with his camera.
The only things that came home with him were photographs.
He was a spiritualist and obsessed with the occult, but he was no killer.
Phantom will fight for me. They will protect me.
But they can’t advise me on military strategy.
But I am the dragon.
I am the first generation with dragon blood in my veins. A dragon has sharp teeth and claws for a reason. They know how to kill. My magic may be powered by the past, but I am forging my own future. And today, I have to trust myself. My gut tells me something is off.
My intuition proves accurate when the battle for the Borderlands comes into view.
The elves are here. Thousands of soldiers with sunlight weapons are lined up at the border with Willowgulch, and our forces are losing.
A hard lump forms in my throat when I see piles of ash that I know were once vampires.
Cassius? No. He is there, fighting side by side with the Rivertoads, covered in blood.
Where should we start, my darling? Phantom asks me.
There. I point to the place where a line of elves behind the battling throng raises their arrows. We cut them off. Cut their forces in half. Take out their archers and distract the others to give our forces a foothold. Are you strong enough?
Never stronger, they say as their chest fills with fire.
We swoop down. I concentrate my magic and intention, focus, take aim, and then release our fire.
Heat singes my cheeks as the stream incinerates the entire line of archers as if they were ants under a magnifying glass.
The other soldiers scatter, some running right into enemy hands.
Vampires rush them and tear out their throats.
A Rivertoad squadron cheers as they lop off pale heads and use their shadows to stab the elves through their hearts.
Phantom gains elevation and banks hard, turning for another pass. You’re tired, I say to them. We should find a place to rest.
We have one more in us, darling. Shall we go again?
One more, then, I say. Quickly, I scan the battlefield.
The elves have a section of carts near the back.
It’s hard to see what they’re filled with from this height, but they might be cages for prisoners or supplies of weapons.
Yes, I see the glow of something inside.
Sunlight. There. The cages. We take those out.
The dragon rumbles with laughter. Brilliant. Hold on tight. We’re going in hot.
Their chest fills again with lethal fire, and we swoop down to release it.
The elves who aren’t caught in the blast scatter, wide-eyed and screaming.
We power through their supplies. Carts of weapons go up in flames.
Cages incinerate. We drive toward an odd-looking contraption. A weapon of some kind. What is that?
Phantom’s fire reaches our target just as a bowling-ball-sized star flies into their side. I have only a millisecond to register that we’ve been hit. Less time to feel myself fall. I fall through fire and smoke and bones.
Everything becomes nothing.