Chapter 45 #2
“What can we do to convince them to stay?” Luther asked.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But we need to find a way to do it soon.” She paused. “There’s something else. Alixe just told me that Vance and his men went to Mortal City after the battle.”
My blood went cold. “Another attack?”
“A few dead guards, nothing more. They didn’t stay long, but when they left, some of the villagers left with them.” She opened her mouth to say more, then decided against it.
“How many?” Luther asked.
“A handful of men, including Brant.”
“Good,” I muttered. I’d been itching to kill him myself for his part in my father’s murder, but Brant’s place on the governing council meant that any strike at him would be seen as a punishment for voting against me.
With him gone, his seat on the council was free for the taking—and so was his life, if I met him in battle.
“And two women,” she went on, looking solemn. “An elderly worker at the orphanage and a wet nurse.”
Luther frowned. “Why would they want to join his army?”
“From the looks of it, neither woman went willingly.”
I had no time to process that chilling revelation before the evening quiet was broken by distant horns.
Luther turned eastward. “That’s a signal from the lookouts. Something’s coming from the coast.”
The entire camp stilled as more horns blared, this time in a deliberate series of long blares and short, staccato bursts.
“Gryvern incoming!” Alixe yelled.
She barked orders at her guards as people began to spill from tents and grab their weapons. Luther looked at me. “I don’t feel Ophiucae’s aura. You think his gryvern came alone?”
“Not his.” I pushed past them both. “Mine.”
I yelled for Alixe to stand down as I marched for the palace lawn and gave the last in a series of commands I’d been silently delivering since the battle’s end. This one, I’d been dreading all day.
“Sorae, come.”
She wasn’t far away. Even though she was the final one called, her familiar silhouette was the first to appear on the horizon.
I forced myself to slow my breaths until my heart calmed enough to thump in time with the steady beat of her wings.
I savored the sight of her golden eyes, her sleek lines, those downy-soft wings that had been both comfort and protection more times than I could count.
I thought of what I had to do, and the empty cold inside me felt a little colder. A little emptier.
She sensed it, too. She hit the ground at a gallop and didn’t stop until her muzzle touched my chest. She nudged at my palm with a tender whirr, her desire to soothe me rippling over the bond.
I couldn’t even look her in the eyes.
Tybold landed next. Sorae’s throat rumbled grumpily, and I set my forehead to hers. “Let it go,” I begged her. “He loves you. You love him. Nothing matters more than that.”
She snorted in protest, though her malice was waning. Even the most fearsome of beasts could grow sick of fighting, and much like the mortals, Sorae had been fighting for a very, very long time.
I eased her away, and she shuffled back to sit at Tybold’s side. Her eyes stayed stubbornly on me. Tybold’s eyes stayed steadily on her.
Luther joined me on the palace steps. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Righting a wrong.”
That was a good enough answer for him. His hand slipped into mine, and we watched in silence as Tybold’s wings spread—slowly, slowly, inch by excruciating inch—until the tip of his dark feathers fluttered against Sorae’s.
She hissed and sidled away. Tybold’s wings snapped in, angry smoke curling from his nostrils.
“Sorae,” I murmured. “Please.”
Rosha, the Faunos gryvern, was the next to arrive.
She was a beautiful creature, and she knew it.
Her fur was dense and glossy, and her pale feathers almost seemed to glow under the moonlight with an iridescent shine.
When her knife-sharp talons sank into the soil on Tybold’s other side, she ruffled her wings, flirtily flicking them out against him.
Sorae’s jealousy boiled across the bond. Her pupils slitted as muscles tensed beneath her fur.
Rosha chuffed, the sound coming out like a laugh.
Tybold didn’t move an inch. He stayed focused on Sorae, oblivious to Rosha’s preening.
The Arboros gryvern, Onaar, landed not long after, another pretty female who eyed Tybold with curious interest—and whose purrs had Sorae unsheathing her claws.
“Claim him,” I whispered. “Show them he’s yours.”
Sorae’s eyes darted to me, then to Tybold. Her tail thrashed wildly back and forth, echoing the feud playing out in her head.
By the time Arilloc, the Meros gryvern, soared down from the ink-dark sky, a crowd had gathered.
On one side, members of the various camps watched in wary, exhausted silence.
On the other, curious palace residents huddled in glittering, colorful groups, their gossipy whispers carrying on the breeze.
Arilloc was strong and large, undeniably a formidable force in battle, but his temperament was more scamp than serpent.
He paced like a proud tomcat and affably bunted his head against each of the female gryverns, lingering against Sorae at the sound of Tybold’s growl.
His black-tipped tail flicked against Tybold’s snout, drawing a hiss from the Ignios gryvern that sent the crowd shuffling back.
“I’m beginning to think,” Luther murmured in my ear as Arilloc lounged lazily against Sorae, “that the real reason the Crowns kept the gryverns apart had more to do with their libido than their tempers.”
I felt his gaze on me, scouring my face in fervent hope for a laugh or a smile, even a crinkled eye—some sign that I had not been another casualty of the morning’s slaughter.
That was reassurance I could not give.
Vexes, the Sophos gryvern, was the last to arrive.
The sound of his sluggish, unsteady wingbeats had everyone, even the gryverns, frowning up at the sky.
When he finally crossed the palace roof, it seemed as if his wings could not hold his plump weight for one second longer, and he tumbled to a hard landing on the soil.
He didn’t lift his head or turn his eyes to mine. Claw marks had been gouged down his haunches and his neck was bruised in the shape of a vicious bite. His battered body gave a shuddering exhale, and his wings, blood-soaked and misshapen, fell limp against his sides.
Sorae let out a quiet whine.
I walked down the steps and knelt at Vexes’s side, stroking a hand down his snout. “You did what you could,” I murmured. “You couldn’t have stopped him.”
An ocean’s worth of guilt soaked the bond we shared, its tide surging in both directions. Shame, too—that he’d been too small and too weak to save the people of his realm. And anger—at me, his Queen—for not being there when I should have been.
A small amount of my magic had returned since the battle, and I pushed it into Vexes to heal his wounds. I was glad to be free of it. The fondness I’d once developed for my godhood was hard to recall. Its thrumming presence in my blood was now a brutal reminder of what I’d done.
I reached to stroke Vexes’s muzzle, but he jerked his head away. He dragged himself to his feet and lumbered to the end of the gryverns’ line, as far from me as he could get.
Rosha paid him little mind as he shuffled by. Her efforts to woo Tybold were still going strong. She cooed as she brazenly leaned in to groom his fur.
Tybold let out a sudden snarl. He snapped his jaws around Rosha’s neck until she whimpered and lowered her head in submission. When he let her go, orange fire glowed behind his fangs, and Rosha scurried away to Vexes’s other side.
Sorae noted it all. When the Meros gryvern twined his tail around her leg, she pulled it free and shifted closer to Tybold.
As I stared at the line of gryverns, I wished, as I so often did these days, that I had more time. Time to help Sorae and Tybold mend their rift. Time to get to know them—what they’d been through and how they felt, what they thought of the war, what lives they wanted for themselves.
But perhaps those were things I was not meant to know. These creatures were never meant for this world.
And they certainly were never meant to be mine.
“The six of you have seen more than any person here can begin to fathom,” I said loudly.
“You have crossed worlds and witnessed generations. You survived the worst of wars and Crowns. You watched as those you cared for died again and again. And you endured it alone, without the comfort of another of your kind. You all deserved better. The gryverns who died deserved better—Rymari and . . .”
I winced. I’d never learned the Umbros gryvern’s name. I’d never learned the Fortos gryvern’s name, either.
“Baldrum,” Lonard called out. “Our gryvern was Baldrum.”
At the mention of the fallen gryvern’s name, the other soldiers from Fortos crossed their arms at the wrist in salute. I nodded deeply and returned the gesture.
“You defended your Crowns and your realms with honor. You may have had no choice, but our gratitude is no less for it.” I sank to one knee and bowed my head. “For all that you’ve given, we thank you.”
Behind me, I heard rustling, then Luther’s voice: “We thank you.”
Movement rippled over the crowd as the members of my army—then, after a stern glare from me, the residents of the palace—lowered to their knees and repeated the words.
The gryverns looked around with narrowing eyes, suspicion flowing strong through each bond. The Descended had always felt entitled to the gryverns’ submission, and the mortals had always hated the gryverns for it. Gratitude was not an emotion they were used to, nor one they trusted.
“The only Emarion worth defending is one where we stand together,” I said.
“This is your home, too, so I am asking you to fight for it. Not for me or my Crown. For yourselves. Help me fight for an Emarion where no one, not even a gryvern, is forced to bend their will to another. But if you do . . .”
I paused. Took a deep breath.
“ . . . do it without a chain around your neck.”