Chapter 76
ALIXE
Archers.
Three short bursts of shadow, then one spear of light.
Fire on the back.
Runa and Enness.
One pulse of shadow, then an illusion-crafted horse.
Ride to the front.
Guardians.
Two shots of shadow, then a swarm of glowing orbs.
Bombs to the middle.
Faunos Descended.
I tensed—we hadn’t been prepared for their arrival, and they didn’t know our signals. I’d have to deliver this order myself.
I scanned the Fortos plains. “Ailani,” I shouted, “where are you?”
My voice could barely be heard over the din of battle, but the roar of a tiger pulled my focus to a pack of yellow-eyed Descended hovering near the trees. I spotted the former Faunos Queen standing in front and scowling.
“Ailani,” I called out again, riding toward her. “Send your animals to attack the group from Meros, and put your magic on the shield around the Guardians.”
Ailani didn’t move. One eyebrow lifted. “You want me to shield terrorists?”
“We’re on the same side today.”
She scoffed. She flicked a wrist, and the creatures prowling around her group set off running eastward. “You can have our beasts. We’ll keep our shields to ourselves.”
A yellow veil shimmered around her to emphasize her point.
She didn’t spread her shield around her people, even though there hadn’t been enough of Teller’s godstone mixture to protect all the Faunos arrivals.
She’d insisted it be applied to her first, then left the others to fight for the rest among themselves—literally, as evidenced by the fresh wounds many of them wore.
Diem would never, I thought crossly.
“This is not the time to be selfish,” I told her. “If Ophiucae gets into their minds, he’ll turn their bombs right back on us.”
She shrugged. “I can shield a bomb. Wouldn’t be the first time we faced them.”
“Ailani, it isn’t up for discuss—”
I stopped short at the gleam of challenge in her eye.
I’d dealt with Faunos Descended like her in the Emarion Army.
It was in their nature to prove themselves as the strongest, most dangerous predator in any given group.
When given orders, their instinct was to fight back until someone more powerful put them in their place.
Unfortunately, Ailani’s magic vastly outmatched mine. The smile rising on her lips was begging me to give her a chance to prove it.
Think, Alixe, I told myself. Her Majesty trusted you to lead. Prove that you deserve it.
I could remind her that Blessed Faunos had chosen Diem, not her, to lead. Then again, the Crown hadn’t stopped the Faunosians from resisting Diem when we’d visited them earlier this year. Diem had been forced to prove herself with her strength, and that was something I couldn’t do.
But I could talk to them in a language they understood.
I waved a hand toward the battlefield. “Today, all of us are a single pack. You might not like everyone in your pack, but you tolerate them, because everyone in the pack has a role to play, from the strongest”—I nodded at her—“to the weakest.” I glanced at the Guardians.
Ailani took the ego stroke as I’d hoped, tension easing from her stance.
“In nature, a pack exists to further its line and to guard its resources, right?” I went on. “Well, Emarion is the most important resource we have, and if we lose today, our lines end. Mortals and Descended both.”
Ailani’s ochre eyes rolled skyward.
“You know what happens to animals who abandon their pack in the wild,” I pushed. “They die.”
Her arms uncrossed and dropped to her side. “Fine,” she groaned. “We’ll shield the rebel filth.”
A rush of pride went through me, but I had no time to celebrate my victory. The archer’s arrows were falling short of the eastern front, and I needed to find out why. I nudged my horse into a gallop and left the Faunosians behind as I searched for the former Meros King.
I found him at the base of the tree line, staring east in a teary-eyed daze while Doriel gently rocked him in their arms. “I told them to leave Meros,” Obaneryn said hoarsely. “I thought they’d be safe on the sea.”
Doriel stroked a hand over his locs, cradling his head against their chest. “You tried to protect them,” they murmured. “You did everything you could.”
“How could the Blessed Mother let this happen to her people?” Obaneryn sobbed.
Doriel’s eyes squeezed closed, agony scrawled across their face. “I’ve asked the Blessed Father the same. I don’t know why they would do this to their most loyal believers. We obeyed every commandment to the letter.”
Did you? I wondered as I swung off my horse. Did any of us?
I’d once believed myself among the most devout of the Kindred’s adherents. So many times over the years, I’d buried the discomfort I felt at the Crowns’ commands beneath my faith, holding fast to the belief that their actions were anointed by the gods.
The Kindred see beyond what our Descended minds can fathom. It’s not for us to understand. Whatever pain obedience might bring, it’s better than what would come from ignoring the Blessed Mother’s wisdom.
That’s what I’d told myself every time doubts crept in.
I heeded the promises of my elders that the system we lived within, though it might seem cruel or unjust by worldly standards, was divinely inspired and righteous in its perfection.
To challenge the gods was a heathen’s pride, and I was no heathen.
But the more I studied the Kindred’s words, the stronger my discomfort grew.
When I read their commandment to honor the mortals as our neighbors, my stomach roiled to see the Crowns use it to impose separate cities, separate schools, sometimes even separate realms. Neighbors, the Crowns emphasized. To live beside each other, not as one.
Protect the mortals—perhaps the Kindred’s most repeated directive, and by far the Crowns’ most often-used excuse.
Those three words wound around my heart every time I was sent to punish a starving orphan for stealing food or arrest a mortal for not paying taxes that anyone could see they couldn’t afford.
But I was obedient.
I was pious.
I was a servant of Blessed Lumnos, and servants did not question their master’s word.
My crisis of conscience reached a peak when Diem took the throne.
For the first time, I saw a Crown who upheld the same values I felt when I read the Kindred’s scriptures.
Diem preached unity and understanding and mercy.
She fought for the most vulnerable and demanded they be given equal respect.
The Kindred had warned that their most faithful would face the greatest resistance, and that strength of spirit, not strength of force, would guide them through.
The gauntlet I’d watched Diem walk had surely eclipsed any previous Crown’s, and she faced it with conviction and remarkable restraint.
But Diem wasn’t fond of the Kindred. She didn’t seem to be a disciple of the mortals’ Old Gods, either. As far as I could tell, she worshipped no god at all. She didn’t do good out of obedience or fear of divine retribution, she did it because she believed it was the right thing to do.
When I swore an oath to serve her, a part of me had feared that I was turning my back on my faith.
Now, as I looked out at Diem’s army—at the mortals and Descended of Emarion protecting each other with no prerequisite for faith or terremère, putting their lives at risk for people they’d once sworn to hate, fighting together for a shared home and the promise of an equal future—I began to think that the day I chose Diem’s path was the very first day in my life that I’d truly obeyed the Kindred, too.
“I wish you had time to properly mourn your people,” I said as I knelt beside Obaneryn, “but there are thousands more lives at risk. Our archers need your wind.”
“You cannot ask him to kill his own people,” Doriel hissed.
“Those people are dead,” I said bluntly.
“You don’t know that,” Obaneryn said. “Maybe they’re just under his control.” He gazed out toward Ophiucae, looking as if he was pleading with him, not with me. “What if they can be saved? If there’s any chance—”
“There is not,” a voice purred from the woods.
Doriel’s hand flew up and raised a thick shield around us. I stood and squinted through the shimmering veil to see several figures emerge from the trees on horseback, all clad in uniforms of bright crimson.
“Symond?” I blinked in surprise. “You came.”
The Chief Centenary rode forward into the sunlight. “Entirely against my wishes, I assure you,” he said, dismounting his horse.
“You can bring them back,” Obaneryn cried. He crawled toward Symond and clutched his legs. “Use your magic. Restore their minds, I’m begging you.”
Symond looked down with a dispassionate stare. “If I had the power to bring back the dead, it wouldn’t be your people I’d use it on.”
Behind him, Drusila’s face had gone ashen at the sight of the fighting. “He has so many,” she breathed.
“Have you come to join us?” I asked.
“No, we came all this way to have tea,” Symond said dryly.
“We’re here to fight. All of us.” Drusila shot him a pointed stare. “Right, Symond?”
He flashed an empty smile. “Whatever Her Majesty asks.”
“We won’t be much help with combat,” Drusila admitted. “In Umbros, we never had to fight by hand. We just used our magic.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “Your magic is what we need most.” I pointed to the group clashing with the Meros sailors. “Shield those mortals. Keep Ophiucae out of their heads.”
“Who’s going to keep him out of ours?” Symond asked. “I don’t suppose you have more of that clever little godstone mix lying around?” I tensed, and he laughed, dry and bitter. “No, of course not.”
“I can hide you with an illusion,” I offered. “That might keep his focus elsewhere.”
Drusila turned back to the other Centenaries and a long silence ensued, though their nodding heads and shifting eyes hinted at an unspoken conversation. Whatever was said, it seemed to work, as their gazes shifted east, and their hands rose in unison.
Symond stared contemptuously at Obaneryn, still huddled at his feet. “I’m not letting my people risk their lives while you fret over corpses.” He leaned down, sneering in his face. “They’re dead. Stop whining and move on.”
“How can you be so heartless?” Doriel said, coming to their mate’s side and holding him close. “Haven’t you ever lost someone you loved?”
“Why do you think I’m here?” Symond muttered.
“He’s right, my love,” Obaneryn murmured to Doriel. “We still have people in that army. We can’t let them die, too.” He wiped his tears away, then placed his hand on Doriel’s. “Stay with me? I can’t do this without you.”
Doriel helped him to his feet, and, arms still clutched around each other, they moved toward the archers.
Fresh tears sprang from Obaneryn’s turquoise eyes as his trembling hands cast a breeze, and a wail choked out of him as he watched the archers’ arrows pierce the skulls and hearts of the people he’d vowed to protect.
I felt awful for what I’d asked him to do. Knowing the alternative was worse didn’t make the guilt any less heavy.
There was no escaping pain in war. All who stepped into battle would feel it. The only difference was whether yours would end at the tip of a sword, or whether you would survive and endure its torture for years to come.
“You promised my people an illusion,” Symond said sharply.
I raised my hands and brought the image of the forest forward, draping it like a curtain in front of the Centenaries to hide them from view, then did the same for the Faunos Descended.
“There’s not many of us,” Symond warned, “and there are quite a lot of mortals to shield.”
I glanced out at the battle, the mantle of High General feeling heavier than ever as I debated which lives to sacrifice and which to spare. I pointed toward the catapults. “Focus your efforts there. If those bombs get turned on us, we’re finished.”
He glanced at the other Centenaries, brows silently twitching, and a moment later, their hands moved to obey.
“Thank you, Symond,” I said. “Your help will mean a great deal to Diem.”
“It shouldn’t. I only agreed to come so I could watch her die firsthand.” He smirked as his stare shifted over my shoulder. “Shame that I already missed it.”
I spun around to see Diem’s body crumpled among the fallen soldiers.
I looked around for Luther and found him riding toward Sorae, casting his shadows toward the Merosians whose wind had pinned her down.
My head shook in confused disbelief—Luther would never leave Diem’s side while she was wounded. And if she was dead . . .
A shudder rippled through me at the dark beast I knew he’d become.
I ran toward Diem. “Stay with your people,” I called back to Symond. “I’ll handle this.”
“Whatever you say, High General. But I’m curious . . . who’s going to handle them?”
I glanced back. His smile had turned markedly tighter as he raised a single pointed finger. I followed its path across the battlefield, toward the west—where another wave of dark figures rode toward us, silhouetted against the deep crimson sky.