Chapter 2
Two
Morgan
Numb fingers grip the edges of the clasp and I pull the necklace over my head and tuck the necklace against my clavicle. Despite the heat from the chain, the pendant is as cold as ice and sears into my skin, marking me where it touches.
“She’ll be fine,” I tell myself out loud.
Every syllable strokes steel along my spine, forcing the truth between vertebrae.
I manage to get the necklace secure. Tugging my tunic up to cover the gem, I march, resigned, unseeing, away from the field. Every step in the opposite direction costs me something more precious than currency.
“They’ll all be fine.”
My muttered prayer means nothing when a hydra roars out its displeasure, the sound echoing off the mountains at our village’s back.
I have to believe it’s true. The herd is strong and our leadership unmatched. Whatever army the King and his favorite General send our way, we’re sure to rise against it; there’s no other choice.
If we fall to our knees for brutes then which village will be next? Will no one else stand up for what’s right? Are we expected to turn a blind eye to tyranny because the threat of the dragon jaws around our necks is too great?
Fallkirk, then Duenden, and Marman, perhaps, south along the entire mountain range. The capital with its greed and ego and ruthlessness to the north will expand beyond the stone borders of their lifeless city and encapsulate everything.
The image draws a sob.
I turn at the intricate iron gate marking our courtyard and march down the main street away from home. The nearest houses to ours are arranged on either side of the thoroughfare in neat rows with plenty of grazing space and open grass between them.
I drive my boots into clover and crush the delicate pink and white blossoms underfoot.
Heart still thundering, I slam my palm onto the door of the next cabin and drive inside without waiting for an answer.
“Hello? Anyone?”
My attention skitters over the four walls and the fireplace filled with dead coals from one of the early cold nights.
The cabin is clear.
Another shrieking hiss from the field has me wincing and drawing in on myself. The battle has begun, and the first waves have met Fallkirk’s defenses against the General’s opening moves.
He’ll have sent the hydras and basilisks ahead of the rest of his troops.
My mother and sister are out there on the ground with those beasts. Hydra venom can paralyze you within seconds, and if you make direct eye contact with a basilisk, you’re turned to stone.
I recover in seconds and force my aching legs to carry me to the next house, and the next. Many of the great manors here, the oldest in Fallkirk, are already empty, and the pure blistering sunlight overhead mocks my struggle.
There should be mist creeping along the edges of the roads and the stables, dark and hungry like the General’s men.
The next house is empty as well until I come to the last house on the lane. The door is locked shut against predators. I slam my hand against the wood until the splinters scrape against raw skin.
“Hello!” I peek in through the dusty whirls of glass on either side of the door. “Anyone—”
My mother gave me a task she deemed possible, to gather whomever I find, the stragglers. But she couldn’t have expected…
An old woman stares at me from her perpetual stoop in front of the drawing room fireplace, her hunched shoulders crouching closer to the flame. Her eyes widen in surprise, but her features stay in their familiar scowl.
“Go away, girl.” Lanai’s voice is clipped. “I’m not budging.”
I’ll have to break down the door if I want to get her out.
The kids in Fallkirk call her Grumpy Lanai for good reason. She’s the kind to pelt stragglers with stones if they stray too close to her porch. Her aim is impeccable as well. The scar on my shoulder twinges at the memory of a particularly sharp scrap of gravel she hurled at me.
I tug on the curved handle. “Open the door, Lanai.”
The crone takes pleasure in crossing her arms over her chest, her wrinkled face like one of the stone gargoyles in my sister’s fantasy books. Lanai should be guarding a castle rather than stoking flames on an already warm day.
“No.”
Another roar sounds from the battlefield accompanied by the cut off screech of a unicorn, and my blood goes cold.
“Flaming, cursed depths.”
My under the breath curse falls easily and I make my way around the side of the manor.
Lanai’s family practically settled Fallkirk themselves, and she’s never let anyone forget it.
Her son might be out there with my mother, along with his wife and their grown children, but the hardest one in the family to crack is still inside.
I quicken my pace to the side door and find it unlocked. My breath leaves me in a whoosh as I cut through the abandoned kitchen toward the front parlor.
Lanai’s gaze shifts to me, her white curls tucked beneath a frayed green and gold kerchief. Something in her rheumy eyes flares.
“I’m not going with you, Miss Morgan.” She waggles an arthritic finger at me in warning, the folds around her eyes thick enough to obscure the blue color.
“You think I don’t know what’s going on?
Your mother sent you here because she wants to turn my house into another one of those blighted stables.
Like the unicorns don’t have enough space in the village as it is.
This house has been in my family for generations. ”
My smile doesn’t touch my eyes and my pulse pounds in my head.
“That’s not what this is about.” I hold out a hand for her. “Come on. We have to get out of here.”
“Always thinking about improvements, your mother.” Lanai works her tongue over her teeth, her lips pressed closed. “Things are fine the way they are. The way they’ve always been.”
“Things aren’t fine,” I counter on instinct.
It’s a fool’s errand trying to change Lanai’s mind or convince her of the pressing danger. Soon enough, the battle will creep from the field and into the village. It’s inevitable. Our lines will only hold for so long. And when the dragons finally arrive…
Without waiting, I grab Lanai by the arm, ignoring her outraged squawk and demands to release her. She’s surprisingly strong for her age as though her stubbornness has added muscle where none should be.
She digs in her heels, and the stool upturns. “I’m not going anywhere!”
“Please, Lanai—” I pull.
She pulls back.
“Don’t try your hand at manners now,” she interrupts. “Too little, too late. You’re not taking my house.”
I draw her up close and bend until our noses practically touch. She smells of caked on floral perfume water and the ripeness of fermented vegetables.
“There’s a war out there. Normally, if you wanted to stay here and be burned to a crisp by dragon fire, I’d let you.” I swallow, my throat lumped with stones. “But my mother told me to get you out and that’s what I’ll do.”
Lanai pauses. “I think I’d hear about a war, Morgan.”
My heart hammers in my ears like spikes. “Trust me. We’ve got to go. We have a lot more houses to get to. My mother’s orders were to take the elderly and the children to safety.”
I won’t fail.
I can’t fail, not when this is my duty, away from the fighting. Away from my family.
The acrid taste in my mouth is as potent as ever. I pry Lanai to her door, the old woman kicking and screaming with surprising sprightliness for someone approaching a hundred years old.
“Stop manhandling me! Mark my words, your mother will hear about your barbarous behavior, young lady.” Wrinkled fists beat ineffectively against my hand gripping her wrist. “You’re not getting off with a warning this time. You and your foul temper!”
I haul in a sharp breath and lift my gaze to the sky, blinking at the light after the gloom of the parlor. “Stop fighting me.”
Impending doom is a song in my blood. From this vantage point through the trees, I catch a glimpse of glittering scales before the snake disappears. Basilisks are fearsome creatures.
A unicorn thunders after the basilisk, and the two clash together.
The sight seems to give Lanai pause. Her fists freeze midair and her lips tremble out of their usual pursed position.
“Oh. My.” Lanai’s eyes widen.
Now isn’t the time to gloat even though I want to. I want to point out that my behavior might be barbarous but so is hers. Instead, I drop her wrist.
“Right. Now follow me.”
She’s the first I find, but she won’t be the last. A few doors down, a young mother and her babies have taken cover underneath one of the beds. The children are too small to have moved easily.
“Morgan Whyte, that you?” The young woman peers up at me.
I windmill my arm to get them to move. “Celeste, we’ve got to go. Now.”
She scrambles to her feet, the tips of her shoes catching in the material and forcing her into a stumble. The baby on her hip gives a single plaintive wail loud enough to alert the General’s troops to our location.
“Brian told me to stay hidden,” she says in a whoosh, reaching behind her for her toddler son. “He said to wait until the fighting was over before coming out.”
If that’s the case, then she did a terrible job of picking a hiding place. I press my lips together.
She stops only long enough to take her son on the opposite hip, balancing out their combined weights.
“It’s not safe here anymore,” I tell her. “The battle will creep from the field any time now.”
Celeste shuffles after me. It takes another five houses before Lanai stops complaining.
The two of them stick close together as we search through the village for stragglers.
It’s slow going with the crowd around us.
In addition to them, we find several other young mothers and their children along with two sets of elderly parents.
Our small group grows. A girl of five years helps me usher those who can’t fight toward the hill in the distance. It’s the best place for us to go. Hopefully any hydra or ground troops will get lost in the trees.
They don’t know the forest like we do.
I’ve made the woods my home my entire life.