Chapter 59
ACKER
“She is magic,” Evelyns whispers, eyes alight as she watches her daughter next to me.
I wholeheartedly agree. “She is.”
She did a better job than Fredrich and I ever could. Keeping the sword raised, I watch as she walks to the front of the line and the soldiers’ frenzy follows down the line with her. I move to follow her, but Evelyn stops me with a hand on my arm.
But even as she speaks, she doesn’t tear her eyes away from her daughter. “You need to spread the word to your men. On the count of ten, cover themselves with their shield or whatever they can find.”
Fredrich speaks up. “What happens after the count?”
Evelyn’s eyes slip to mine as she says, “Just make sure everyone knows to take cover.”
My eyes dart to Zion’s and he doesn’t need further instructions, disappearing into the fray. When I look back at Evelyn, she, too, is merging with the soldiers, and I quickly lose sight of the gold sword strapped to her back.
A piercing sort of pain shoots through the Bond that has me looking for Jovie, feeling her through the tether. She’s within view. Head tilted back to the sky, her eyes search the expanse of black above, looking for someone who won’t be coming.
Even as I think it, I don’t want to believe it, half convinced Messer will swoop in and save the day.
Eat a troll or something.
Jovie’s pain is violent. And when she drops her gaze from the sky, there’s a new kind of determination in her stature.
I can see her fury mixing with grief, a dangerous combination, but powerful as she matches the rage-filled energy of her men.
Eyes blazing with the need for blood, teeth barring as she shouts her orders for the men to ready themselves. Their war cries are deafening.
But on the wind, there’s an answering call.
Looking to the city, the flickering firelight slowly creeps closer, the vibration in the land growing stronger.
I make to move toward Jovie, but Fredrich stops me with a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll stay with Jo. Don’t let your concern for her distract you,” he says.
Impossible.
He gives me a pointed look. “I’ve got her.”
Knowing he means it, I jerk him to me in a swift embrace. “Let’s get this over with, yeah?”
He grins. “Let’s.”
Jovie is staring into the distance when I come upon her.
Snow speckles her hair, little flakes of ice against her red locks.
The sword in her hand radiating a steady light.
I say her name and it almost feels like she’s looking through me when her eyes meet mine.
I cup her face in my hand, holding her stare until I see fissures begin to form in her icy exterior.
“Marry me,” I tell her.
There she is.
Relief floods through me as her mouth thins.
She’s annoyed, yes, but there’s also a flicker of humor down the tether.
She opens her mouth and I hear the answer in her mind, and I cover her mouth with mine before she can speak it.
The kiss is a promise from each of us to fight until tomorrow, when we can look back at this in memory.
Pulling away, I cradle her to my front, forearm across her chest. I breathe her in. Wildflowers mix with the smell of ice; chin tucked into her neck as I watch the pinpoints of firelight descending on our position.
I love you.
I’m stopped in my tracks, registering the words she projects toward my mind. The worry I’ve carried since I first heard her fears of me obtaining Vad’s gift spikes before slowly melting into something completely opposite.
Placing my mouth against her temple, I send my own message back. Tell me tomorrow.
A quiet settles over the army and that’s when I notice the disappearing fire in the distance.
One after another, the fires extinguish in a move reminiscent to the time Jovie arrived in Kenta.
It’s a strategic move to make the incoming army invisible in the night air, swirling snow and clouded breaths creating a veil over their position.
“Put out your fires,” Jovie commands.
The order gets passed through the crowd and the light steadily wanes until we’re also cast in darkness. Jovie’s sword is the last to remain lit before she pulls her gift back. Removing two daggers from the strap across my chest, I move to Jovie’s side.
Other than the clank of swords against shields, shuffling feet, and heavy breaths, it’s silent as we listen for the incoming horde. It’s the calm before the storm.
Then, so very slowly, a vibration increases under our feet. Not the booming caused from trolls, but the kind from a flowing stampede. The yells of the men come next, their chorus coming in much quicker. We ready ourselves, anticipation coursing through the entire throng of soldiers.
It feels as if a wall of metal is coming for us. In their clothes, and weapons, and blood. So much iron that it makes my teeth hurt.
“Hundred paces,” I warn Jovie, Fredrich by her side. I run the back of my knuckles against the fist she has her sword clutched in and I can nearly sense her building anticipation through the Bond. “Fifty.”
Like an incoming thunder, the sound of thousands of men comes barreling down on us, their yells mixing with yells of our own right before the collision.
The incoming men are barely visible in the night, their arrival bringing forth a gust of wind.
My ears ring as metal bangs into metal, bodies into bodies.
Fredrich’s shield cocoons us, but not entirely. Unperceived threats sneak past the barrier, like the man stumbling into my front. I can’t tell who he’s aligned with, and I don’t want to kill our own men, but before I can react, Jovie ignites her sword.
Except, it’s not just her sword.
It’s every sword within fifty paces that ignites with light.
Fredrich cusses and there’s a stunned moment where the fighting stutters, everyone stunned, some of our own men dropping their weapons in fear.
I stare at Jovie in awe. But all she does is cut down the Roison soldier who found himself within our shield with a backswing of her sword.
It doesn’t take long for the fighting to resume, our men using the newly quired advantage of blinding light to strike down their adversaries.
I flick a dagger to my right, the blade arching back toward me, slicing the man coming toward us across the throat. Been hiding that nifty trick, have you?
There’s a cocky edge in her expression when her eyes cut to me.
I find myself smiling as I jab my dagger into an Alaha’s ribs, using my magic to shove the weapon through the front of his chest, out the back, grabbing the sword in his poised hand right before he crumbles to the ground, recalling the bloodied dagger in my other.
I hold the front line with Jovie and Fredrich and have the vague sense of Zion nearby.
The killing is mindless. I can feel my heart beating in my chest, hear it in my ears, but everything seems to calm in the sea of rage.
Instinct takes over, an endless sequence of motion.
My vision locks in sporadic moments, time caught in the span of breaths, in the pause of a blink.
I watch as my sword splits a man open ear to mouth, his tongue visible on a scream I can’t hear.
Swirling snow as I spin and throw my sword up against an incoming saber.
Jovie’s blade spearing through the man’s chest. On and on it goes.
Stumbling over the fallen, we don’t stop. We don’t slow.
Then, the ground judders.
A violent shake that has everyone freezing in place, even our opponents as the tremor comes again, except stronger.
The roar of a troll vibrates the air and everyone looks toward the bellow, as a growing figure emerges from the swirling snow.
It’s the troll with one less eye and he’s hurtling through the horde of battle, feet hitting the ground with violent force as he stumbles over his own men. Their deaths end in abrupt screams.
When a second set of steps sound in the distance, Zion’s prayer is just about audible above the melee. “Mother help us.”
We move in unison to avoid being crushed to death under the foot of the troll. But every man around us has the same idea, Roison, Alaha, Kenta, and Maile alike, all make for a congested escape out of the troll’s path. We’re not going to make it.
Jovie and Fredrich skid to a stop ahead of me, and I clutch the sleeve of Jovie’s leathers and yank her in the opposite direction.
Toward the troll rather than away. Zion catches on.
Faster than Fredrich and I both, he sprints toward the giant, sword raised over his head, a cry leaving his mouth as he slides underneath the falling footfall of the troll.
He scores the bottom of his sole, sliding across the ground as blood waterfalls from over his head.
He barely escapes being smooshed as the troll screams. The sound is ear-piercing, but the giant stumbles to the side, creating an opening for the rest of us to get by.
He’s angry. He growls as he bends over, swatting a hand across the ground and taking out anyone in his path.
Bodies fly, screams fading into the night sky.
The giants are either too hard to control, or Wren really doesn’t give a fuck about his own men.
Shoving Jovie ahead, I make sure she and Fredrich are clear of the troll’s rampage, I fall back.
Jovie screams my name, but I don’t break concentration as I ready the sword in my hand like a javelin, squinting as I take aim.
And when the troll bends to grab a handful of soldiers, I hurl the sword, pushing the metal through the air toward my target.
His remaining eye explodes as soon as the sword pierces it.
I make a run for it.