Look me in the eyes and lie
JASPER
In all my years crawling across the Wastes with Maksym, I’d been in plenty of fights.
Meager ones, large ones. Brawls in taverns, fistfights in alleyways.
Skirmishes in towns that wanted little to do with our band of misfits.
Even the culmination of our building rebellion against old King Callum, which ended in weeks of bloodshed and battles breaking out everywhere in sight.
In theory, the mage training of my youth had prepared me for it all.
To strategize, assess danger and risks, and enact plans carefully crafted with my arcane knowledge. To be the right hand of a king who needed guidance; to impart my wisdom on brutish generals and squadron commanders who could see little reason beyond their need to conquer.
But that morning, I learned just how frighteningly little in my life had actually prepared me for something that truly tasted like the cusp of war.
Behind the tentative safety of Grimmoria’s border wall, we were a well-organized disaster. A sea of dark fae troops, dotted with hurriedly erected tents and weapon stores, painted the landscape for as far as I cared to look.
Groups had moved trebuchets into place.
Specialized squads were packed into the battlements, on standby for movement with ballistas and archers loaded.
Our infantry was chomping to do damage, scattered out in battalions, balanced with magecraft and brute strength. But they’d be the last to go through the reinforced gate, beyond the safety of the wards, and only if the ward stone was felled.
We would fight from a distance, returning equal fire, until we were given no other choice. And I desperately hoped it would not come to that.
The siege of my kingdom aside, I refused to consider an outcome in which Max lost his life. I’d gladly lay down my own before it came to it, if I could offer a second of distraction in the name of any greater good.
Thankfully, Odessan forces had retreated since their earlier offensive on the anchor stone, a mighty obelisk of ink-black veined with crystalline blue that stood a hundred feet in the air and easily thirty feet across, etched with thousands of ancient runes.
The Odessan war camps were a murky smudge of smoke and tents below the ridgeline of the last plateau separating Grimmoria from the desolate lowlands of the Wastes.
Whatever they had done to secure that land—usually inhabited by willing and harmless outcasts of society—was beyond me, but it made my blood boil all the same.
Our border guard hadn’t even known Odessan forces were about to launch an assault until they’d appeared on the ridgeline and volleyed their first wave of projectiles at the ward stone. An entire fucking battalion, pulled from thin air, equipment, bodies, buildings and all.
It was a feat I could handle if desperate measures called for a broad retreat, but it would leave my body wrecked after, and a magic-drained mage was an utter waste during war.
Many years had passed since I left the lands of the god-touched people, sure, but our intelligence stayed fairly reliable until Enora’s father died, and we had never known of noteworthy Steppers in royal service.
I’d have plenty to mull over once we cleared through to the other side of this irritating display from Odessa’s pissant boy king.
“High mage!” came a call from somewhere to the right of me, and a young Umbrite messenger came funneling through, waving a paper in her hand.
“The headcounts you asked for.” The poor woman was huffing and puffing by the time she thrust it at me. “And Lord Malakai wants to know if he should pull from the northern faces? They could be gathered and moved within the hour.”
“No. Goddess, no. Tell him to keep them right where they are for now.”
The messenger gave me a curt nod and hurried away as fast as she came.
The last thing we needed was to strip our other borders of their manpower and have the fucking wool pulled over our eyes at the last second.
Shifters fought territory wars so often with the unscrupulous high fae who inhabited the northern faces beyond our wards that I wouldn’t put it past them to strike an alliance just to scourge their precious mountains of dark fae filth, leaving the rest of Grimmoria to Odessa’s taking.
We were well supplied with bodies at the gate anyway, and a once-over of the headcount confirmed that. I folded the paper, tucking it into my pocket, and was ready to head back to the planning tent when a crackle in the air came from across the camp.
It shouldn’t have registered to me at all, given how much energy had been coming and going from the temporary stone placed there all damned morning.
It was an aetherical anchor to make it less taxing for our Steppers to come and go as they moved troops and resources—something I had used abundantly already.
But Enora wasn’t supposed to be standing beside it with Gallan, wide-eyed and awestruck as she held Apollo’s lead.
What the fuck.
Enora should not have been anywhere that wasn’t stowed away inside the Keep, not when she was being used as the fuel for this assault.
If there was even a chance the stone fell, and she was here at the gate? Goddess below, she would be so fucked, never mind the rest of us.
Maksym and I had discussed it as well.
It might’ve been a fraught, hurried conversation while he refused to let me tend to the wound in his side and directed me to haul two bodies like trash, but we had agreed.
Enora was to stay in the Keep until a time came that it wasn’t safe to do so—Maksym had even sound-warded her quarters to give the woman a chance at some damned rest after everything she’d gone through.
To hell with whatever else was on my endless list of things I needed to check at the camp. I was striding towards them in a hurry, dodging infantry and mages as they hurried from place to place.
From a step behind her, Gallan fixed me with a wide-eyed stare that built a knot in my stomach. I knew what was coming next, even if I didn’t want to hear the word uttered.
We’d also discussed this, just a few weeks ago.
A fail-safe.
An absolute last resort.
Enora approached first with a tentative smile, decked in leathers with a war bow strung over her shoulder, her golden hair worked back in twin braids. She was breathtaking in her element, and I wished I’d had more time to appreciate that.
“Maksym put me to work,” she said, though I could tell there was so much else trapped behind that smile. “You can never have too many archers, right?”
I cast her the most playful look of skepticism I could manage, despite catching Gallan digging out a missive from the corner of my eye. “Does that mean your aim has improved? You had just about the worst—”
She gave me a shove with a scowl. “It’s great now, thank you.”
“And I’ve got this for you,” Gallan interjected with the folded note poised between his fingers. “A little update in direction from His Majesty.”
Gallan and I both knew what was inside, but I took it and cracked the seal anyway, reading the single word scrawled in Maksym’s handwriting. Somehow, reading it felt worse than I thought hearing it would.
I sighed and nodded, stuffing it quickly into my pocket.
“Are they directions I can know about, or…?” Enora was quick to quip.
Despite her former kingdom having all but just declared war on ours, in her name, she seemed awfully chipper.
That had to be why I hesitated.
“Just organizational strategy for Elixia. Boring stuff,” Gallan slid in with ease. “And I’m sure Jasper probably needs to get on relaying it, doesn’t he? We’re pretty spread amongst the camp right now.”
“I…really should.” Fuck. They were going to be utterly ravenous about this. “If you find Matteo, he’ll get Nor set up with the archer squads on the battlements.” I shifted my attention to Enora. “Are you good with that?”
She gave me an eager nod. “Of course. However I can help out.”
Gallan and I exchanged a glance that seemed to graze right over her, and the Umbrite set his hand on her back. “Come. We’ll get you introduced to Matteo. He’s one of Malakai’s brothers, but you’d never be able to tell. This one has the most incredible manners.”
Goddess below, Enora laughed at that and flashed me another smile over her shoulder before Gallan led her away.
I’d lock that sight and sound into my mind before all hell broke loose and hope it carried me through with a shred of my sanity intact. First, though, I had to relay Maksym’s orders, and not to the Elixia. The kingdom’s most elite weren’t even entirely here yet, but Enora was none the wiser.
I had only made it a few steps toward the planning tent when I halted and spun back.
“Wait, Enora!” That I’d had a stroke of remembrance, given everything and the ever-deteriorating state of my memory, was a hell of a feat. “I have your necklace.”
Enora’s eyes widened, and she jogged back as I fought to dig it out of the innermost pocket of my jacket, tucked right against my chest. I refused to keep it anywhere I couldn’t feel it constantly, not with how much it meant to her.
“It wasn’t damaged, thankfully. It just needed cleaning.”
The only cord I’d found in a hurry to replace the ruined one was much too long, but Enora slipped it around her neck anyway and stuffed the pendant beneath her layers of leathers.
“Thank you.” Goddess, she flashed me another smile so earnest, it seared itself into my mind. “I’ll see you later.”
She was going to be so pissed with me.