Chapter Ninety-Five
Folami
An earth-shattering, bone-shaking boom sounded throughout the streets of Alvor, so loud I heard it inside the palace, my ears popping slightly with the force.
The walls rattled, shaking loose dust and debris, causing the women and children to cry out in fear.
My heart jolted, muscles tensing, as if my psyche was already preparing for battle.
That cannot be. Torin and Lex will not let them come close to here.
“Stay with them,” I instructed one of the female Mages assigned to the small contingent of soldiers that decided to stay back to protect the women and children.
Many of the Mages and Vessels were young—newly Awakened and some even unAwakened.
It was a ragtag unit, individuals who we hadn’t trained as hard or desperately as the others, thinking they’d see little—if any—combat.
My heart thudded in time with my steps as my boots slapped against the stones. The hallways were blessedly empty, everyone either sheltering in their own homes or in the palace as Talamh instructed.
I braced myself the entire time, waiting for a second explosion, but none ever came.
That, more than anything, had my steps quickening until I was sprinting through the corridors, taking turns at lightning speed. My spear was tied tight to my back, and I used both hands to push off of walls as I careened through the palace.
I threw my weight against a small side door, opening it with a loud bang, nearly falling into one of the courtyards we used for training. While separated from the rest of Alvor, it was surrounded by an easily scalable wall that overlooked the docks and the sea beyond.
I approached the wall at a sprint, not stopping as I ran up the sheer face of it, grasping protruding stones as handholds to pull myself up the rest of the way.
Perched on the edge of the wall, I gasped, nearly falling the fifteen-odd feet to the streets below, at the sight of the sea.
Black, acrid smoke billowed from slowly sinking ships; the scent of burning wood and singed flesh carried on the wind, causing me to gag.
I hawked and spat the excess saliva rapidly pooling in my mouth, ignoring the turning of my belly.
Waves sloshed violently, quickly dragging remnants and survivors out to sea rather than to the beaches and docks that lined Deucena’s coast.
What happened?
The sounds of the injured and dying wafted across the sea, their cries mingling with the calls of carrion as they circled the area from the sky.
One hand pressed to my mouth, the other to my brow to shade the sun, I scanned the horizon for what would have caused that type of noise, but found nothing.
Small, schooner-like ships were easily circumventing the larger Iluulian vessels as they slowly sank beneath the waves to a watery grave, but there was no evidence of whatever cataclysmic magic just struck our navy.
Peytor was on those ships.
The man was noble to a fault—there was no way he absconded his position before the dozen ships were blown to smithereens.
My stomach roiled violently at the thought, and I had to take deep breaths through my nose to fight it this time.
Surely, he was still alive, floating somewhere beneath the boiling waves. Surely, I would have felt if one of my husbands died . . . right?
He is alive. He must be. I refused to entertain any other possibility.
I watched in abject horror, frozen to my perch, as the smaller ships progressively neared the docks at an almost lazy cadence, as if they knew there was no rush, no military to stop them once they disembarked.
We were supposed to be Elyria’s last line of defense. Now, it seemed, we were first.
The gravity of the situation hit suddenly, spurring me into action as my blood ran hot with fright. I leapt from the wall with a gasp. Tumbling at the last moment to avoid a jarring impact, I sprang to my feet and sprinted through the streets, screaming for Talamh as I went.
The streets, like the palace corridors, were eerily empty, and I directed any Mages and Vessels I saw to the palace.
“Commander Folami! What happened? What was that noise?” Faces and voices blurred together as I ran, braids pounding against my back and beads clicking in alarm.
“Get to the palace!” I called, my voice booming with authority and a crazed, desperate edge. My feet slapped against the stone, my breaths sawing through my heavy chest. “We are under attack! Get to the palace!”
I never paused to see if my orders were followed, but I had to believe that their training—and perhaps the animalistic instinct to survive—would propel them into action.
On and on I ran, growing ever closer to the sea with each step. The streets sloped downward here, and my cadence only increased in an effort to keep my body from toppling head over heels.
My feet carried me to the docks, my boots slapping against the wood with a harsh echo.
The smells of battle and death were thicker here, causing me to hack and cough as I approached a lone figure.
They never turned, even as I retched onto the docks, my meager breakfast and bile coating the wooden boards.
With eyes watering from vomiting and the thick smoke in the air, I turned to the end of the docks.
There, silhouetted against the rising sun, was Talamh.
He was clad in Deucena’s traditional attire, his hand resting lightly on a pouch of crystals—the last remaining from the mine collapse.
My breaths sawed in and out of my chest as I fought desperately to calm my racing heart. Sweat slicked my skin, causing my loose pants to stick obscenely, but I felt none of it. Time seemed to halt completely as I surveyed the wreckage aside Talamh.
It was worse from this angle; a graveyard of masts and ships, broken bodies bobbing with the currents and waves. Portions of the sea were darker, especially beneath groupings of more than one body.
Blood, I realized with a jolt. It’s from their blood.
I listened intently to the sounds of the wind and the crackling of fire as pieces of ships burned asunder, desperately searching for a voice—any voice. But it was quiet as a tomb—no calls of pain or cries for help or mercy came from the watery depths.
Were they all dead?
Silence reigned in the aftermath of the destruction, and I refused to break it, cautiously pulling even with Talamh.
He never acknowledged my existence, simply spoke on a broken whisper.
“We are doomed, Folami. They come, and we have no way to stop them. My people—” Talamh faltered.
“Your people”—I paused to inhale deeply a few times—“are safe in their homes or within the palace. But you are not. I am not. We must retreat into the city and plan our defense.”
“What defense, Folami?” Talamh looked at me then, and I saw the same worry and fear I felt reflected back at me in his azure eyes.
I hardened myself, then, closing off all emotion; any lingering personal cares I had needed to be buried for the time, at least until we were safe.
“We have Mages and—”
“No, Folami. We don’t. We have unAwakened cadets and Mages too fearful to join the frontlines. They will break the minute Solace steps foot on these docks.” It was said with finality and a snort of disgust.
I kept my mouth shut, unable to disagree with him despite how desperately I wanted to.
The reality was we weren’t a fighting force and, if we did try and defend the city from Solace, we’d be eviscerated in seconds.
I crossed my arms, hugging my sides in a rare display of uncertainty.
“So what do we do?” I asked, my voice quiet and reverent as I watched the sails of the enemy ships slowly glide through the watery graveyard.
Talamh turned on his heel, having seen enough to formulate a plan. I followed in his wake, my eyes hanging onto the slowly sinking ships for a moment longer, praying I’d see a head of chestnut curls darkened by the water. But the waves kept their secrets.
“We pull back to the city. Hide everyone in the warded mines,” Talamh said as we quickly climbed the sloping streets back toward the heart of Alvor.
“Wait until they pass,” I said, understanding dawning. Talamh grunted, and I nodded my head. “It’s a good plan.”
“It’s the only plan.”
“Alvor will fall,” I said, preparing him for the inevitable destruction of his homeland.
“Palaces can be rebuilt. Homes and businesses, too. Stone may be scorched and Alvor reduced to mere rubble, but it is just that—stone and earth. It can all be rebuilt,” he intoned quietly, almost reverently, as we wound our way through the cobbled streets.
My heart hurt for him; Alvor was a beautiful, ancient city with ties to a time before the gods walked Elyria. To lose that history—his ancestral home—would be devastating. But one glance at his hardened expression and determined glint in his eyes told that the city wasn’t his concern.
“People cannot,” he finished as the palace loomed. He stopped suddenly, causing me to halt a few paces in front of him.
There was a feral glint to his eyes now, a gleam that I was all too familiar with as it was often reflected in my own. Solace may have won this hour, but it would be her last.
“Once they have passed through, we will follow them. Leave the vulnerable in the caves and only bring those who wish to strike back. We’ll meet with Torin’s forces near the river and strike them from Elyria. Permanently.”