Chapter 45
LYKOR
Asecond island hit the river like a fist from the sky.
Water exploded upward, mud and spray battering the northern shore. Lykor snapped a hand out and cleaved the surge around himself and Skylash, driving Rimeclaw’s gift through the current.
Stone and root ground into the riverbed, the weight shuddering through his boots. The island lurched, cracked, then settled half-drowned, one edge jutting above the water while the river swallowed the rest.
Blossom’s vines struck before the veil of water fell. Green coils speared through broken earth, cinching the mass to the first isle she’d ripped from the sky.
Atop the fallen isle, tents sagged into buckled ground. Blankets, packs, and overturned cookpots skidded toward the drowned edge, bodies scrambling around them.
Alive, then.
The useless, stranded ones. Their prisoners. Those without Cinderax’s gift of fire and wings. Left behind while everyone worth sending to the battle took to the sky.
“Worth sending?” Aesar asked. “I’m sure the king would admire how neatly you’ve ranked them.”
Lykor’s fist tightened at his side. Apparently a handful of silent days had been enough to make him forget how exhausting it was to share a skull.
Coughs and ragged shouts rose through the river’s roar. Survivors clawed toward higher ground over slick stone and exposed roots, some on hands and knees, others dragging the wounded.
Across the river, an army of thousands packed the southern bank, columns deep, elven officers shining with Essence.
“They could open enough portals,” Aesar said, the same calculation already forming in Lykor’s mind.
Lykor’s lip curled. “AND BLEED THEIR RESERVES KEEPING THEM OPEN FOR THE ARMY TO CROSS.”
Rifts would’ve suited him, every opening an invitation to kill. Collapse the passage as it formed. Sever bodies caught between places. Drown one squad in shadows before the next found its footing.
But Blossom could do the work for them. She could close the river with dead islands, bury Skylash, and grind Lykor down on the shore while the army waited behind her, their Wells unspent.
Another stretch of water vanished under stone and vine.
Minutes, then.
Beside him, Skylash lay where the current had spat her onto the shore. Aesar had mended the worst of Rimeclaw’s damage, but neither wing would bear her.
She had yet to speak to him through whatever bond existed between her and the fool who’d landed on her back and somehow survived. Lightning snapped between her fangs with every exhale, and the growl in her chest hadn’t stopped since the army had arrived.
“This position isn’t defensible,” Aesar murmured.
“FIND ME ONE THAT IS.”
“We can portal.”
“AND LEAVE HER FOR GALAERYN?”
“Then bring her.”
“I HAVE A FEELING SHE’D RATHER DIE IN THE MUCK THAN SUFFER US SHOVING HER THROUGH A RIFT.”
Every instinct pulled Lykor up to where he’d left Jassyn.
But Jassyn had made it clear what he thought of being guarded like something breakable, so Lykor planted his boots deeper in the mud. He sheathed his forearms in frost and yanked shadows over his fists.
He had enough magic for one hard fight. Enough to make the first ranks pay for crossing.
Lykor focused on the river, where he could bleed their numbers. Every soldier he dropped here was one that would never reach Jassyn on a different front. And if this shore was to become his grave, he’d make it large enough for an army.
The spray thinned over the newly crashed island, and bodies sharpened into faces, tethers glinting at their throats. At the island’s lower edge, Saundyl stood knee-deep in the river while others clawed for higher ground.
His wife pressed against his side, their infant son locked to her chest, mud streaking them from temple to waist. The current battered Saundyl’s legs, whipping soaked fabric around them, yet his gaze landed on Lykor.
A thousand paces behind him, Galaeryn’s army blackened the bank. Blossom had already chained Saundyl’s fallen isle into the growing bridge. He only had to face south to find Elashor’s banners, and return to the side that would use his blood and perhaps let his wife and son live to see another dawn.
Lykor waited for him to turn.
Saundyl took the infant from his wife, then stepped into the river with her.
Toward Lykor. Toward a wounded Stormstrike with lightning fraying between her fangs. Toward a shoreline Lykor had already measured for the dead.
“What the fuck are you doing?” The words ripped out of him as he strode toward the waterline, shadows writhing over his fists. “Go back, you stupid bastard. You’ll die on this shore.”
Saundyl waded deeper.
The river struck him across the chest, his footing slipping before he caught himself. Spray broke against his ribs as he clambered over submerged stones, his son held above the water and his other arm locked around his wife.
Lykor sensed Saundyl seize the current. The prince fought against its pull with his connection to the earth, forcing just enough water aside to keep all three of them upright.
Others followed.
One of Daeryn’s loyal shamans slid from the island’s edge and gasped when the cold river climbed her thighs. Two prisoners they’d freed from the king’s dungeons plunged in after her, fighting through the churn.
A handful broke south, swimming for the bank Galaeryn’s army held, survivors from the Maw choosing the side whose chains they already knew.
Then the rest began stepping into the river.
Scores of them.
Some with tethers. Some with wounded draped across their shoulders or children held above the water. Saundyl fought ahead of them, wrenching the current aside as they abandoned the island one by one and followed him north.
Apparently whatever waited beneath Elashor’s banners frightened them more than the river or Lykor.
“You’re going to drown!” Lykor snarled, pacing the shallows. “Every last one of you is going to—”
“They’re not going to listen,” Aesar said, far too amused.
Lykor wanted to strangle it out of him. Instead, he bared his fangs, hauled on Rimeclaw’s gift, and tore the river apart.
The current bucked against his hold. Water reared on either side, its weight shuddering through his arms as he drove it outward. Mud surfaced first. Then broken stone. Then the riverbed emerged in a ragged strip, walls of water towering on either side and bowing inward against his grip.
Narrow. Slick. Choked with sludge.
But passable.
They came through, shivering and stumbling. Hauling one another across exposed rock while the river hammered at the passage.
Saundyl’s sapphire eyes never left him.
Lykor held the river open and hated him for it.
Rimeclaw’s power tore through him, strength he’d need when the army crossed. Strength meant for killing. He spent it anyway, holding back the river for people he’d looked at minutes ago and judged too useless for war.
“Strange amount of effort for the useless ones.”
Lykor ground his molars until his jaw ached.
Upstream, another island struck the river hard enough to roll the impact through his boots.
Then another.
Blossom’s roots and vines burrowed into the broken earth and hauled the wreckage into line. Island by island, the bridge widened, each new ruin consuming another stretch of open water. Soon, the army would march shoulder to shoulder in a broad front.
Saundyl reached the shore drenched and shaking, his son crushed against his chest. He passed the infant to his wife, then took a place at Lykor’s side and faced the army across the river.
Water streamed from his clothes. Mud dulled the gold at his throat. But he lifted his chin the same way his sister did, with that insufferable defiance.
Saundyl raised one trembling hand. Water peeled from the survivors gathered along the shore, drawing free of hair and clothes before spilling into the muck at their feet.
Good. Now they could all die dry when the first blade found them.
Aesar huffed. “Like Essence won’t reach us first.”
Lykor rolled his eyes.
Skylash hauled herself upright. Her hind legs carved trenches through the sodden earth while her wing talons gouged the bank for purchase. For one precarious instant, she wrestled her weight underneath her.
Then her damaged wing crumpled.
She crashed back into the mud with a snarl that scattered sparks across the shore.
Lykor stared at her. Grounded. Wounded. But still perhaps the most dangerous thing on their side.
Lykor pinned his attention to the southern bank. “When that army crosses, everyone standing here—”
Blossom ripped another island from the sky, roots streaming behind it like torn veins. It struck beside the other isles and punched a geyser of riverwater upward.
Saundyl kept his gaze on the army. “We know.”
Two words. Lykor wanted to hit him for making idiocy sound like conviction.
“Took you long enough to grow a spine.” He tore the ring of keys from his armor and hurled it into Saundyl’s chest. “Do something useful. Get those tethers off.”
Saundyl caught the keys and crossed immediately to his wife. His fingers shook against the mud-caked gold at her throat until the key caught and the lock gave. The tether dropped into the muck.
Lykor ripped open a portal to the abandoned Everfrost Caverns, because apparently one stupid mercy deserved another. He jerked his chin toward the rift.
“Go.”
Those without collars stumbled through first. The wounded followed, limping and bleeding, shoulders wedged under arms while the stronger dragged what remained of the weaker toward safety. Saundyl returned to Lykor’s side as his wife crossed the shore.
At the threshold, she turned. Saundyl gave her the smallest nod and she stepped through with their son, the void swallowing them both.
Only when they vanished did Saundyl fit the key into his own tether. Gold struck the mud, and Essence flared around him.
He tossed the keys to the next prisoner, and the ring began its passage down the line while Lykor held the portal open. Locks gave. Gold fell. Some went straight for the portal.