Chapter 36 #2
Inside his old office, where General Wintre now kept his effects, Loren found his own equipment prepared for him.
He shoved Camilla into the chair behind the desk with a firm command for her to stay there and turned to where his full set of golden dragon-scale armor glittered in the corner of the room nearest the dying fire alongside a new sword with a hilt of gold and inlaid with rubies.
A crimson cape hung from the back of the breastplate, and a gold helm rested on its rack with a crown inlaid around its circumference.
More jewels—diamonds, rubies, and sapphires—encircled it amongst curls of filigree.
Loren grinned as he pulled his bloodied shirt off his back, wiping down his face with the few dry lengths of cloth before tossing it into the hearth. He picked up a fresh shirt from where it lay folded beside the armor and slipped it on before turning to his new ensemble.
Now this was the armor of a King.
If there was one thing about having a bondheart that Ariadne hated, it was the shared pain.
Even after Whelan was whisked away by Anthoria, the phantom injury in her spine continued to haunt her as she tried to find someone—anyone—she recognized in the confusion of battle.
It reminded her far too much of her time hanging from chains in the dungeons of Auhla.
But nothing compared to the echoes of death that came from the death of a bondheart linked to everyone.
Ariadne could never forget the agony of Rhun’s death that took Gavrhil during the ambush in Laeton.
It’d been the first time she experienced such horrific pain that she questioned whether or not she still lived.
Unfortunately, she knew that by going into battle alongside dhemons and dragons who had strong vinculums, she would likely feel it again.
Such understanding did not ease the shock of it—particularly when she witnessed the devastation firsthand.
Following Dhanin’s successful flight into the middle of a company of Valenul soldiers, a poisonous red dragon darted in. Ariadne watched in horror as a dhemon woman ran down the spine of her bondheart, making it no farther than the mid back before being struck in the gut by a thick bolt.
The pain did not register at first. Ariadne continued her fight, arms beginning to flag from the constant battering. Training and even the Battle of Monsumbra weren’t enough to prepare her for the incessant onslaught.
However, not long after the shock of the first bolt hitting the dhemon woman began to fade, she was pierced by a second.
This time, the flare of pain came from the shoulder, causing Ariadne’s grip to weaken just enough for the vampire in front of her to swat the blade from her hand.
It fell into the mud, and she knew all too well not to stoop to pick it up.
Yet just as she was dodging another attack and deciding how to regain her sword, a third bolt hit the dhemon connected to her through the vinculum square in the chest.
Death strikes were something entirely different from the agony of a deep wound.
It was a sudden, horrible sensation that cracked through Ariadne as though it were she who was impaled by the artillery instead.
She gasped, the air struggling to fill her lungs as her fingers instinctually scrabbled across the armor in search of what caused the pain, finding nothing.
The Valenul soldier took full advantage of her weakened state.
A sharp shriek from the red dragon succumbing to the death of its bondheart snapped across the battlefield.
While some turned their heads to look at what had happened—something Ariadne need not do thanks to feeling the result of the attack—the vampire did not.
Instead, he adjusted his grip and swung hard at her legs.
It was a calculated angle. By going for her limbs, he didn’t risk killing her outright.
Rather, he’d maim her just enough to gain the opportunity to pick her up and deliver her back to Loren.
And once that happened, the bastard would use her to get inside the minds of every other dhemon connected through the bondhearts in search of Azriel so he could taunt her husband into a frenzy that would end up getting him killed.
So Ariadne, seeing the grip shift and noting it from her drills with Kall and Madan, dropped belly-down into the mud so that the sharp blade arched just over her. Before he could pull up and change tactics, she scrambled forward, grabbed her own sword, and shoved it straight up through his pelvis.
Choking on the blood that poured down, combined with the final moments of the dhemon woman and her bondheart, Ariadne used the soldier’s body as a sort of shield as she picked herself back up.
Her boots slid, forcing her back to her knees, before she could regain her footing and yank the blade free of the soldier’s body cavity.
How many people had she killed now? Gods, she had lost count long ago. Too many. Too many deaths on her hands, coating her soul like a plague.
Before she could lose herself down such a horrible path of thought, Ariadne heaved the sword back up to ready herself for the next attack. And just like that, another soldier, having just bled a dhemon dry, dropped his opponent to the ground and turned to her, mouth dripping with blood.
“Come on, fucker,” she hissed. This was the first she had seen any of the Caersans take advantage of the fresh blood on the field, yet she had the feeling it would not be the last. With their likelihood of injury increasing, their need for any kind of sustenance would become more and more necessary.
Perhaps she should be doing the same.
But the idea vanished almost as quickly as it came. The Valenul soldier grinned as he recognized her, took one step in her direction, and paused.
He blinked.
He opened and closed his mouth like a fish out of water.
He looked at her with wide, horrified eyes.
Then he collapsed to the ground.
Ariadne stared at him for a long moment, waiting for the trap to spring. Yet as the seconds slid by, it didn’t come. He didn’t move. She didn’t move. Upon closer inspection, he no longer breathed.
What the fuck just happened?
Ariadne turned, still reeling from the death of the dhemon woman and now her own confusion doubled. If something was infecting the Caersans, she was in major trouble.
To her increased horror, another vampire released a dhemon with a scream that stuck in his throat.
The dhemon did not collapse for the soldier did not seem to have drank nearly as much as the first. They both watched while the Caersan scratched at his throat, then his knees, too, buckled as his eyes rolled into the back of his head.
“What the fuck?” Ariadne looked up at the dhemon, who did not look nearly as surprised nor concerned as she. In fact, the woman seemed positively thrilled. “What did you do?”
It was not until that woman looked at Ariadne with a frown that loosened that she recognized who it was: H’axinhum. The beautiful dhemon smirked as she adjusted her grip on the sword in her hand and said one word that had Ariadne’s mind going blank: “Aegrisolis.”
Before Ariadne could gather her wits and press for more information, H’axinhum swept up to the next vampire.
With her throat already bleeding, the Caersan soldier’s eyes snapped straight to the wound.
He did not make it close enough to take advantage of the dhemon’s blood, however, for there was a reason H’axinhum had been named the Sword Master.
The dhemon moved unlike any other Ariadne had seen of her people.
She was small and quick enough to move in tandem with a vampire, yet wicked enough with her blades to make up for what she lacked in dhemonic strength.
Mere flashes of silver, then she was stepping over the dead vampire and beckoning to the next.
Now that was with whom Ariadne wanted to train.
Such thoughts were no good for a battle, though. Instead, she refocused on what was happening before her: vampires falling into the mud, mouths covered in blood that had somehow caused aegrisolis.
Reaching out to Almandine in hopes of uncovering what the dhemons had done to poison themselves against vampires, Ariadne was met with silence.
Despite the dragons flying overhead, landing amongst the fray, and ripping into enemies, she was still too far away from her bondheart to get a good connection.
Why? Where had Almandine gone? She had been within reach at the back of the army, and yet now she could not tug enough on the vinculum to speak with the dragon. Only their thread-like ties remained a tether that kept them connected.
So as the vampires fell and the dhemons cheered around her, Ariadne could do nothing but push forward with them with a weak prayer to Keon that whatever was infecting the Valenul soldiers could not take her, too.
Until she looked up at the open gates to the Hub and an idea struck: they wanted inside…
and the soldiers wanted to get her inside—to deliver her to Loren.
The army was closing in, and they would make it into the Hub, Ariadne had no doubt about that.
What she did doubt, however, was getting to the King of Valenul.
Her stomach sank at the thought. Could she face Loren again alone? The last time…
No. No, she promised herself and Azriel that she would not be so brash ever again. They would find another way past the walls, where they would find Loren. Together.
The next Caersan to pull up before her hesitated once again as he realized who she was, dragging her out of her thoughts before she could talk herself into allowing them to take her. She would get to Azriel, and they would face that bastard side-by-side. As such, she swung her sword.
Batting her blade aside with ease, the soldier moved in. Ariadne took a step back, but he gripped her wrist. Too many times in her life, now, someone had grabbed her arm and made her pause. Dhemons. Loren. Ehrun. Every time, something terrible had happened because she let them into her head.
Between the incessant drone of memories and the dampened desire to get into the Hub, she found herself hesitating just as much as the soldier.
So when Ariadne swung the blade, he blocked again and yanked her forward to sneer, “Have I found my Queen?”
That familiar panic rose in her chest. Not again.
She shoved it away and slammed her head into his face.
The soldier, to his credit, did not release her as he yelled and cursed behind his hand.
Another swing of her blade, this time directed at the arm holding her wrist, but a second soldier was there to bat it away, twisting it from her grip.
Blood dribbled over the first soldier’s lips as he glared at her, dragging her forward.
Ariadne’s feet slipped and slid through the mud and snow as she fought against him.
She twisted her wrist, only for him to catch the other and haul her to his body.
Strong though she was, she could not compare to a trained Caersan man, and she had lost all chance at a surprise attack.
The second soldier swept back her hair, dodging her snapping teeth, and confirmed that she was who they believed her to be.
“We must get her to His Majesty,” the first soldier said, fighting to keep hold of Ariadne as she writhed in his grip.
They pushed through the Valenul soldiers at the back of their army, each step bringing her closer to the Hub. To Loren. Again.
Fuck. She could not let them take her in. Not after all she endured in Laeton. She could not face him. Not alone. And with every moment longer that she thought about it, more adrenaline dumped into her veins. He had tried to kill her—had tried to do far worse if it were not for Nikolai.
Again, Ariadne reached out to Almandine. She yanked on the thread between them, desperate to speak to her bondheart. Gods, to speak to anyone. A scream tore from her throat, and she writhed just enough for the hands to loosen.
Yes. Yes…she would get away from them. Run. For if she did not, she very well may never make it back out of the Hub.
Ariadne turned, shoving the soldier holding her back, and stumbled towards the battle. Hands sinking into the snow, she cursed and pushed off again. Each sliding step brought her closer to the fray. Closer to freedom.
Then everything went black.