Chapter 3
Chapter three
Evandaine
Over the Scathmore Barrens
(Previously the Provence of Talwaith)
From the air, the movement of the battle reminded Evandaine of a dying animal thrashing in its death throes.
The dragon beneath him moved with easy grace.
The wind bit his cheeks, and battle smoke stung his nostrils.
It was a familiar dance—the scattershot tearing the clouds to ribbons, the shotfire balls shearing off his dragonscale vest, the bellows of the dreadnought dragons soaring overhead with their six-person crews.
They flew over the enemy line, dropping explosive canisters into the infantry and blowing the ranks to pieces.
Sennalaith was taking the beach, but they would not take the forest. Another battle, another draw.
Tomorrow, the Scathmore Barrens would be nothing but a bloody shoreline and jagged dunes occupied by a few bored Ashkendoric soldiers.
A scornful captain with a jagged scar across his cheek dropped out of the clouds and hovered beside Evandaine, his lithe little fighter dragon grumbling and snapping its jaws.
“The witch child is here. Don’t embarrass us, Evandaine,” he sneered.
Evandaine’s mother often complained that the gods had wasted a warrior’s skill on a weak-hearted boy who could never inspire the respect of the men.
Evandaine agreed.
The heir apparent to the Ashkendoric throne should be beloved and revered by his army. Instead, the ruthless soldiers eyed him with suspicion at best, derision at worst. He knew they mocked him behind his back, and his mother did not prevent it.
A scattershot ball burst from a cannon below and shattered the air.
Evandaine pulled his dragon into a tight dive, curving through the haze, under the pellets.
He spotted Tiernan below him, trying to move below the blast, but his dragon bellowed in agony as its wing was torn to tatters.
Evandaine's heart stilled as Tiernan spiraled toward the ground, landing in a spray of sand behind the ruin of a hulking manor house on the edge of the dunes.
Evandaine dove after him. Sparksparrows flashed in the darkness. A phoenix wheeled past, its wings streaming flames as it plummeted into the ranks of foot soldiers and land dragons in the writhing body of the army below.
Evandaine ignored it all, diving toward his father, who was struggling to free his leg from his dragon’s corpse.
A movement near the crumbled stone wall caught Evandaine’s attention. A yellow-haired man dressed in a pale blue vest strode across the packed sand toward Tiernan. He held a curved cutlass in one hand, a white shotfire in the other.
Cadmus. The king of Sennalaith.
“Father! Look out!” Evandaine screamed, urging his dragon downward. Something whistled to his left, and he turned his head just in time to see a billow of sparking purple roar toward him. He slipped over his dragon’s side, holding to the saddle, and the magic snarled overhead, narrowly missing him.
Maintaining his dive, Evandaine righted himself on his dragon's back.
Tiernan slid free of his mount and flung up his sword as Cadmus’s cutlass sliced down. Steel sang as Tiernan blocked the blow, but Cadmus followed it with a flurry of quick cuts. Tiernan’s defenses were sluggish. Blood streamed down his face, dripping into his eyes. Blinding him.
Another smoky, sizzling zephyr nearly struck Evandaine, but he dodged it again, pulling his dragon into a tight barrel roll.
As he leveled out, he glimpsed his attacker: A young woman dressed head-to-toe in skin-tight purple dragon scales, her dark hair slicked, her almond-shaped eyes smudged with dark powder.
Valeria—Cadmus’s witch child.
Tiernan cried out. Evandaine was forced to arc upward, avoiding another attack.
Upside down, Evandaine saw Cadmus kick Tiernan in the chest. He fell against the trunk of a dead dragon willow, and Evandaine watched in horrified helplessness as Cadmus thrust his cutlass through Tiernan’s ribs.
“No,” Evandaine gasped. He tore toward his father, expecting Valeria to strike his exposed side, but in an unexpected show of fair play, she waited.
Evandaine jumped from his dragon too early and fell onto his knees, then his side, rolling twice before gaining his feet.
He drew his cutlass and brought it up to meet Cadmus’s.
The king advanced on him, making rapid jabs, but Evandaine was clever and quick.
He parried, pushing Cadmus until he was on the defensive, his back to the dragon willow.
Evandaine drew his shotfire and pointed it at Cadmus, but before he pulled the trigger, a gust of stinging wind hurled him to the sand.
Like waves crashing against a jetty, blasts of magic struck him over and over. Searing pain pierced his head from ear to ear, blinded him. He tried to crawl away, but the force cracked his head against the ground. He tasted blood. He couldn’t breathe.
With the last scrap of air in his lungs, he screamed to the Only for mercy.
And Valeria stopped.
Gasping, Evandaine opened one eye. Valeria stood over him, brambles winding around her body, rooting her to the ground so she wouldn’t be blown away by her own zephyrs. The thorns cut through her pants, and the blood dripping from the punctures stood out brilliant red on the glossy dragon scales.
For an instant, Evandaine thought it might be over. That she would walk away and let him live to mourn his father.
But she raised her hands again. Nauseous and reeling, Evandaine managed to gain his knees. When he reached out with his mind, trying to summon his dragon with his magic, it felt like a cord in his head had snapped. No more than a weak, shaky consciousness. No connection.
He threw himself to the side as Valeria released another wave of scalding wind, and he drew his cutlass. Pitching forward, he swept the blade across her torso. She shrieked, clutched her stomach, and fell to the ground, where she lay still, blood pumping over her fingers.
His mouth tasting of copper, Evandaine collapsed. The battle had begun to dissolve, Ashkendoric soldiers running past. A small detachment gathered the king’s body and bore it away. They ignored their prince, curled in the dark. Alone.
Evandaine’s head ached like he’d been pierced with a pike. Blood poured from his nose and ears, and a strange, high-pitched humming rang in his head. He stumbled to his feet, looking down at Valeria as she bled on the sand.
She wasn’t dead—he could tell by her rapid breathing—but unless someone helped her, she wasn’t going to survive.
He froze in an agony of indecision. She was his enemy—the daughter of the man who had just murdered his father. Ashkendoric religion taught him to drive his cutlass through her chest and then cut off her head.
The Only would say he shouldn’t be part of this miserable war in the first place.
Evandaine loved to distort his mother’s religion every chance he got, and pity and guilt racked him. Or maybe it was just his bleeding brain playing tricks.
Before he could question his motives, he fell to his knees, snatched a fallen Sennaliath standard from the littered ground, and bound it around Valeria’s stomach. She groaned. It was dark, and he couldn’t make out her features, just the flashing whites of her sunken eyes.
He had barely finished binding the wound when an overwhelming dizziness washed over him, and he sprawled on his back in the sand beside the witch. He could hear her ragged breathing as she rolled over, then the weight of her body as she climbed on top of him and pressed a knife under his jaw.
“I’m supposed to kill you,” she said, her voice raw.
“Do it,” he rasped. “Better to die on the battlefield with my father than be murdered in my bed by my mother.”
The cold blade lifted, and she sagged onto his chest, her head falling onto his shoulder.
He lay his hand on her back, pressing her body against his, and for a bleary, fever-dream moment, they breathed in rhythm.
She smelled of sweat and leaf rot, and her breath was hot against his neck.
Then she slid off of him and scraped in the sand, crawling away.
The world blurred, the pain overtook him, and he thought his mind had tricked him, and the witch was a nightmare.
He awoke to hands dragging him across the field.
“You’re a simpering fool, Evandaine,” a gruff captain said as he pulled him onto a dragon. “That woman will be the death of you.”
Evandaine couldn’t keep his seat. The pain in his head crescendoed to a roar.
She has already been the death of me, he thought as the world faded to black.