Chapter 47
Warriors
Arabella
Pacing around the castle of Darkmoor had become my new favorite hobby. At least it had rather recently. Ever since Allie, the human visionary, stared across the dining room table at Micah and me, her eyes wide, her head tilted, and her heartbeat erratic.
“The threads are shifting. Something is coming,” she whispered over her dinner.
She’d say no more, and since I’d been with visionaries enough over my long years ruling the Court of Ravens with my mate, I knew better than to ask for further clarification.
If the Fates wished for us to have it, they would’ve sent it through. If they didn’t? Well, it meant that was all they deemed necessary.
Micah had taken her to bed, telling her to rest and we’d take care of whatever was coming. I didn’t need to have any sort of empathic abilities to see the tension in his muscles.
He came back downstairs, his blond hair even more disheveled than normal.
“She said nothing more before you ask,” he mumbled as he dumped another bag of blood into a cup and downed it within moments.
“I wasn’t going to ask.”
He stared before dipping his chin in acknowledgement.
“Do you have fighting leathers?”
“Of course I do, Micah.”
“Good. Put them on.”
We stood at the edge of the property line. I’d asked if he wanted to go to the edge of town, but he refused to leave the manor with Allie inside.
Instead, he’d taken every free moment once she was asleep to evacuate the townspeople into the manor itself. Skilled members of the Shadow Brigade were stationed throughout the home, providing food and blankets, comfort for the children, while the rest were stationed throughout the streets.
“I know what you’re thinking. This is a strange way to wage a battle, but Keres isn’t a normal male,” Micah explained, interrupting the eerie quiet that had sat between us.
“He enjoys the mental aspect of it all. Raiding homes. Destroying property. He’s always despised how the people of the Court of Shadows don’t live in fear beneath Raiden’s rule.
They respect him, and it drives Keres to a new level of madness. ”
I swallowed down the anxiety bubbling within my chest. “You don’t have to explain him to me, Micah. I lived it. I survived him. I understand.”
He looked over at me, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword, his expression of the utmost sincerity.
“I need you to hear me when I say this, he won’t be with them.
He won’t risk leaving his castle knowing that Raiden could show up with Cora and Silvana at any moment.
I’m not sure how he found out they were coming, but someone must’ve tipped him off to it. Either way, he won’t be here.”
Nodding, I thought of Paine. What he’d say right now. What he’d do. I didn’t need to think long on it, because I knew already. It was the same he’d been telling me since the moment I told him my story.
“There is one thing he won’t expect, Micah. One thing he won’t think to tell those who show up here ready to wreak havoc on your home.”
“And what is that?”
“Me.”
He watched me carefully before a slow smile creeped over his face. “Any idea how many you can manage?”
“Quite a few,” I replied as my gaze turned out over to the roads of Darkmoor.
A city I’d always thought of as a second home.
That wouldn’t be changing today, because the Court of Ice soldiers could arrive, but they wouldn’t be within Keres's grasp for long. “You just take them down, I’ll do the rest.”
Silence fell over the city as we waited for a force that we knew was coming.
Time slowed as the moon crested high in the night sky, and they finally came. Ravens flew high within the sky, trilling within the clouds, hidden from view but not sound.
“They’re here,” Micah said, pulling his sword from its sheath.
He didn’t need to alert anyone with the Shadow Brigade.
My ravens were in the sky alerting them, and the trained soldiers knew their signal.
They started strolling through the streets, acting as if it were any other night.
Males and females alike. Some holding hands, others hanging out outside of taverns.
No one the wiser, unless you took note of their clothes in the dark streets.
It didn’t take long before the screams began, bringing a smile to my face.
“Don’t hold back, Arabella. I want them to write about you in sonnets within the tales of the Fates themselves when they speak of this night.”
I smiled. “As you wish.”
Strolling through the streets, Micah at my side, I let my magic flow from my body and into the soil.
It extended from me and into the fallen warriors—both our own and his.
Blood seeped back into their bodies in order to reanimate them, but their minds were no longer their own.
Their souls long gone to be dealt their hand from the minds of the Fates.
“Rise, my warriors. Rise and may death find any of those with whom wish harm upon Darkmoor and its inhabitants,” I commanded through my magic and into the dead as they pushed to their feet, swords and axes once more in hand.
Eyes unseeing, they ran through the streets, attacking any of Keres’s warriors who may have remained.
Males in blue fighting males in blue until the newly fallen rose once more to continue the fight, no longer on their own terms.
I smiled as Micah and I walked, my magic flowing stronger than I’d had needed in many moons.
The first time I’d fallen into my own magic, I’d been terrified. The dead whispered to me in a way I’d never heard. A way that was demanding and terrifying. But learning to control it, accept it, had come naturally to me once I’d realized what I was now capable of.
Micah and I walked around the streets of Darkmoor long into the night, and by the time we came back to the manor, the streets were quiet.
A raven circled above me, its trill sounding into the night, but it wasn’t one of warning, it was one of victory.