Chapter 70
Elsedora
The moon seemed to wink at me as claws pinned my arms to the ground, piercing through my wrists.
Blades clashed above me, and hands slipped beneath my arms, yanking me away from the onslaught of the horde.
The world spun. My vision doubled, unable to focus.
“Get up, Red.” Cassidee pulled me to my feet. I wobbled. “It isn’t your time. You’ve got more fight than that in you.”
We were so fucked.
I shook my head, trying to regain my senses. My fist tightened on my throwing dagger, and I readied to launch it.
As it left my fingertips, it didn’t make purchase with anything.
I’d missed again? My depth perception failed me.
I’d die with a bruised ego.
My vision swam as the scene before me distorted. The Moirai all stilled at once. Our soldiers and Warhorses ran through them.
“What’s happening?” I heard Fenris shout.
“Continue to attack!” Krait shouted.
The Moirai decayed into piles of dust on the blood-soaked street. I stepped forward, only for my knees to wobble. Before I could fall to the ground, Wyeth caught my elbow.
“We need to get you to the healer’s tents,” she said. “Just a scratch.” Though she grimaced when she took in my injuries.
The momentary silence grew eerie. Wyeth dragged me toward the outskirts of town to be healed. My body longed to keep fighting, unable to believe that the battle had concluded.
With jumbled thoughts, I winced against the dim light of torches that sent a shooting pain through my head.
“It’s over. It’s alright,” Wyeth soothed as I white-knuckled a throwing dagger.
I leaned against her side. She was too petite to hold me upright, and I felt bad for slumping all my weight onto her.
“We won?” I gurgled out.
I’d spent so many years waiting for this moment. Every tomb raided, every mission completed, every friend lost—it flashed by as darkness clouded my vision.
It couldn’t be over. I’d never allowed myself to imagine what came next.
The stillness felt ominous.
“Where’s my puppy?” I mumbled, though the words sloshed around too much to be understood. Did they make it back?
Only then did I realize that the blood on my tunic came from my head. It definitely wasn’t just a scratch.
“I’ve got her,” Cass said. Before I could make sense of what had transpired, she lifted me onto a Griffith. “I’ll take her to the healer’s camp. Help the wounded here and then meet us.”
I lost consciousness to the beating of wings and cheers of victory.
I awoke where the gates of Lamoreaux should be. The familiar rolling hills arched across the horizon, stretching toward the lake. The land welcomed me home, though no estate stood tall before me and no everplums dotted the landscape.
A young man with scraggly red hair helped a woman with fair eyes and a heart-wrenching smile off a dappled gray horse.
“We’ll build it here!” he said to her, extending his arms wide and circling. The woman laughed at him.
Sources how I missed that laugh. I recognized it immediately, the same one that giggled through bedtime stories and odd topics of conversation by the parlor fire.
“It’s far from town,” she said.
“Better to keep our children out of trouble.”
“We don’t have children,” she argued.
He winked. “Someday.”
“My mother will never visit,” she retorted.
“Even better,” he said in jest, which earned him a playful slap on the shoulder. Fen had inherited Papa’s sense of humor.
My father looked so vibrant, so full of life then, with no worry etched on his brow and a clean-shaven face.
Before.
I was seeing before it all.
Days and nights flashed before me, and I knelt in the grass to watch as they built a life into something beautiful—brick by brick.
I longed for it to always remain so peaceful, but I knew it would not.