CHAPTER 41
To walk in the Dream Realm, you leave your Jaedan body behind, travel through the space between, and remake yourself anew using the threads of thought.
This brings peril in both realms, but also form and feeling and magic.
I have never known the true fragility of the mind and body until now.
Whether together or apart, they are both so vulnerable to the forces of others.
—Entry from the private diary of Patriol, Dragonbound
SERAE
Ten bodies in Riht leather and mail were strewn across the beach, some in pieces.
An acrid tang filled the air. Scorch marks covered the pebbled beach.
One by one, we all ran at full speed toward the longship carved with Vaya’la’s likeness.
Eldreth spun around first, longsword unsheathed and raised toward the trees.
“Swim for the ship,” he commanded. A handful of warriors dove into the water. The Riht galley had floated just offshore. I prayed to Vaya’la that they’d bring it back in time for us to flee.
“Small One, something is wrong.”
Her voice made tears spring to my eyes. “You’re back.”
“Return to me with the other Bound,” she commanded.
“What other—?”
Rumbling at my back drew my attention. At least a hundred soldiers in full mail marched from the opposite tree line and began surrounding us. The sea was at our backs, and a cold, salty wind swept my loose hair into my eyes.
“Did you really think I left my home so unguarded?” My father’s voice rang out in the distance.
I scanned the squadron for a glimpse of him, disbelieving.
I expected him to secure the manor, maybe send a section or two out scouting for more threats.
But an entire squadron after us? We, the two children he happily sold—one to the army and one to the Riht—to curry favor with the king?
The center of the group split, revealing the margrave, Lord Fethersen, and Tam, all dressed in black.
They were on horseback, despite the lack of purchase their steeds would have on the rocks.
“I had thought you Rihtlonders were smarter than that.” He tutted. “Such a small party, too. It’s a wonder you’ve ever succeeded in raiding our lands.”
“The Riht take only what is rightfully ours,” Sellan replied, his longsword raised.
The margrave ignored him. “I’ll give you one chance. Hand over my wayward progeny, and your deaths will be quick.”
Eldreth stepped in front of me. “I have a counter-proposal.”
The margrave laughed.
“Turn your little company around, march back to your pathetic homes and wasteful lives, and I’ll let you keep your heads attached to your shoulders.”
His laugh fell away alongside all pretenses of civility. An ugly scowl overtook the margrave’s face. “Attack!” he commanded.
“Halt!” Tam intervened, holding up a hand to still his men. I had mistaken the Fethersen blue for black in the twilight. Except for the margrave, whose black doublet was a shade darker than the rest, all the soldiers donned the colors of Fethersen.
Tam urged his horse forward a few paces. “Serae, please, we can stop this.”
I moved to Eldreth’s side, fists clenched inside Bale’s overlarge tunic sleeves. “What’s your price?”
“My price?” He sighed. His reins were fisted in his left hand, and his right was covered by another diagonal cape. “Come back with us. Let this foolishness lie.”
“So he can whip me to shreds again?” My eyes flicked to the margrave.
Tam turned to my father, then back to me. “He should never have laid a hand on you. He never will again. You’ll be moved to Fethersen immediately. You have my word.”
It was the last thing I wanted, but the white, pulsing lifelight of thirty Riht warriors, sparkling with loyalty in waves as bright as green amaryllis against fresh snow, met me at all sides. Except Tam no longer counted among the people whose word I trusted. He had ruined that beyond repair.
“Will you let them all live?” I called back. “Let them board their ship and sail away untouched?” All heads of the Riht turned to me, but it was Eldreth’s glare at my side that penetrated my chest like an arrow.
Tam dismounted and walked out from the line of soldiers.
If he was hoping I would meet him in the middle before exacting an oath from him, he was sorely mistaken.
“Our lives have been tied together since birth. You know this. We were each other’s first friend, first kiss, first lover…
Our bond is deeper and stronger than anything they can throw our way.
I’ve never been more certain of it. You belong with me.
” Tam held his arms out wide, cape still draped over his right side, offering himself to me.
“Please, you know it’s true. Come with me, and everyone lives. ”
Eldreth’s eyes fell away from me. The glow of his lifelight flashed deep blue, darker than a moonless night.
Grief. Across from me, Tam’s lifelight was jarring in contrast, flickering with bright peacock blue.
Shame. Over what he had done to me, or over the lies I knew he spoke?
In the end, it didn’t matter. I was foolish to think, even for a moment, that my father would ever back down.
I laced my fingers into Eldreth’s, and his hand gripped mine tightly. There was only one way out.
“I never belonged to you, Tamas Fethersen. Don’t you see? I belong to myself.”
His face twisted as maroon frustration poured from him. “You would go with him instead of me?”
“He holds my heart. That will never change.” My answer was a truth so simple, it was easy to speak. If these weeks apart had not already proved it to me, the fact that he came for me, despite how we left things, would have.
Tam’s eyes hardened. “Order the attack,” he hissed. He turned his back on us and remounted his horse. Behind him, Lord Fethersen called out the charge.
The Riht were ready to meet them. Eldreth and his ranng moved forward as a unit, waiting.
Together, they might stand a chance. Bale and I, behind them, were unarmed and a liability.
I pulled Gerta to my side as we withdrew as far back as we could.
Behind us, the Drakhi galley had been boarded, and I could just make out our warriors rushing to tie the sails.
“We’re going to die,” Bale said to me, resignation in his voice.
Eldreth glanced back, locked eyes with me, and smirked. “Not today.”
He spun as the first wave of soldiers approached, and in three strikes of his blades, three were down. Death cries rang out all around his ranng and the others who had come—the most skilled warriors the Riht possessed.
And they had come for me.
More and more pressed in, but Eldreth was relentless. He and his chosen warriors kept a tight semicircle, blocking the Fethersen soldiers from breaking through. Behind them, my ranng formed up, providing a double layer of warriors to protect Bale, me, and Gerta.
“Break the line!” Tam shouted at the back.
Every Riht warrior became a dance of death.
Yaego flowed between sword and dagger. She threw one, stopping a man at Praeth’s back before unsheathing another at her ribs and meeting her next opponent with full force.
Praeth and Branye fought side by side in perfect complement.
Sellan fought at Eldreth’s side. His movements were sharper than the dizzying fluidity Eldreth exuded, yet still, he moved with the same exactness that wasted nothing between strikes.
In seconds, twenty men lay dead at their feet, but Fethersen’s army had barely taken a dent.
What I thought was a hundred men kept filling in—spilling from the trees in droves and organizing into lines.
The next wave charged at our group, twice as many men as before, but the ranngs moved out to meet them.
Their skill was phenomenal, but it would never last. Soon, we would be outnumbered ten to one, and the Riht would begin to fall.
I froze, at first, paralyzed with fear. Either from my experience with the dragori, my overall training, or my own sense of will, I came back to myself.
I was no longer helpless. I reached for that connection with Vaya’la, and though she settled back into that special place in my mind, I couldn’t feel her magic anymore.
But I could keep trying. Short of picking up a sword from the fallen and joining the fray, there was nothing else I could do.
As I reached within, time and again, I bore witness to their pain, praying our warriors were not fighting in vain.
A man with two blond braids and dark skin was the first to go down.
He slipped on a patch of blood-slick pebbles, and his opponent’s sword sliced clean across his abdomen.
His companion, a woman as tall as him, screamed as he fell and charged wildly.
It was the cry only a lover could make as their entire world was taken from them.
It was a mercy that she spent only minutes in agony before she was impaled in the side by a spear.
By some miracle, Eldreth’s ranng had pushed a dent into the Fethersen soldiers, rallying the warriors at their sides. But then another wave came, twice as big as the last. Our chance, I knew, had slipped away.
Praeth, still with a fresh scar down the side of his head, took a blade to the thigh. By luck, it missed the major artery, but he was struggling to stand.
Helene jerked as an arrow embedded in her arm. She snapped off the tail, but her second sword clattered to the ground.
One by one, I watched in horror and misery as my friends and companions were forced back into a tight group, trying to protect me to the very end. Even Bale took up a sword from one of the fallen soldiers, but next to the Riht warriors, he was barely any help.