The savage and the swan

Dade

Venom coursed through my veins with each step away from the moonstone fortress that held my crushed heart.

A game. I was but a leading piece in this game called war, and though my swan might have thought she’d played me well, it was I who’d decided I’d be used.

Her actions, her warring emotions, and those fucking eyes gave her away at every turn. I’d wanted her—a want so dire, so depthless and insatiable, that I’d accepted the role she’d thought she must play.

For I knew underneath that false bravado lurked my mate, a bond that suffocated all else. A tether of the soul that would outshine her ire and conflicted feelings until they were but a dim shadow I could erase with time.

She must have thought me no better than a brainless beast prone and often lost to baser desires, hungry for nothing more than her warm blood and body. At times, I was. Most certainly.

But not always.

That didn’t stop her parting words from doing the damage she’d intended. The hatred brimming those golden eyes, the disgust, not wholly with me but with herself, weighing each breath and step and staining the imagery of rolling green hills, the fields of lavender cutting through them, with darkness.

All too soon, we entered the forest we’d marched through and flown above a handful of times before. All thanks to my swan showing me the last remaining bridge, the hidden hollowed tree, upon which we’d first met.

Legion three had flown ahead, now nothing but dark patches swallowed by the starlit clouds atop the woods across the ravine. I’d chosen to walk. There was little point in making a hasty arrival home when that home would now feel like the tomb it had always been.

Without her, it was just a Keep, just a palace to house ghosts and monsters.

Legion two chatted amongst themselves, quiet for the most part as they tried to make sense of all that had just happened, and Fang doubled back to walk beside me now and then. He knew when to keep his mouth shut and wisely did not open it as we meandered through the trees toward the low-lying cave.

Entering that cave, spying the space in which I’d laid over her and felt my soul co

“Dade,” Fang called, and I hadn’t realized I’d stopped moving.

I hadn’t realized everyone had left the cave, crossed through the aged trunk and over the ravine to Vordane.

Shaking my head, I prowled past him, deeper into the cave until the hollowed insides of the dead tree appeared.

Fang’s boots crunched behind me over the dirt. “You, ah, do you want to talk—”

“No,” I snapped, then stilled. Low, almost undetectable but growing in volume, howls entered the trunk.

We raced to the hole, climbed through, and while Fang took to the steep edge of the ravine to scale up the dirt and rock-packed wall, I shifted and shot into the air.

A myriad of violent curses flooded my head. Of course, they would. While I was gone. When they’d discovered over half of my best warriors were absent, too.

More calls sounded from the south, and I flew over the ravine until it spread into a river, then veered west, the wind a roar that threatened to overpower the ones sailing from there. I soared straight up the cliffside to the trees and shifted as soon as my paws slammed into the earth. I’d barely drawn breath before I warped to the other side of the forest bordering the river.

The first village I saw upon welcoming back my beast was lit up—burning.

The winged legion were almost there, having heard the calls for help far before us, and I willed myself to fly harder, faster, my bones rattling with the force of the wind pushing back against me, tearing at my fur.

A snarl was swallowed by the night as I realized just how well I could be played after all.

And now, it was my people who would pay the price for my arrogance.

Fire raged from cottages and treetops, warriors clashing upon the ground. Up ahead, as though someone was merely lighting a collection of candles—fire followed fire, a burning trail heading straight for the city and all its hundreds of occupants.

On the ground, his smug demeanor unmistakable as he gave orders to his generals, to the men stealing females and children from their homes and tossing them toward what looked to be a pen used for livestock, stood the filthy human prince.