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Hidden in the darkness of a maple tree, a flash of red burned through shadow.
Silver nodded when I turned and landed before her. “You should hurry,” she said, her snakes still, so still, coiled around her shoulders as I shifted back. “I’ve got her.”
My mother’s sobs could be heard from my rooms, and I glanced back, knowing I’d have to leave her regardless, but… “You,” I said, a little breathless. “You were before… her another.”
Silver’s eyes narrowed. “Another?” I nodded, knowing I wasn’t making much sense but I was right. Her upper lip peeled back, but her eyes flicked up to the windows. “I am no one’s another, and that was the problem.”
No, I couldn’t imagine this female being anything but someone’s sole reason for breathing. Still, it remained. Whatever it was that her and my mother shared before my father came to Gracewood hadn’t left the sorceress.
Perhaps not even for a moment, as she confirmed, “Why do you think I remain in this stars-forsaken place when everyone thinks me a fate dealer of darkness?” She scoffed. “My gifts would not only be appreciated but revered elsewhere.”
“Yet you stay,” I said softly.
Her shoulders fell, and she sighed, gazing back at me. A heavy breeze rolled in, gathering my hair and bringing with it the scent of smoke and uncertainty but leaving the sorceress untouched. “Fly, my bright flame. The winds of fate wait for no bird, no matter how rare.”
Then she was gone, her words enough to have me shifting and shooting straight for the skies.
Hours crawled by while I wished for the ability to warp.
Treetops swayed, ash dancing above them, embers threatening to cross the river near the remnants of Old Bridge to create more carnage in Sinshell.
I continued southwest, spearing to the left to hide above the smoke-filled forest. My eyes watered miles from the first river village before it fully came into view. Black as night and red as deep as the setting summer sun, fire engulfed cottages and barns and small buildings.
I couldn’t see Dade. I could hardly see anything through the haze of smoke. A roar came from the north, and I dipped lower toward the trees as varying colored dots soon grew into fast-flying beasts.
Help had arrived, but the legion without the ability to fly… it would take over a day for them to get here, and that was if they did not stop ru
Fury swept through me, pushing me harder as I followed the wolves in the sky. Half of them dropped to the ground at the village, immediately falling into battle with human soldiers, soldiers who appeared to be heavily armored in head-to-toe metal.
The other half followed the flames to the next village, to the farmland that resided just outside the city.
Livestock moaned and scattered, and I chanced a look behind me. Pens. They were herding the females and their young into livestock pens—much like the king of wolves and his warriors had done.
Only, they were not released nor given the chance to start a new life.
Arrow after arrow flew, slamming into heads and chests, mothers and grandmothers falling around their wailing offspring.
I fell, in both horror and grief, turning and flying fast toward those pens.
I didn’t know what I would do, only that I couldn’t continue to look for Dade while i
He’d killed plenty of i
All of it was wrong.
He knew that now. He’d learned. I had to believe that much at least. I had to believe that no matter what, he would’ve continued to right those wrongs.
And now he was being made a fool for doing the right thing.
I dropped and spiraled into the arm of an archer, knocking the bow from his hands before he saw me coming, and tumbled over the next. “What the—”
We both fell to the ground, feathers splaying, my head ringing against a metal breastplate, but I forced myself up and back into the sky before the cursing soldier could curl his hand all the way around my foot.
Flying toward the flames, I banked and scooped up a burning branch. My eyes closed against the smoke and the heat traveling down toward my beak. An arrow whizzed, narrowly missing my wing. Screams sounded as more archers knocked their bows, the branch burning closer and closer, giving away my presence in the night sky.
A wolf howled and broke into a run, shifting and then snatching a tin of kerosene from a soldier’s hand.
And tore it open with his bare hands, spilling it over the grass in a semi-circle around the pen, between the occupants and the soldiers.
I dropped the branch, fire spreading in a climbing arc, the trapped females and their young ru
I followed the villagers as they dispersed into the trees, my wings spreading as I circled a tree and hit the ground with a jarring thump. I shifted back, coughing as smoke filled my lungs, and raced after the escaping children.
I wasn’t sure what I could do. I just knew I had to make sure the soldiers who were now entering the woods didn’t reach them—
I rounded a thick cluster of trees, dirt spraying beneath my bare feet as I skidded to a stop.
One by one, villagers shoved children through a hole beneath a tree.
The elves.
Turning in a circle, I discovered more and more of them were climbing from their homes and taking the young, some of the mothers and elders ru
“Climb them,” I hissed, some hearing and gazing behind them before scrambling up trunks and into the dark foliage above. I repeated myself, urging the breeze to carry my whisper to those out of earshot.
“You should go, princess,” a graying elf said, gesturing with her walking stick toward the deeper woods. “Queen now, no?” A sad smile tipped up her cheek. “Run, for they will hunt you too if they see you.”
She was right. She was right, but… queen.
In all the chaos since the glowing early evening ceremony that now felt as though it had taken place days ago rather than mere hours, I’d forgotten. I was no longer a princess.
I was a traitor who’d been, and would continue to be, used as a pawn to bring Dade Volkahn to his knees.
Rustling sounded, men shouting over the thunder of approaching horse hooves, and so I ran.
And then I flew once more, escaping the cover of the trees. In the sky, I found it no easier to breathe as I followed the fire-lit trail for a few miles and chased that familiar roar. A roar so violent and agonized it shook the trees, my bones, and the stars themselves.
Beyond the farmland, a circle of fire raged around the river separating it from the city. I continued toward it, toward that sound, followed that incessant tug at the chains that would forever bind me to him.
The carnage was so complete, limbs ripped and shredded, the dead tossed toward the river or staring at nothing while fire licked and ate their broken corpses. Wolves whined and howled in both rage and injury, soldiers, hundreds of them, falling by the dozen but unrelenting as they tried to push through the line of beasts that blocked their attempts to get to the city beyond.