“I did it for those Children of the Blessed,” I said. “Not for glory.”
“I know,” Jurian said, flicking up his brows. “Why do you think I decided to trust you?”
CHAPTER
55
“I’m too old for these sorts of surprises,” Mor groused as the war-tent groaned in the howling mountain wind at the northern border of the Winter Court, the Illyrian army settling down for the night. To wait for the attack tomorrow. They’d flown all day, the location remote enough to keep even an army of our size hidden. Until tomorrow, at least.
We’d warned Tarquin—and dispatched messages to Helion and Kallias to join if they could make it in time. But come the hour before dawn, the Illyrian legion would take to the skies and fly hard for that southern battlefield. They would land, hopefully, before it began. Right as Keir and his commanders winnowed in the Darkbringer legion from the Night Court.
And then the slaughter would begin. On either side.
If what Jurian claimed was true. Cassian had choked when we’d told him Jurian’s battle advice. A milder reaction, Azriel said, than his initial response.
I asked Mor from where I sat at the foot of the fur-covered chaise we currently shared, “You never suspected Jurian might be … good?”
She swigged from her wine and leaned back against the cushions piled before the rolled headrest. My sisters were in another tent, not quite as big but equally luxurious, their lodgings flanked by Cassian’s and Azriel’s tents, and Mor’s before it. No one would get to them without my friends knowing. Even if Mor was currently here with me.
“I don’t know,” she said, hauling a heavy wool throw blanket over her legs. “I was never as close to Jurian as I was to some of the others, but … we did fight together. Saved each other. I just assumed Amarantha broke him.”
“Parts of him are broken,” I said, shuddering to recall those memories I’d seen, the feelings. I pulled some of her blanket over my lap.
“We’re all broken,” Mor said. “In our own ways—in places no one might see.”
I angled my head to inquire, but she asked, “Is Elain … all right?”
“No,” was all I said. Elain was not all right.
She had quietly cried while we winnowed here. And in the hours afterward, while the army arrived and the camp was rebuilt. She did not take off her ring. She only lay on the cot in her tent, nestled among the furs and blankets, and stared at nothing.
Any bit of good, any advancement … gone. I debated returning to smash every bone in Graysen’s body, but resisted—if only because it would give Nesta license to unleash herself upon him. And death at Nesta’s hands … I wondered if they’d have to invent a new word for killing when she was done with Graysen.
So Elain silently cried, the tears so unending that I wondered if it was some sign of her heart bleeding out. Some sliver of hope that had shattered today. That Graysen would still love her, still marry her—and that love would trump even a mating bond.
A final tether had been snapped—to her life in the human lands.
Only our father, wherever he was, remained as any sort of connection.
Mor read whatever was on my face and set down the wine on the small wood table beside the chaise. “We should sleep. I don’t even know why I’m drinking.”
“Today was … unexpected.”
“It’s so much harder,” she said, groaning as she chucked the rest of the blanket into my lap and rose to her feet. “When enemies turn into friends. And the opposite, I suppose. What didn’t I see? What did I overlook or dismiss? It always makes me reassess myself more than them.”
“Another joy of war?”
She snorted, heading for the tent flaps. “No—of life.”
I barely slept that night.
Rhys didn’t come to the tent—not once.
I slipped from our bed when the darkness was just starting to yield to gray, following the tug of the mating bond as I had done that day Under the Mountain.
He stood atop a rocky outcropping crusted with patches of ice, watching the stars fade away one by one over the still-slumbering camp.
I wordlessly slid my arm around his waist, and he shifted his wings to fold me into his side.
“A lot of soldiers are going to die today,” he said quietly.
“I know.”
“It never gets easier,” he whispered.
The strong panes of his face were taut, and silver lined his eyes as he studied the stars. Only here, only now, would he show that grief—that worry and pain. Never before his armies; never before his enemies.
He loosed a long breath. “Are you ready?” I would stay near the back of the lines with Mor to get a feel for battle. The flow and terror and structure. My sisters would remain here until it was safe to winnow them afterward. If things didn’t go to hell first.
“No,” I admitted. “But I have no other choice than to be ready.”
Rhys kissed the top of my head, and we stared at the dying stars in silence.
“I’m grateful,” he said after a while, as the camp beneath us stirred in the building light. “To have you at my side. I don’t know if I ever told you that—how grateful I am to have you stand with me.”
I blinked back the burning in my eyes and took his hand. I laid it over my heart, letting him feel its beating while I kissed him one final time, the last of the stars vanishing as the army below us awoke to do battle.
CHAPTER
56
Jurian was right.
We’d seen inside his head, yet we’d still doubted. Still wondered if we’d arrive to find Hybern had changed their position, or attacked elsewhere.
But Hybern’s horde was precisely where Jurian claimed they’d be.
And as the Illyrian army swept for them while they marched over the Spring border and into Summer … Hybern’s forces certainly seemed shocked.
Rhys had cloaked our forces—all of them. Sweat had slid down his temple at the strain, at keeping the mass of us hidden from sight and sound and scent as we flew mile after mile. My wings weren’t strong enough—so Mor winnowed us through the sky, keeping pace with them.
But we arrived together. And as Rhys ripped the sight shield away, revealing battle-hungry Illyrians spearing from the skies in neat, precise lines … As he revealed the legion of Keir’s Darkbringers charging on foot, swathed in wisps of night and armed with star-bright steel … It was hard not to be smug at the panic that rippled over the marching mass of Hybern.
But Hybern’s army … It stretched far—deep and long. Meant to sweep away everything in its path.
“SHIELDS,” Cassian bellowed at the front line.
One by one by one, shields of red and blue and green flickered into life around the Illyrians and their weapons, overlapping like the scales of a fish. Overlapping like the solid metal shields they each bore on their left arms, locking into place from ankle to shoulder.
Below, Keir’s troops rippled with shadowy shields flaring into place before them.
Mor winnowed us to the tree-covered hill that overlooked the field Cassian had deemed would be the best place to hit them based on Azriel’s scouting. There was a slope to the grass—in our advantage. We held the high ground; a narrow, shallow river lay not too far back from Hybern’s army. Success in battle, Cassian had told me that morning over a swift breakfast, was often decided not by numbers, but by picking where to fight.
The Hybern army seemed to realize their disadvantage within moments.
But the Illyrians had landed beside Keir’s soldiers. Cassian, Azriel, and Rhys spread out amongst the front line, all clad in that black Illyrian armor, all armed as the other winged soldiers were: shield gripped in the left hand, Illyrian blade in the right, an assortment of daggers on them, and helmets.
The helmets were the only markers of who they were. Unlike the smooth domes of the others, Rhys, Azriel, and Cassian wore black helmets whose cheek-guards had been fashioned and swept upward like ravens’ wings. Albeit raz
or-sharp ravens’ wings that jutted up on either side of the helmet, right above the ear, but … The effect, I admitted, was terrifying. Especially with the two other swords strapped across their backs, the gauntlets that covered every inch of their hands, and the Siphons gleaming amongst Cassian’s and Azriel’s ebony armor.
Rhys’s own power roiled around him, readying to hammer the right flank while Cassian aimed for the left. Rhys was to conserve his power—in case the king arrived. Or worse—the Cauldron.
This army, however huge … It did not seem that the king was even there to lead it. Or Tamlin. Or Jurian. Merely an invading harbinger of the force to come, but sizable enough that the damage … We could easily spy the damage behind the army, the plumes of smoke staining the cloudless summer sky.
Mor and I said little in the hours that followed.
I did not have it in me for words, for any sort of coherent speech as we watched. Either through our surprise or pure luck, there was no sign of that faebane. I was inclined to thank the Mother for that.
Even if every soldier in our camp this morning had mixed Nuan’s antidote into their gruel, it would do nothing against blocking weapons tipped in faebane from shattering shields. Only stop against the stifling of magic, should it come into contact either through that damned powder … or by being impaled by a weapon tipped in it. Lucky—so lucky it was not in use today.
Because seeing the carnage, the fine line of control … There was no place for me on those front lines, where the Illyrians fought by the strength of their sword, their power, and their trust in the male on either side of them. Even Keir’s soldiers fought as one—obedient and unfaltering, lashing out with shadows and steel. I would have been a fissure in that impenetrable armor—and what Cassian and the Illyrians unleashed upon Hybern …
Cassian slammed into that left flank. Siphons unleashed bursts of power that sometimes bounced off shields, sometimes found their mark and shredded flesh and bone.
But where Hybern’s magic shields held out … Rhys, Azriel, and Cassian sent out blasts of their own power to shatter them. Leaving them vulnerable to those Siphons—or pure Illyrian steel. And if that did not fell them … Keir and his Darkbringers cleaned up the rest. Precisely. Coolly.
The field became a blood-drenched mud pit. Bodies gleamed in the morning sun, light bouncing off their armor. Hybern panicked at the unbreakable Illyrian lines that pushed and pushed them back. That battered them.
And as that left flank broke apart, as its nobles fell or turned and fled … The other Hybern soldiers began descending into panic, too.
There was one mounted commander who did not go easily. Who didn’t turn his horse toward that river behind them to flee.
Cassian selected him as his opponent.
Mor gripped my hand tight enough to hurt as Cassian stepped out of that impenetrable front line of shields and swords, the soldiers around him immediately closing the gap. Mud and blood splattered Cassian’s dark helmet, his armor.
He ditched his tall shield for a round one strapped across his back, crafted from the same ebony metal.
And then he launched into a run.
I could have sworn even Rhys paused on the other end of the battlefield to watch as Cassian cut his way through those enemy soldiers, aiming for the mounted Hybern commander. Who realized what and who was coming for him and started to search for a better weapon.
Cassian had been born for this—these fields, this chaos and brutality and calculation.
He didn’t stop moving, seemed to know where every opponent fought both ahead and behind, seemed to breathe in the flow of the battle around him. He even let his Siphons’ shield drop—to get close, to feel the impact of the arrows that he took in that ebony shield. If he slammed that shield into a soldier, his other arm was already swinging his sword at the next opponent.
I’d never seen anything like it—the skill and precision. It was like a dance.
I must have said it aloud because Mor replied, “For him, that’s what battle is. A symphony.”
Her eyes did not stray from Cassian’s death-dance.
Three soldiers were brave or stupid enough to try to charge him. Cassian had them down and dying with four maneuvers.
“Holy Mother,” I breathed.
That was who had been training me. Why Fae trembled at his name.
Why the high-born Illyrian warriors had been jealous enough to want him dead.
But there Cassian was, no one between him and the commander.
The commander had found a discarded spear. He threw it.
Fast and sure, I skipped a heartbeat as it spiraled for Cassian.
His knees bent, wings tucked in tight, shield twisting—
He took the spear in the shield with an impact I could have sworn I heard, then sliced off the shaft and kept running.
Within a heartbeat, Cassian had sheathed both shield and sword across his back.
And I would have asked why but he’d already picked up another fallen spear.
Already hurled it, his entire body going into the throw, the movement so perfect that I knew I’d one day paint it.
Both armies seemed to stop at the throw.
Even with the distance, Cassian’s spear hit home.
It went right through the commander’s chest, so hard it knocked the male clean off his horse.
By the time he was done falling, Cassian was there.
His sword caught the sunlight as it lifted and plunged down.
Cassian had picked his mark well. Hybern fled now. Outright turned and fled for the river.
But Hybern found Tarquin’s army waiting on its opposite bank, exactly where Cassian had ordered it to appear.
Trapped with the Illyrians and Keir’s Darkbringers at their backs and Tarquin’s two thousand soldiers on the other side of the narrow river …
It was harder to watch—that slaughter.
Mor said to me, “It’s over.”
The sun was high in the sky, heat rising with every minute.
“You don’t need to see this,” she added.
Because some of the Hybern soldiers were surrendering. On their knees.
As it was Tarquin’s territory, Rhys yielded the decision about what to do with prisoners.
From the distance, I picked out Tarquin from his armor—more ornate than Rhysand’s, but still brutal. Fish fins and scales seemed to be the motif, and his azure cloak flowed through the mud behind him as he stepped over fallen bodies to get to the few hundred surviving enemy.
Tarquin stared at where the enemy had knelt, his helmet masking his features.
Nearby, Rhys, Cassian, and Azriel monitored, speaking to Keir and the Illyrian captains. I did not see many wings amongst the fallen on the field. A mercy.
The only mercy, it seemed, as Tarquin made a motion with his hand.
Some of the Hybern soldiers began screaming for clemency, their offers to sell information ringing out, even to us.
Tarquin pointed at a few of them, and they were hauled away by his soldiers. To be questioned. And I doubted it would be pleasant.
But the others …
Tarquin stretched out his hand toward them.
It took me a heartbeat to realize why the Hybern soldiers were thrashing and clawing at themselves, some trying to crawl away. But then one of them collapsed, and sunlight caught on his face. And even with the distance, I could tell—could tell it was water now bubbling out of his lips.
Out the lips of all the Hybern soldiers as Tarquin drowned them on dry land.
I didn’t see Rhys or the others for hours—not when he gave the order that the Illyrian war-camp was to be moved from the border of the Winter Court and rebuilt at the edge of the battlefield. So Mor and I winnowed to and from the camps as the exodus began. We brought my sisters last, waiting until many of the bodies had been turned to black dust by Rhysand. The blood and mud remained, but the camp maintained too good a position to yield—or waste time finding another one.
Elain didn
’t seem to care. Didn’t seem to even notice that we winnowed her. She just went from her tent to Mor’s arms, then into the same tent rebuilt in the new camp.
Nesta, however … I told her upon arriving that everyone was fine. But when we winnowed to the battlefield … She stared at that bloody, muddy plain. At the weapons soldiers of both courts were plundering from the fallen enemy.
Nesta listened to the low-level Illyrian soldiers whispering about how Cassian had thrown that spear, how he’d cut down soldiers like stalks of wheat, how he’d fought like Enalius—their most ancient warrior-god and the first of the Illyrians.
It had been a while, it seemed, since they had seen Cassian in open battle. Since they’d realized that he’d been young in the War, and now … the looks they gave Cassian as he passed … they were the same as those the High Lords had given Rhys upon seeing his power. Like them, and yet Other.
Nesta watched, and listened to it all, while the camp was built around us.
She did not ask where the bodies had gone before her arrival. She wholly ignored the camp Keir and his Darkbringers built beside ours—the ebony-armored soldiers who sneered at her, at me, at the Illyrians. No, Nesta only made sure that Elain was dozing in her tent, and then offered to help cut up linen for bandages.
We were doing just that around the early-evening fire when Rhys and Cassian approached, still in their armor, Azriel nowhere to be found.
Rhys took a seat on the log I was perched atop of, armor thudding, and silently pressed a kiss to my temple. He reeked of metal and blood and sweat.
His helmet clunked on the ground at our feet. I silently handed him a pitcher of water, and made to grab a glass when Rhys just lifted the pewter container and drank right from it. It sloshed over the sides, water pinging against the black metal coating his thighs, and when he at last set it down, he looked … tired. In his eyes, Rhys seemed weary.
But Nesta had jolted to her feet, staring at Cassian, at the helmet he had tucked into the crook of his arm, the weapons still poking above his shoulder, in need of cleaning. His dark hair hung limp with sweat, his face was mud-splattered where even the helmet had not kept it out.