“Company?” I asked.
She nodded.
We stood there, looking into the quiet. We had already said everything there was to say. Done everything we could do. Dalbreck’s troops were in place. Our odds were better. Venda outnumbered us only two to one now. But they still had better weapons. Something deep inside me wanted to drag Lia away, keep her safe, but I knew I couldn’t.
“We’re as ready as we can be,” I said.
She nodded again. “I know.”
Her gaze traveled along the silhouette of ruins on the cliffs, their ghostly edges lined by silver moonlight.
“They were great once,” she said. “They flew among the stars. Their voices boomed over the mountains. And this is all that’s left. Will we ever truly know who they were, Rafe?” She turned toward me. “After tomorrow, will anyone know who we were?”
I looked at her, not caring who the Ancients were. All I could think was, It doesn’t matter how many universes come and go, I will always remember who we were together.
I leaned down. Kissed her. Slowly. Gently. One last time.
She looked at me. She said nothing. She didn’t need to.
* * *
The meadow grass rippled in the breeze. By the next day, it would be trampled. Burned. Bloody. Our scouts had ridden in tonight. The Komizar’s army would make it to the valley entrance by morning.
The crowned and beaten,
The tongue and sword,
Together they will attack,
Like blinding stars thrown from the heavens.
—Song of Venda
CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN
LIA
Nurse the rage.
My heart pounded wildly.
The army was a blur at the end of the valley. A solid rolling wave. Condensing. Rising. Solidifying as the valley narrowed.
Their pace was leisurely. Unworried.
They had no need for worry. I’d already seen them approaching from the cliffs at the entrance to the valley before I rode back to take my position. I had seen how far they stretched, how unstoppable they were. Even the trail they left behind them was staggering, like the dust of a star shooting across the sky. It reached back for miles. They marched in ten divisions, infantry at the lead, followed by what looked like supplies, artillery, and herds of brezalots. More infantry followed, and then a fifth divison of soldiers on horseback. There was a heaviness to this division, something thick and weighty and more foreboding than the rest. There was no doubt in my mind that was where he rode, in the middle, within quick reach of all divisions, keeping a close watch on his creation, sucking in its power and breathing it out again like fire.
The army’s slow pace wore on nerves—just as he’d calculated.
A squad of their scouts had spotted us, then raced back to their front lines, probably reporting our pathetic numbers. Five thousand of us defended the exit of the valley—five thousand that they could see. More were ready to stream in behind us. The Vendan pace continued syrup slow, unflustered. We were merely a stone in the trail to be trampled underfoot. Even if the whole Morrighese army blocked the exit, the Komizar wasn’t worried. If anything, we only whet his appetite. At last he was getting the first course of the feast he had anticipated for so long.
Morrighan.
I heard the name of the kingdom on his lips. Amused. Sticky and cloying like a jelly drop in his mouth. He swallowed it down like a treat.
If rage pulsed in my veins, it was masked by the fear that roared in my ears for the thousands who stood behind me. This might be the day they lost their lives.
Rafe and Kaden sat on horses on either side of me. While I was dressed to be recognized, their clothing served an opposite purpose. Both wore black cloaks with the hoods drawn—the uniform of Morrighese Guardians. Jeb, Tavish, Orrin, Andrés, and Griz were in a line behind us, wearing the same. We didn’t want them recognized too soon.
“He’s playing with us,” Rafe said, his eyes locked on the slowly progressing cloud.
Kaden cursed under his breath. “At this pace, we’ll be fighting by moonlight.”
We couldn’t rush forward. We needed them to come to us.
“It’s just past midday,” I said, trying to calm myself as much as him. “We have hours of daylight yet.”
And then a horse broke free from their front lines. A distant speck at first, but then charging, fast. I heard the ratchet of the ballistas as it stormed toward us. But something about its coloring was wrong.
“Wait!” I said.
It wasn’t a brezalot. And there was a rider.
As it drew near, I knew.
It was the Komizar.
He stopped a hundred yards off. He held his hands up to show he wasn’t armed.
“What the hell is he doing?” Rafe asked.
“I request a parley with the princess,” he called. “Alone!”
A parley? Had he gone mad?
But then I thought, No. He is deadly sane.
“And I bring a gift of goodwill,” he called again. “All I ask for is a moment to talk—without weapons.”
Both Rafe and Kaden balked, but then the Komizar reached behind his back and swung a child down to the ground.
It was Yvet.
My heart stopped. The grass swallowed her up to her waist.
I remembered the day I had seen her huddled in the market with Aster and Zekiah, clutching a bloody cloth after her fingertip had been cut off. She looked even smaller and more terrified now.
The Komizar dismounted. “All yours,” he called, “just for the price of a few minutes.”
Rafe and Kaden railed against it, but I was already unbuckling and handing them my sword and knives.
“Our archers can take him down, and we can have the child too,” Rafe argued.
“No,” I answered. Nothing was ever that simple with the Komizar. We knew each other too well, and this was a very clear message to me.
“And when do I get Zekiah?” I called back to him.
He smiled. “When I’ve returned safely to my lines, I will send him. And if I don’t make it back—” He shrugged.
He was enjoying this. It was a game, theater. He wanted to draw it out, squeeze all the game pieces a little tighter in his fist.
I knew Rafe and Kaden were both a heartbeat away from signaling the archers. The sacrifice of one child for the beast himself. A child who could die anyway. A child who would likely die anyway. And our prize was in our grasp. But it was a choice that came with a price, one the Komizar had already calculated. The air was taut with the decision. He stood there, unafraid, knowing, and I hated him more deeply. How much was I like him? Who was I willing to sacrifice to get what I wanted?
“The Komizar’s fate will come later,” I whispered. “Do not lay a hand on the beast yet.”
I rode out to meet him, but when I was still ten yards away, I dismounted and waved Yvet forward. Her wide frightened eyes turned to the Komizar. He nodded, and she walked toward me.
I knelt when she reached me and held her tiny hands. “Yvet, do you see those two horses far behind me with the cloaked soldiers?”
She looked past me at the thousands of troops, her lip trembling, but then spotted the two dark cloaked ones. She nodded.
“Good. They will take care of you. I want you to go to them now. I want you to run and not look back. No matter what you see or hear, you will keep going. Do you understand?”
Her eyes brimmed with tears.
“Go,” I said. “Now!”
She ran, stumbling through the grass. The distance seemed like miles, and when she reached them, Kaden scooped her up and handed her off to another soldier. My stomach jumped to my throat. I swallowed, forcing the bile down. She made it, I told myself. I wrenched my breaths to a slow rhythm and turned back to face the Komizar.
“See?” he said. “I keep my word.” He waved me forward. “Let’s talk.”
I walked to meet him, looking for lumps, bulges in his clothing, a knife waiting to pay me bac
k. As I drew closer, I saw the lines in his face, the sharpness of his cheekbones, the toll my attack had taken on him. But I also saw the hunger burning in his eyes. I stopped in front of him. His gaze rolled leisurely over me.
“You wanted to talk?”
He smiled. “Has it come to this, Jezelia? No niceties?” His hand reached up as if to caress my face.
“Don’t touch me,” I warned. “Or I will kill you.”
His hand returned to his side, but his smile remained chiseled on his lips.
“I admire you, Princess. You almost did what no one else was able to do in the eleven years of my rule. That is a record, did you know? No other Komizar has ever ruled that long.”
“A pity it’s about to come to an end.”
He sighed dramatically. “How you still hang on to things. I care about you, Jezelia. Truly, I do. But this?” He waved his hand toward the troops behind me as if they were too pitiful to consider. “You don’t have to die. Come over to my side. Look at all I have to offer.”
“Servitude? Cruelty? Violence? You tempt me so, sher Komizar. We’ve talked. You can go back now.”
He looked past me at the troops. “Is that the prince back there? With his hundred men who stormed the citadelle?” His tone was thick with mockery.
“So the Viceregent has come running to you with his tail tucked between his legs.”
“I smiled when he told me what you’d done. I was impressed that you rooted out my moles. How is your father?”
“Dead.” He deserved no truths from me, and the weaker he thought we were, the better.
“And your brothers?”
“Dead.”
He sighed. “This is all too easy.”
“You haven’t asked me about Kaden,” I said.
His smile disappeared, and his expression darkened. I knew him well, too. Kaden was a blow he couldn’t hide. There was something in this world he had loved, after all. Something he had saved, nurtured, but it had turned on him. Something that pointed to his own failure.
A small rush of pebbles suddenly streamed down from the cliffs above. He looked up surveying the empty ruins, turning to look at the other side. The silence of held breaths gripped the valley.
He looked back at me and grinned. “You thought I didn’t know?”
Ice filled my belly.
He turned as if to leave but then stepped closer to me instead.
“It’s the girl on the terrace that’s bothering you, isn’t it? I admit I went a bit too far. Caught up in the moment I suppose. Would an apology change your mind?”
Caught up in the moment? I stared at him. There were no words. No words.
He leaned down and kissed my cheek. “I suppose not.”
He turned and walked back to his horse.
The rage came, blinding, bright, consuming.
“Send Zekiah!” I yelled.
“I will, Princess. I always keep my word.”
KADEN
I handed Yvet to a soldier. She choked on sobs, but there was no time to comfort her. “Take her to Natiya,” I said.
Lia had set up a camp outside the valley for whatever children we could capture. Gwyneth, Pauline, and more soldiers were there. Natiya spoke the language and would reassure them that they wouldn’t be harmed—and hopefully help comfort them—assuming we were able to get any more of them out of the valley alive.
I got back on my horse, watching Lia step closer to the Komizar. It was madness. I surveyed the cliffs. Watched the wall of the army poised to attack. Watched and waited and knew this was not just a parley. It was tearing nerves loose. The slow draw of a knife over skin. A stalking howl in a forest. The horses stamped, knowing, nervous.
“Shhh,” I whispered.
Make them suffer.
This was the Komizar, doing what he did best.
RAFE
I finally breathed as the Komizar rode away and Lia got back on her horse.
Zekiah was delivered as promised, whole and alive. He was rushed out of the valley to wait with Yvet. I had been expecting the worst, pieces perhaps, as the Komizar liked to threaten, but he always knew how to turn the moment. To plant doubt.
Lia had warned me he knew there were troops up in the ruins, and I sent soldiers to alert them. He may have known they were there, but he didn’t know exactly where they would charge from, or how many of them there were. It was a long valley, and when the Viceregent had escaped, he only knew of me and my hundred men—not about the whole Dalbreck army.
The cloud rolled toward us again, but this time with ravenous hunger. I felt the thunder of its feet, both human and animal, but united as one raging beast. I sensed our troops tensing, ready to spring. I stretched out my left arm, a signal to hold. Hold.
“You’re sure he’ll send them first?” I asked Lia. With the high hills around us, dusk was already closing in.
Lia’s knuckles whitened. One hand clenched her reins, and the other, her hilt. “Yes. Him using Yvet and Zekiah is proof. He knows me. He knows what will unsettle our soldiers and make them hesitate. We are not like him.”
We watched them get closer, and their features came into view at last, lines of soldiers, ten deep, a hundred across. None of them older than Eben or Natiya. Most much younger. They held halberds, swords, axes, and knives. As they advanced, I saw their faces, wild, barely recognizable as children anymore.
I signaled the shield guard to move forward into position. “Shields up!” I ordered. Their shields interlocked with practiced precision. “Archers forward!” Orrin called.
And then the first of the brezalots charged.
LIA
The prodded animal streaked past their front lines, heading toward the shield guard. The ballistas tucked above us moved to the ridges, ratcheted, cocked, and ready. I watched them turn, aiming. Tavish waited with distressing patience and finally signaled the two with the best angles. “Fire!” The iron spears flew. One missed, but the other was a perfect shot, spearing the animal in its shoulder. The brezalot stumbled, fell, and then the earth exploded a safe distance away, meadow, horse, and blood, raining down, the pieces still on fire. The smell of burnt flesh filled the air.
And then another brezalot came.
And another.
The second was downed, but the third was only grazed by the iron spear, and charged into the shield guard. There was a scramble to get away, but it was too late. It exploded, leaving a gaping hole surrounded by dead bodies and pieces of beast. Orrin and his archers were knocked to the ground by the blast. Rafe and infantry rushed forward to help them, and the Komizar used the resulting chaos to send his brigade of child soldiers forward to further demoralize us.
“Retreat!” I yelled, loud and frantic, so even the Komizar would hear. “Retreat!”
Our lines hobbled back, the guard holding their shields in disarray, but the infantry behind us moved into position. Ready.
I watched. Breathless. Waiting. Drawing on patience I didn’t know I had. The shield guards staggered back. The child soldiers bore down on them, charging down the middle of the valley toward us.
“Retreat!” I shouted again. The Vendan troops behind the children stalled, waiting for their young soldiers to add to our chaos before they moved in with their heavy weapons. I watched, my heart hammering, and then when the last of the children crossed a designated line, I yelled, “Now!”
Dirt soared into the air. Chunks of meadow and grass flew as rows of sharp-angled pikes sprang from beneath the valley floor. Two impassable rows crossed the width of the valley, trapping the children on our side. The children turned, stunned by the noise, and then nets were launched, falling on them, ensnaring them further. The infantry rushed forward to subdue them and then guide them out of the valley to where Natiya, Pauline, and Gwyneth waited with more soldiers.
I raced forward, stopping at the wall of pikes. I knew I had only seconds before another brezalot was readied to break through our wall or another of their heinous weapons was launched.
K
ADEN
Eight Vendans rode with us—the ones we trusted, who had revealed themselves back at the citadelle. This was the part I knew Rafe objected to—or maybe feared—but he rode forward on one side of Lia, and I on the other, watching for archers or others in range to take Lia down.
There was calamity on the other side of the pikes, a ripple of disturbance behind their front lines, orders rolling back.
“Brothers! Sisters!” Lia called, drawing their attention back to her. More word rippled back. There were Vendans at her side, including Griz and myself. It triggered a strained silence. She made a plea for surrender, settlement, a promise for peace, but she hadn’t even finished her proposal when the Komizar, Chievdar Tyrick, and Governor Yanos pushed through on their horses. The Komizar’s eyes fell briefly on me, the fire of my betrayal still blazing in them, and then his attention turned to a soldier who had stepped forward and lowered his weapon, listening to Lia. The Komizar swung his sword, and the man was halved. The front line soldiers raised their weapons, gripped in fists hot with fervor again to avoid the same fate, and then a herd of brezalots charged toward us.
RAFE
I was thrown from my horse. Splinters of wood rained down on me. A horn sounded, reverberating through the valley. I rolled to my feet, my sword drawn and shield raised. The battalions were launched. On the cliffs in the distance, I saw forces led by Draeger charging down a trail. On the opposite side, Marques’s men did the same in an effort to divide the Vendan forces in two. Tavish fought at my back, the loud ring of steel coiling around us, both of us swinging, lunging, and cutting down the wall of Vendans coming at us. We finally made it back to our horses, and killed Vendans who were about to claim them. From atop my horse, I searched through the bedlam of brown and gray and flashing metal for a glimpse of Lia. She was gone. We fought our way to band with other ranks, then plowed through enemy lines, and headed toward the fifth division.
LIA
I scrambled to my feet, a knot of soldiers at my side. Thick dust filled the air. I’d lost sight of both Rafe and Kaden. Vendans swarmed in past the shattered pikes. I heard the burbling gasps of soldiers impaled with splintered wood. Darkness was creeping in, but the cliffs ignited with a line of fire, and stones were catapulted to scatter Vendan forces as Dalbreck’s battalions swarmed to the valley floor. Jeb made it to my side.