“You are a monster,” I spit, the words a familiar refrain, a shield I desperately try to raise. “You do not feel sentiment.”
“She does not share your assessment.” His words are clipped, brutally efficient. “My mission has been terminated. She has dispatched her elite guard. The Crimson Wing.”
The name is alien, but the way he says it, the sheer menace laced in the two words, makes the hairs on my arms stand on end.
“They are not like me,” he says, and finally, I hear something other than cold logic in his voice. A warning. “They do not have…conflicting objectives. Their directive is to retrieve Lyren. And to cleanse this fortress and all its inhabitants with fire. They are coming to kill you. They are coming to kill our son.”
Our son.
The two words hit me like a sledgehammer brandished by an orc. My knees feel weak. The sounds of the fortress, the panicked shouts of my own people, fade to a dull roar. He is lying. It is a trick. A desperate, brilliant manipulation to get me to lower my guard, to stand down my men.
I stare into his eyes, searching for the lie, for the deception. But I find none. I am tethered to his soul by a psychic scar, and in this moment, that cursed link is my only guide. I do not feel deception. I feel a cold, biblical rage that is not directed at me, or at Haven, but at his own kind. I feel the possessive, protective fury I saw flicker in him before, now a blazing, unconstrained inferno. He is telling the truth.
The world tilts, the options laying themselves bare with brutal, terrifying clarity.
Option one: I treat him as the enemy. My people fight him, weaken him, and in doing so, weaken ourselves. And then we face an army of a dozen more just like him, an army of monsters with no conflicting loyalties, alone. We will be slaughtered. Lyren will be taken. Haven will burn.
Option two: I trust him. I trust the monster who violated my body and soul. I trust the man who sees my son as a specimen. I trust my greatest enemy, my personal demon, to be my savior.
The calculation is insane. It is a fool’s gambit. It is the only choice I have.
My dagger does not waver, but the question that leaves my lips is not a threat. It is a plea for intelligence. For a weapon.
“How many?”
A flicker of something—surprise? respect?—crosses his features before it is gone. “Twelve. They are the Matriarch’s personal hand. Each one is my equal in strength and speed.”
Twelve of him. The thought is a sickening lurch in my stomach. We barely managed to capture one.
“What are their tactics?” My voice is stronger now, the queen returning, the terrified woman receding.
“They will favor a silent, overwhelming assault. They will come from the air, likely from the east, using the morning sun to mask their approach. They will strike the walls first, creating chaos. In the confusion, a smaller team will infiltrate, their only objective the retrieval of Lyren.” He pauses, his gaze unwavering. “They will not be gentle.”
His knowledge, his brutal honesty, solidifies my choice. He is giving me the weapons I need to fight his people. He is betraying his queen, his race. For his son. For… us.
I lower my dagger, just a fraction, a minute gesture that signifies a monumental shift. “The eastern wall is our highest,” I say, my mind racing, already shifting from confrontation to strategy. “The archer positions are well protected. We can lay fire down on them as they approach.”
“Their hide is resistant to standard arrows,” he counters immediately. “You would need bodkin points forged of cold iron, and your bowmen would need the strength to punch through Vrakken plate.”
“Our forge can make the points,” Tarek interjects from behind me, his eyes wide as he follows our impossible conversation. “But the strength…”
“I will handle the ones that make it to the wall,” Eoin states, his voice leaving no room for argument.
And just like that, the alliance is forged. In the space of ten heartbeats, my prisoner has become my general. My monster has become my weapon. We stand in the dungeon corridor, theair thick with tension and the smell of ozone, and we begin to plan the defense of my home. His knowledge of Vrakken warfare, his understanding of their minds, is a resource I could never have dreamed of. It is a terrifying, intimate dance of strategy, his cold logic meeting my fierce, desperate resolve.
In the middle of a heated exchange about the structural integrity of the main gate, it comes.
A high, piercing blast from the watchtower horn. A single, sustained note.
Enemy sighted.
They are here.
I look at Eoin. He is standing free in the heart of my fortress, his eyes burning with a cold, deadly light, his entire being thrumming with a barely contained power. He is the most dangerous weapon on this battlefield. And I am the one who has just aimed him at the heart of my enemies.
The full, terrifying weight of what I have done crashes down on me. I have just armed the greatest threat Haven has ever known.
18
