The silence after the storm is the most brutal sound of all. It is a hollow, ringing void where the screams and the clash of steel used to be, filled now only by the whisper of the wind through the broken gate and the low, agonized moans of the dying.
The air is thick with the metallic tang of blood and the acrid smell of scorched stone. I stand in the middle of my courtyard, dagger still in hand, and force myself to breathe. My body aches, but the pain is a distant, unimportant thing.
“My Queen.”
Tarek’s voice, rough with pain and exhaustion, cuts through my daze. I turn to him. He’s clutching a deep gash on his arm, his face a grim mask of soot and grief. His eyes, when they meet mine, are filled with a devastation that mirrors my own.
“Status,” I command, my voice a raw croak. I clear my throat and try again, forcing the queen’s authority into my tone. “Give me a status report, Tarek.”
“The wounded are being moved to the great hall. We’ve… we’ve lost a lot of people.” He gestures with his chin to a spotnear the forge. “Rhys… he saved two of the younger recruits before he fell.”
I follow his gaze, and my breath seizes in my chest. I see the face of the boy, no older than seventeen. I remember handing him his first proper sword just a week ago. Now, his eyes are open, glassy, staring at a sky they can no longer see. “He was just a boy, Tarek,” I whisper, the words a knot of grief in my throat.
“He died a warrior.”
We begin to walk, a slow, grim survey of the battlefield that was once our home. I see Anya from the kitchens, her body lifeless near the well. I see Markus, the old stonemason who taught me how to mix mortar. Every face is a failure. Every body is an accusation. The sanctuary I built has become their tomb.
“Elza!” A woman’s cry, sharp with pain, calls my name. It is Lyra, one of our healers. She’s kneeling over a young man, trying to staunch the bleeding from a terrible wound in his leg. “We need more blood-clotting moss! Anya was the one who knew where the hidden patch was…” Her voice trails off as she remembers.
My heart clenches. The practical, cascading consequences of loss. I kneel beside her, my own hands now covered in the blood of one of my people. I call on my Purna, a faint, weary golden light trickling from my palms as I press them to the wound, helping the flesh to seal. “Use torn linens for now, Lyra. Keep pressure on it. We will survive this.”
As I rise, my gaze sweeps across the courtyard and finds him.
Eoin moves through the field of bodies with a purpose that is terrifying to behold. He kneels beside one of the Crimson Wing warriors, a female whose leg has been nearly severed. I see her whisper something to him. He listens, his expression unreadable, then places a hand on her forehead and, with a clean, efficient twist of a dagger, ends her suffering. It is not an act of cruelty. It is a cold, profound mercy.
“Gods,” Tarek murmurs beside me, his voice a mixture of awe and revulsion. “I do not know whether to thank him or run him through.”
“I know,” I breathe, because his words are a perfect echo of the war in my own soul. He is the monster who brought this apocalypse to our door. But he is also the whirlwind of death that saved us. Our damnation and our salvation.
As Eoin rises, his gaze sweeps the courtyard. It is no longer an empty abyss. It is burning with a fierce, protective fire. He is a fallen god, covered in the blood of his own kind, and I see in his eyes not the victory of a warrior, but the grim resolve of a guardian.
The realization, cold and hard, settles in my mind. “This is not the end, is it, Tarek?”
He looks from Eoin, to the bodies of our friends, and then to the sky, as if expecting another wave of winged death to descend at any moment. “They will send more. We barely survived a dozen. An army…” He does not need to finish the sentence.
“Haven is no longer a sanctuary,” I say, the words tasting like ash. “It is a target. A beacon, calling the wrath of the Vrakken down upon us. We cannot stay.” The dream I built from dust and blood is over. My home is lost.
A sob, thick and ragged, threatens to break free, but I choke it down. I am their queen. I do not have the luxury of breaking.
Eoin finishes his grim work among the dead. He stands, his borrowed dagger dripping crimson onto the cobblestones, and turns to face me. He walks toward me, his steps sure and silent, a path clearing before him as my people instinctively move aside. He walks through the dead of two races, the casualties of a war he started and a war he just joined, and he does not falter.
He stops a few feet in front of me. The psychic link, which had been a blazing battle cord during the fight, is now a steady,somber connection between us. It is a quiet river of shared grief and grim, unyielding purpose.
He looks at me, his burning eyes taking in the devastation around us, the cost of our victory. He has reached the same brutal conclusion.
He extends a hand. It is not a command. It is not a plea. It is a statement of the only path left. His hand is large, pale, and stained with the blood of his kin. It is the hand of a monster, a violator, a murderer. And it is the only hand offering salvation.
“They will not stop,” he says, voice a low, gravelly sound, stripped of its formal edges by the battle. “The Matriarch will send more. An army. This fortress will fall.”
In his gaze, I see the reflection of my own impossible choice, my own despair.
“You and the boy must come with me. It is the only way.”
20
EOIN
The wind is a blade against my skin, but I fly on. Elza is a warm, solid weight against my chest, her arms a band of steel around Lyren, who is sheltered between our bodies. I have folded my left wing around them, a leathery shield against the punishing cold, forcing my right to bear the strain of our flight. The muscles burn with an agony I have not felt since my capture, but I do not slow.
