CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Ellery
We can do this. We can do this.
“The palace is very big,” Indon remarked.
“It is.”
And suddenly it felt too overwhelming as I gazed up at the towering structure. There are more guards inside there too.
If we failed in this, not only would the children suffer, but Ryker would as well. And if the duke got his hands on me, I’d wish I were dead.
There were far too many lives hanging in the balance, and they all rested on my shoulders. It didn’t matter that there were many fighters here; they all looked to me to get them through this… except maybe the gargoyles.
Indon stood as still as stone while he surveyed the palace. His towering, powerful physique gave me some reassurance we could get through this, but if we failed….
I gulped again as I inhaled a big breath through my nostrils. The icy air froze my nasal passages and helped calm some of my rising panic.
I couldn’t give in to the terror trying to grip me; if I did, we’d all suffer and perish. I’d rather die fighting for Ryker and the children than cowering in the cavern. I just didn’t want to take anyone else with me.
Unfortunately, it would be impossible not to lose some, if not most, of those gathered with me. I reminded myself they knew what they were getting into, and many of them had loved ones they were fighting for too.
Enough lives had already been lost because of the greed of those who ruled Tempest. It needed to end. And for that to happen, more blood would spill, but hopefully, by the time tonight came to an end, so would the bloodshed.
I shifted my attention back to the castle and the guards between the children and us. At least two thousand feet and a thousand combatants separated us from the palace.
They outnumbered us ten to one, and once we moved against them, we wouldn’t be able to hide our presence or the gargoyles anymore. We had to get in and out fast enough to free the children and return with them to the woods.
Once there, we’d open a portal and get them to safety in the Revenant Woods. If everything went to plan, their parents would be waiting in the cavern for them.
If we freed the children, the duke would lose his mind, and Ryker would be the one to pay for that. The tears forming in my eyes turned icy as they slid down my cheeks.
Ducking my head, I hastily wiped them away. This wasn’t the time for tears, even if my chest felt like someone had punched through my ribs and seized my heart. The death grip they held on it made breathing difficult.
If there had been any other choice, I would have taken it, but we’d talked about this endlessly, and only one solution kept presenting itself. We had to free the children before going for Ryker and the others. Even before we learned the children’s location, we’d known this.
There had always been the possibility they were keeping the children in the same dungeon as Ryker and the others, but we’d all agreed that was unlikely. The duke would have them guarded and locked away, yet he also intended to bend them to his will and turn them into future soldiers.
For that, they’d require training. Parading them in and out of the palace every day wouldn’t make any sense, and I was certain the duke found the children repulsive; because of that, he wouldn’t allow them in his newly acquired home.
I’d suspected the children were either in the barracks or the stables. In some ways, that would have been better, as there weren’t any cells. In other ways, it would have been worse; if they were in the palace’s bailey, it would have been more difficult to get to them.
“They’re going to kill Ryker and Callan before we can get to them,” Luna said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Ellery
I glanced over to where Luna stood with her chin raised and her fingers gripping her cloak. She had never been fully on board with this plan, but she had to admit there were no other options.
If we freed Ryker and the others first, the duke would take his wrath out on the children, and he cared far less about those hostages than he did his son. And he didn’t care about Ryker because he loved him. To the duke, Ryker was a powerful tool to get to me.
The duke would slaughter some, if not all the children if we freed Ryker first. I didn’t doubt that.
He’d do it to punish us and turn the rest of the amsirah against us… and I wouldn’t blame them if they did. The only reason he hadn’t already killed the kids was because he saw them as a weapon against the amsirah and a future wave of fighters who would stand behind him.
And that was only if we could get to Ryker. Even locked in a dungeon, the children were more accessible than the others, who were locked deep within the palace’s bowels. We could very well fail to free them, and then everyone would suffer.
