“Hilarious, my king. Any idea how we get out of this?” he grunts as he meets our attackers, blade against blade.
“I have a theory.” I coax the shadows to lasso a soldier’s ankle and yank them off-balance. He shifts into shadow to avoid the fall, and his sunlight weapon clatters to the ground. When he forms again, I slice him in half. “They can’t maintain their hold on their sunlight weapon when they shift!” I yell to him. “Elven magic is incompatible with the shadow network.”
“Bravo, my king.”
Warbill catches on right away with no further explanation. Working together, we force each soldier into their shadow form. These shades have spent their entire lives using the shadows and have only recently been handed sunlight weapons. It’s child’s play to trigger their instincts to shift. Once they’re disarmed, we end them. We do it again and again and again.
But just as I begin to think we have the upper hand, the archers arrive—this time, a unit of elves from the north. Our new strategy won’t work on this set.
“Take cover,” I call to my unit. We break into shadow and hide behind or under anything we can find when a deluge of arrows carves bright as lightning through the dark sky, a cascade of deadly shooting stars. One of our men has nowhere to hide. There’s no place left. Too many of us. Not enough cover. He stares at the incoming arrows, face going impassive as if he’s accepted the inevitable.
I want to scream. But then I see something on the horizon.
Eloise is there.
With a roar that rattles my bones, her dragon sends a stream of fire that engulfs the arching arrows. When the dragon fire stops, the arrows keep coming, but our man is showered by nothing but ash.
“Huzzah, dragon!” Warbill cheers as he surfs the darkness across the space between us and our enemies, a sword in each hand. He lops the heads off two elves before I’ve even reached the battle.
My muscles ache, but I keep going. Bodies fall to my right, to my left. I crawl over them, shake the blood from my hands. By the time we can say with certainty that we’ve secured the area, I’m panting hard and splattered with the blood of my enemies. Eloise circles the sky above me twice, then swoops down to land in the center of the village.
Voices ring out, my men crowding around her, slapping her hands, and crying out their thanks. I have to push through them to get to my mate.
“Please tell me that most of that isn’t yours,” she says to me. I look down at my bloodstained skin.
“Not enough of it to matter,” I confirm.
“Good, because I’m afraid the fight isn’t over.”
My brow sinks. “Where?”
“The mountain dwellers are struggling to take back the area around Bolvet. Their units aren’t as strong. Many have fallen.”
“Is the way to Bolvet clear?” I have to look over Phantom’s head to see her sitting on the beast’s back, her spine as straight as a queen on her throne. One of our menstaggers backward when Phantom’s head comes around. My mate is intimidating, a force of nature if ever there was one. The corner of my mouth tugs up in pride,
“It’s clear. Undaku’s team has it secured.”
“I’m on my way.” I send word down the shadows, and my men return to me one by one, columns of darkness coalescing into a band of umbrae.
“Do you have a report from the Borderlands?”
“Going now,” she says. She turns the dragon between us and, with a flap of Phantom’s wings, she’s gone.
“Bolvet,” Warbill says, sounding exhausted.
“Can you make it, old man?”
“For my village? If they succeed in killing me, they will have to grind my bones to keep my corpse from fighting.”
We both share a dark laugh and then shadoweave north, praying we reach the mountain dwellers in time.
Eloise
“This doesn’t make sense. Where are all the elves?” I ask Phantom. We’re soaring above the northwestern Borderlands. Fields of stubble where red wheat once grew before the harvest stretch out like scattered hay beneath us.
We saw plenty of elves, darling. Fried their arrows to ash.
“Not enough, though. Entrydal has a vast army of soldiers and hunters. I don’t think we ever got a proper count, but most of the bodies today were shades. Why are they holding back?”
