I blink up at him and offer the type of self-assured smile I know drives him crazy with desire. “Nope.” I pop thepat the end. “I’ve been practicing. This should be child’s play.”
He lowers his chin, bringing his face close to mine, and cocks a brow. Through a crooked smile, he says, “Then I’ll let you play.” His gaze turns heated. “I love to watch you play. Especially when we’re alone.”
I chuckle. “Judging by the size of that cabin, I don’t believe we’ll be alone anytime soon.”
A deep sigh rumbles from his chest as he turns and slips inside the door, closing it behind him.
I draw a deep breath into my lungs and reach for astrand of my power, weaving it with another I pluck from the ether. I cast my protective net over the small cabin in silence, to the sound of night creatures and the rustle of leaves in the breeze. My smile falters as my thoughts return, time and again, to the man we buried and to our starving friends inside.
My anger swells like the magma in Mount Damocles, thick and hot and yearning for destruction. Nevina and Brahm don’t know what kind of wasps’ nest they’ve stirred up by messing with our friends. I will not stop until they’ve paid for what they did to Bolvet Village. Until they’ve paid for every life they’ve taken from us.
4
Stranger No More
Damien
“His name was Victus,” Warbill says. “The man you buried. The owner of the general store. He escaped with his children just before the silver coats lit the fires.”
“Silver coats?” Eloise asks.
“That’s what Banias has renamed the umbrae. They’ve all adopted the preferred white and silver colors of their queen. Elven colors.”
I wince, remembering what Banias was wearing when he visited Mount Damocles. Umbrae warriors always dressed in black to blend into the night. Elven warriors often wore dark green and brown to blend into the forest. The only reason for the New Stygarde troops to wear silver is because they want to stand out, to intimidate, to show superiority when they are bullying their way through the kingdom. It’s a brazen color.
“You were saying about Victus?” I ask Warbill.
“Lady Eudora and Lord Prandle received word the silver coats were heading to Bolvet and evacuated the village. Anyone who was strong enough to shadoweave left with them for Aendor. We have no idea how many made it out. Ariadne and I stayed behind to help those who had to ride. We managed to get a few on the road. Victus volunteered to lead the group out because his children were too young to shift.”
“Victus was no fool,” Ariadne adds. “Since his wife died and he started trading with the Rivertoads, he’d learned to sleep with one eye open. No one was as travel-savvy as he. The shade understood how to avoid the silver coats. He was meticulously careful and had friends in low places, friends he thought would protect him. We assumed they’d survived, until now.”
I scratch my cheek, remembering the man and the waif of a girl I’d seen standing behind him in the store the day I visited. “You say he had his children with him when he fled? I found his body strung up on the road to the Borderlands with a New Stygarde execution decree.”
Ariadne clutches her chest. “Then the silver coats have the children.”
I stare into the fire. “Most likely. How many children were with him?”
“Only two. His children. Anyone else with young ones had fled Bolvet long ago. There’s a girl, Zarissa, and a boy who is a year older, Zander,” Warbill says.
“I’ll get them back. I swear it.” A muscle in my jaw cramps as my teeth grind on the promise.
“Of course you will,” Ariadne says, leaning forward in her chair. The light from the fire reflects in her rheumyeyes. “You have the dragon! By the goddess, all of us believed it had died.”
“It did.”
They both look at each other and then back at me.
“Eloise practices spirit magic. The dragon was dead and now is animated by her ancestors. They are the source of her magic.” Although Eloise tried to explain this before, it bears repeating, considering the rarity of her abilities.
“Goddess, so she’s a witch?” Warbill shakes his head in abject wonder.
Ariadne’s hand flutters against her chest. “She told me she was a vampire. I tasted—” She cuts herself off, not wanting to admit directly to me that she once tasted Eloise’s blood. She clears her throat. “I am sure she was not a witch when I fitted her for her wardrobe.”
I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “Eloise lost her powers temporarily when she came to this world, but she does practice magic, spirit magic. Yes, she is a type of witch, but she is much more. The goddess Thanesia has made her a shade.”
“Made a shade? How is such a thing possible?” Ariadne curls her lip.
“Through blood and death and quite dangerous magic,” I explain.
