On the other side.
The battlefield is nothing like the skirmish in the streets of Faros during the Festival of Night. Those fights were quick and bloody, our movements desperate and penned in by the narrow alleys and the fleeing civilians. In the darkness, it was nearly impossible to tell friend from foe, nearly impossible to know where to go next, the only real guide the sound of screams.
Here, the lines are clearly drawn. The soldiers hold their formation on both sides, engaging in a melee at the front with the rear lines attacking from range, searching for cracks in the collective armor. It feels wrong somehow to stand here between Ronan and Taran, clutching my sword and shield and waiting for my turn to fight. It’s the anticipation of it that unnerves me,the long inhale before the slaughter begins. Before I step forward into the fray to end someone’s life.
Someone who I know. There, two cohorts back near the catapult. The son of the castle’s carpenter. And here, coming closer. One of my sister’s servants, a woman who braided my hair once while I was waiting for Adria to finish her lessons. Neara. She’s good with her sword, better than I would have expected, but not good enough.
I watch her fall with a strange sense of detachment. My self-preservation instinct, which has so often failed me, has fully taken control now. It knows that if I think about what’s happening, I am lost. It keeps my legs moving, my arms moving, my shield up.
It feels Ronan beside me: alive and fighting fiercely, using his magic freely to cut holes into their formation that his soldiers punch through. It feels Taran on the other side: shielding us from their fire, flinging his ice with deadly precision, his calm preternatural, unfailing.
And it responds with shadow. Here in the light of day, my shadow is as powerful a weapon as any other. I plunge the enemy into disorienting darkness, and when I lift it again, they’re gone, fled like actors on a stage vanishing before the curtain opens, only there will be no curtain call.
It feels like hours, but I’m certain it has only been a few minutes when our cohort advances, swapping places with the flagging group at the front. Ronan adjusts my shield and his own, blocking as much of me as he can from view. “Are you with me, Sylvie?” He looks down at me, his face framed by his helmet, his hair dripping with sweat. He’s a force of nature, and yet I know if I asked him to, he’d risk everything to take me away from here.
The truth is, I’m terrified, but I know I’m not alone in that. The closer we get, the more I sense the feelings of those aroundme, their anticipation rising on a fever pitch, the suffocating horror of violence bearing down heavier and heavier until it’s all our line can do to hold up their shields, until it takes every ounce of strength they have left to lift their swords.
And here in the center of it is Ronan. The golden god-king. The glory and the fury of daylight incarnate.
Gods, how could I be anywhere else but beside him?
“Always, Ronan.”
We charge forward, and our swords and spears clash with shields and flesh. It’s impossible to know who or what I’m striking. All I know is to press forward, to keep the lines tight, to keep pushing through the fatigue, through the terror and the screaming and the loss.
Fire catches on Ronan’s tunic, but I extinguish it. A surge of wind nearly topples my shield, but Taran forces it upright. A well-timed strike with a spear punctures my arm. I barely feel it before Ronan’s hands are on me, healing the wound.
Nithyria fights well, but they’re outmatched. These are some of their best, but they’re desperate. They know their cause is in its death throes. Their lines begin to break. We force them back to the next ditch. They stumble against it, the earth-born desperately trying to raise the land. To keep themselves upright before they’re crushed under our relentless spears.
The ground rumbles, but it isn’t the earth-born. It’s hooves, hundreds of them, the cavalry charging from their left wing, finding a weak point in our lines and breaking through to rout us. My head lifts along with several others, my body tensing in fear. I’m surrounded by our soldiers, but with the sound of hoofbeats in my ears, I feel naked. Alone on the field.
“Hold!” shouts Ronan. “Hold the line!”
But the lines are slipping, crushing together to flee the relentless charge of the riders, death galloping forward on four legs.
And then I hear a voice I know better than few others. “With me!” cries Adria from on high, her voice floating over the field from horseback. Then I spot her, her blonde hair streaming from her helmet, her smile full of triumph and freedom, a woman unburdened. She leads the column of calvary, smashing through our lines and overwhelming our defenses, her grey stallion leaping over ditch and barricade.
Our cohort breaks, panic setting in. One moment, I’m there with Ronan and Taran, charging forward, and the next, I’m flung backwards into chaos, the swords and shields surrounding me our own. I can’t tell friend from foe in the fray, I can’t see whose sword pierces my side, whose elbow cracks against my ribs, whose arm tugs on my helmet, pulling me down.
“Siege lines, forward!” shouts Adria, her voice miles from where I last heard it. She’s a whirlwind on the field, a terror, the avenging angel of my nightmares.
Though I’m standing in the open, the walls close in on me. A thousand memories of our childhood flash through my mind. Adria in the parlor playing games. Adria in the bailey, yelling at me to get down from the wall. Adria in her bed, telling me not to crawl in during a storm but letting me stay anyway. Adria shouting at Seth, shouting at the servants, shouting at me.
And me, small, dark, and terrified. Terrified and enamored, desperate to please her and to be her, to shape myself into someone that she admires and respects. That she loves.
My legs won’t move. My arms won’t lift. The soldiers around me are gone, fled or regrouping, but I’m trapped there alone in my memories.
“Sylvie!” Ronan’s voice is small and far away. Or I am small; I’m not sure which is true. “Stay there. I’m coming.”
And then, there’s only darkness. But it’s not the darkness of sleep. It’s not the darkness of injury. It’s not even my own darkness.
It’s the darkness of night, and I know who it belongs to.
Ronan.
I can’t explain it, but I know it. I recognize his magic even in this form. I feel his presence wrap around me, shielding me, protecting me. It isn’t his light. It’s his shadow, my shadow, my own power filtered through him, his magic a lens that draws on my power, refining it. Finding the strength to wield it that I do not have.
I see him through the darkness. My eyes meet his, half a battlefield between us.
