“What?”she demanded, glaring at him as if he had been the one who started this.“Growth doesn’t mean we stop threatening people.”
For the first time all night, Gerick laughed.
It was small.Rough.Painful.But real, and it scraped its way out of his chest like a thing that had been buried too long beneath everything else.
The Great Luna stepped back, her form already beginning to soften into moonlight around the edges.The hem of her gown unraveled into mist before it touched the moss.
“Hold fast, General,” she said.“The foundations have been shaken, and it has started.There is still more darkness before dawn.”
Gerick bowed his head.“There always is.”
When he looked up again, she was gone.
The forest slowly exhaled.Sound returned in layers.Leaves shifting.Distant wings rustling.Water moving somewhere down the mountain.A draheim, very far away, making the low grumble that meant it had decided not to investigate.
Peri stood beside him in silence for several long moments.Then, without looking at him, she slipped her hand into his.
Gerick looked down at their joined hands, surprised by the small, careful tightness of her fingers.
“I’m not good at comfort,” she said.
“No.”
“And if you tell anyone I held your hand, I’ll deny it and possibly set your hair on fire.”
“I believe you.”
“Good.”
He looked back at the Nushtonia.The book rested motionless on the stone.For now.
Gerick’s fingers tightened around Peri’s hand once before he released her and straightened fully, shoulders squaring, spine settling into the line every soldier under his command would have recognized in their sleep.He was still hurting.That had not changed.
But the shape of the hurt had.
Before, it had been a chain.Now it was a blade.
He could carry a blade.He had carried many.
“Gather Lucian, Lilly, and Serapha,” he said quietly.
Peri studied him, head tilting, the last of her tears blinked away.“What are you going to do?”
Gerick looked toward the distant mountains where draheim watched from ancient shadows, their eyes occasionally catching the moonlight like scattered embers.
“What generals do.”
His voice steadied.The wind, finally, touched his face.
“We prepare for the battle we don’t want to fight.”
CHAPTER21
“There are moments when the world narrows down to one heartbeat, one breath, one person.Everything else either survives it with you or burns away.”~Nick
The foundations screamed.The sound tore through the mountain hard enough to knock Kara sideways, ripping across the chamber in a high, splintering wail that did not belong to anything living.
Nick caught her before she hit the stone, one arm locking around her waist, the other bracing against the trembling platform beneath them.
