He couldn’t imagine what she’d look like—similar to their mother, perhaps, with a heart-shaped face, with delicate features and rosy cheeks. Perhaps harsher, like their father. He might not even recognize her if brought face to face with the sister he’d lost to Ulder’s graces, so much time had passed since he’d last been allowed a glance at her. Then, he’d seen her from a distance, and the only reason he’d known it was her, apart from Ulder’s word, was the mass of bronze hair billowing behind her as she’d run through the palace courtyard, unaware of the ten guards watching her every move, and oblivious to her own blood mere feet away, unable to call her name because of the arrow one of Ulder’s guards kept pointing at her chest. One wrong word—one wrong move, and she’d be dead.
The color of liquid metal still stuck in Khayrivven’s mind—their mother’s hair.
With a shake of his head, Khayrivven left the memories behind, focusing on what little hope resided inside of him as, together with Ycken, he ascended the mountain.
Maybe they’d find Frost’s body, and he’d know that the ice-wielder had escaped Ashthorn for good.
Something in the branches cracked as he stepped into the small clearing he remembered from the images Lenya’s astral projection had collected and shown them at the camp at the foot of the mountains. This was where Lory had faced the ashling with the unusual skill of sound manipulation and the lightning wielder.
Khayrivven’s hand was on the hilt of one of the sabers crossed over his spine, ready to draw it in a heartbeat.
In front of him, Ycken hadn’t even noticed the disturbance, his pure human senses unable to detect such tiny details.
It would have been easy to let the general walk into a trap, easier even to stand by and watch him being slaughtered by the three people crouching in the bushes at the seam of the clearing, but if there was one thing Khayrivven could be certain of, it was that letting the general die on his watch would mean punishment—and Lenya had all sorts of torments in his arsenal, Khayrivven knew from experience.
So he caught up with Ycken, gesturing at the place he’d spotted the danger.
“Three,” he mouthed when the general’s head snapped toward him, raising a brow at Khayrivven’s half-drawn weapon, and gestured toward the other end of the clearing. “Could be rebels.”
Guardians bless Ycken, he hadn’t become Ulder’s general for nothing. Without questioning Khayrivven’s warning, he drew the blade by his hip, pivoting east, into the scattered rocks and trees seaming the clearing in that direction.
There, another crack. Louder this time. And boots slithering over stone.
For a while, they stood out of sight, Ycken’s heart audibly racing at the prospect of an attack while Khayrivven’s attention slid across the clearing, marking the torn pieces of the Ashthorn students Lory had defeated before fleeing south, enclosed by a wildfire of her own making.
He’d need to get closer to make out Bellmont among them.
“Might be our own soldiers,” he suggested with another nod toward the shadows where the hidden group wasmoving near-soundlessly through the thicket. He didn’t believe that for one second, though, merely mentioned it to give Ycken a full assessment of possibilities, the way a good captain was supposed to. “Or Vednis.”
Ycken shook his head, cautiously making his way around the edge of the open space, his focus on the three shadows moving across from them. “Unless she has made friends up here in the mountains, I doubt it’s her.”
Of course, he was right. Ulder hadn’t picked a fool for a general.
There were only two types of people up in these mountains: those who fought to protect their freedom and those who fought to take it. No matter how long Ulder’s bloodline had been reigning over all of the continent, Criulias would never give up their endeavors for independence.
They were perhaps a hundred feet away from the shadows when he recognized their uniforms for the brown-and-green pattern the Criu rebels liked to wear to melt into the landscape of the mountains.
“Rebels,” he hissed at Ycken, but the general was already charging across the side of the clearing, his boots trampling over the remainder of what had once been Solen, the lightning wielder, and Khayrivven had no choice but to follow suit, no matter how little he’d intended to kill the rebels.
Saber drawn, he followed in a rush, reaching the general’s side just as the first rebel’s blade met Ycken’s brutal sword. The music of steel clashing with steel rang through the mountains as the other two rebels flanked the first one,ready to stab Ycken in the sides, and Guardians, Khayrivven wanted to let it happen.
Lenya would know, and he’d have Khayrivven’s head, and no matter how little he cared for his own life, that life was the only thing standing between Ulder, the Triad, and Lory.
With a scream, Khayrivven Falcrest lunged into battle, fire crackling in his veins as his blade tasted blood.
Three
Lory
When Lory woke,she was no longer sprawled on the ground right by the northern cave mouth; rays of golden light tickled her cheeks, teasing her eyes open, and she found herself face to face with the leonthor’s massive paw. A paw tipped with claws sharp enough to slice through flesh, cartilage, and bone.
Holding her breath, Lory lifted her gaze toward the source of the light, squinting her eyes at the bright, burning orb hanging at the edge of the horizon. The same obsidian walls making up the other three directionsinformed her that she was still in the cave—perhaps at a different exit, but still in the cave.
The leonthor’s ongoing, muscled legs were angled in a way that his hind paws were close to her toes while his front paws rested near her head, and on top of those front paws… his head, the size of a horse’s but with infinitely sharper teeth and the general shape of a lion’s, rested, palm-long canines visible in his half-open maw. The smell of rot and decay blew from his nose with every slow breath, making Lory want to turn around and cover her nose and mouth with her sleeve, but the leonthor would wake if she wasn’t careful, and she hadn’t been able to get a good look at him like that. Until now, those lilac eyes had always captured her, not allowing her to properly inspect the obnoxious creature.
His antlers were slightly crooked, some of the tips chipped, telling stories of battles she could only guess at. If the stained-glass panel in Ashthorn’s mess hall was remotely telling the truth, this creature had seen more bloody slaughter than anyone could care for. Not that Lory felt any pity. She knew nothing about the leonthors’ role in Brestolya’s history.
A deep breath expanded the leonthor’s ribs, and Lory noticed the long, jagged scar curling his caramel-sand-colored fur above his shoulder where all depictions of the creatures she’d ever seen had shown wings.
