Page 6 of Wings of Destruction

“Hello? Anyone?”

My attention skitters over the four walls and the fireplace filled with dead coals from one of the early cold nights.

The cabin is clear.

Another shrieking hiss from the field has me wincing and drawing in on myself. The battle has begun, and the first waves have met Fallkirk’s defenses against the General’s opening moves.

He’ll have sent the hydras and basilisks ahead of the rest of his troops.

My mother and sister are out there on the ground with those beasts. Hydra venom can paralyze you within seconds, and if you make direct eye contact with a basilisk, you’re turned to stone.

I recover in seconds and force my aching legs to carry me to the next house, and the next. Many of the great manors here, the oldest in Fallkirk, are already empty, and the pure blistering sunlight overhead mocks my struggle.

There should be mist creeping along the edges of the roads and the stables, dark and hungry like the General’s men.

The next house is empty as well until I come to the last house on the lane. The door is locked shut against predators. I slam my hand against the wood until the splinters scrape against raw skin.

“Hello!” I peek in through the dusty whirls of glass on either side of the door. “Anyone⁠—”

My mother gave me a task she deemed possible, to gather whomever I find, the stragglers. But she couldn’t have expected…

An old woman stares at me from her perpetual stoop in front of the drawing room fireplace, her hunched shoulders crouching closer to the flame. Her eyes widen in surprise, but her features stay in their familiar scowl.

“Go away, girl.” Lanai’s voice is clipped. “I’m not budging.”

I’ll have to break down the door if I want to get her out.

The kids in Fallkirk call her Grumpy Lanai for good reason. She’s the kind to pelt stragglers with stones if they stray too close to her porch. Her aim is impeccable as well. The scar on my shoulder twinges at the memory of a particularly sharp scrap of gravel she hurled at me.

I tug on the curved handle. “Open the door, Lanai.”

The crone takes pleasure in crossing her arms over her chest, her wrinkled face like one of the stone gargoyles in my sister’s fantasy books. Lanai should be guarding a castle rather than stoking flames on an already warm day.

“No.”

Another roar sounds from the battlefield accompanied by the cut off screech of a unicorn, and my blood goes cold.

“Flaming, cursed depths.”

My under the breath curse falls easily and I make my way around the side of the manor. Lanai’s family practically settled Fallkirk themselves, and she’s never let anyone forget it. Her son might be out there with my mother, along with his wife and their grown children, but the hardest one in the family to crack is still inside.

I quicken my pace to the side door and find it unlocked. My breath leaves me in a whoosh as I cut through the abandoned kitchen toward the front parlor.

Lanai’s gaze shifts to me, her white curls tucked beneath a frayed green and gold kerchief. Something in her rheumy eyes flares.

“I’m not going with you, Miss Morgan.” She waggles an arthritic finger at me in warning, the folds around her eyes thick enough to obscure the blue color. “You think I don’t know what’s going on? Your mother sent you here because she wants to turn my house into another one of those blighted stables. Like the unicorns don’t have enough space in the village as it is. This house has been in my family for generations.”

My smile doesn’t touch my eyes and my pulse pounds in my head.

“That’s not what this is about.” I hold out a hand for her. “Come on. We have to get out of here.”

“Always thinking about improvements, your mother.” Lanai works her tongue over her teeth, her lips pressed closed. “Things are fine the way they are. The way they’ve always been.”

“Things aren’t fine,” I counter on instinct.

It’s a fool’s errand trying to change Lanai’s mind or convince her of the pressing danger. Soon enough, the battle will creep from the field and into the village. It’s inevitable. Our lines will only hold for so long. And when the dragons finally arrive…

Without waiting, I grab Lanai by the arm, ignoring her outraged squawk and demands to release her. She’s surprisingly strong for her age as though her stubbornness has added muscle where none should be.