Page 355 of Commanding Scythe and Sky

I bit back my comment that she’d had one by her side for over a decade. Instead, I glanced between them before landing on Jo. “You’re certain?” When she nodded tightly, I looked between Carrson and Cyrus before leveling Atreus with a glare promising retribution. “Step even a toe outside the infirmary without a direct invitation from Nathara herself, and I’ll do what she’s much too kind to.”

When Atreus gave one curt dip of his chin, I looked at Freya. With a sigh, I asked, “Can you get them there?”

Without a word, she thrust her hands out and tore open the wards again.

“They’d have to go through me,” Carr said coldly, glaring at me and then Atreus before stepping through the portal. The northern assassins followed without another word.

“The delegation,” Freya breathed as she closed it.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, shaking my head. “Blaz⁠—”

“They’re going to rule against you.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”

“Blaz is that woman’s world, August. You don’t understand⁠—”

“Don’t I?” I cut her off. “I think Reyna and I are not so very different when it comes down to it. It’s easy to hate something that reminds you of yourself.”

She held out her bloody hands, tears lining her eyes as her crimson fingers shook. “That’s what scares me. It’s our violence—our need for retribution—she sees looking back at her from the mirror.”

With a huff, Cyrus closed the gap, yanking her into his bare chest by the back of her head. It was the sob she let out as she collapsed against him that told me we were way more fucked than I wanted to admit.

And I wasn’t sure if we could extract Ally without Bellaton at our backs. Cyrus met my gaze with exhaustion weighing down his cheeks, his eyes a dam of all the things he couldn’t say.

I didn’t need him to voice them anyway.

Best case, Reyna would enter our next conclave swinging for retribution.

Worst case…

Well. I’d never intended to cut down an ally, but if it came down to Reyna, or Alvara, there wasn’t much of a choice, now was there?

Seeming to read my resolution, Cyrus nodded, his jaw tight. “We intercept them. When they go to strike back, we intercept them.”

It was a promise between brothers. A promise I found myself clinging to through the following hours as they blurred together.

Hours where we sent word to Reyna. Where the summons appeared just as quickly. Where the three of us armed ourselves in silence. Where we debriefed the delegation on both the new intel and our initial extraction plan with Bellaton. Reyna had rewritten it—demanding Freya and I stand down because of our emotional entanglement and that Ally be transferred from one prison into another: a cell enchanted to hold souls below one of Bellaton’s bunkers. If she couldn’t be captured without unacceptable casualties, Reyna believed the resistance would be better off with both of us dead.

The latter barely concerned me—if they wanted to make that bed, so fucking be it. Ally wouldn’t suffer another day, and I’d find my way home to her in this life or the next, but the former…

Ally. My Ally, confined to four white walls deep in the earth, with no sunlight on her face after surviving six months of torture. I insisted—between Alec, Fae, Freya, Lana, and the Westerlunds—that we could handle her. Bring her back into herself.

Unwilling to meet my eyes, Reyna demanded a vote… and the council was split down the middle. Freya, Marcus, Kingsley, Teiran, and Nat by proxy through Kenna had my back. Kalma, Sable, Ajei, Zeke, and Sire had Reyna’s.

Jaw clenched, I lifted my gaze to amber eyes. Alec sat beside his wife, their sleeping daughter on her chest. Fae’s face was streaked with tears, her eyes closed and lips wobbling, cheek resting against Winnie’s head.

The shield clutched that metal cigarette tin he’d taken from Ansel’s body, his thumb running over the Celtic cross.

He didn’t hold my gaze for long, dropping it to the table as every set of eyes landed on the man who’d stood beside Ally for centuries, waiting for him to weigh in in Aren’s stead.

As though he had all the time in the world to reach a resolution, Alec turned to study his sleeping daughter. Sorrow pinched my chest at the hopeless look in his eyes.

Minutes must have passed. Kingsley huffed in irritation while we waited.

I locked gazes with Marcus, who dipped his chin, his voice brushing my mind: Me and mine are with you till the end, brother. Do what you must. We’ve got your back.

Do what you must. Those words took up a war drum in my mind. Delegation be damned, I was getting Alvara back. Based on the way Freya was staring Reyna down like she’d already planned her death blow, I assumed she had a better plan than I did.