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Before her, the land rolled outward in smaller, gentler hills. The rising sun bathed the landscape in a soft, pink light, turning gold against the blaze of colors on the trees along the small creek that cut between the farm fields.

The view would have been picturesque, if not for the scars of trenches, earthworks, and fortifications that sliced through the mountains and valleys with unrelenting ruthlessness. A tangle of barbed wire lay before her with a jagged line of concrete lumps that looked like the teeth of some gigantic monster rising from the earth. Earthwork nests dotted the landscape, each fortified with several men and a machine gun, all before the main line of trenches and barbed wire barriers. The boom of the large artillery guns reverberated from somewhere just out of sight, the shells whistling overhead before they were caught by her magic.

Above, a fleet of airships and a swarm of aeroplanes swooped toward the squadron of Alliance aeroplanes.

In her chest, her magic raged, begging for release from the tight grip she kept on it. Gritting her teeth against the burn of her own magic, she threw herself forward into that crossfire of machine guns and artillery shells. The barbed wire went up in a blaze of sparks. Earth scorched as she swept her magic across it to clear any mines or other hidden traps.

With her magic so occupied destroying the armaments, the Mongavarian soldiers were spared. Some tossed aside their weapons and ran for the line of trenches. Others crouched where they were, gripping weapons as they waited for her to come to them.

The ones most eager to die leapt to their feet, bayonets affixed to their guns, and rushed her. She struck and sliced, her two swords a blur, as she fought with the ferocity honed into her from the moment her dacha had put a sword into her small, child hands.

So many men, so ready to die at her hands. She hated the warmth of the blood that spattered her face. The taste of scorching death in the air. The stench of burnt metal choking in her lungs.

And still her magic burned within her. More of it—ever more of it—aching and churning to be unleashed, just waiting for her to slip and be consumed by it.

This war had taken so much. Destroyed so much. How much more would have to be taken and destroyed before enough was enough?

She was still yards away from the trenches when something wrenched deep within her. She skidded to a halt, gasping for breath, blood dripping from the tips of her swords.

Far, far away on the other side of Mongavaria, Dacha and Fieran were using their magic. Not just using it, but unleashing it in a torrent of power yet unseen in this war.

She shouldn’t have known that. They were much too far away for her to sense.

And yet she knew. Deep within her soul, their magic called to hers in a deep resonance of an ancient magic.

Uncle Iyrinder halted next to her, his sword poised just in front of her in a guarding position. “What is it?”

She shook her head before she motioned to him with a sword. “Get back. Find cover.”

“Adriana…” Uncle Iyrinder hesitated, drawing out her name rather than using her nickname or her military rank. While he was technically her commanding officer, she was the Laesornysh. That made their command structure rather messy. When a Laesornysh gave one the order to find cover, it was generally a good idea to do so.

She shook her head again. She hardly knew what to tell him, nor could she gather words past the pressure of her magic building—burning—with that ancient call until she didn’t feel entirely in control of herself.

Still Uncle Iyrinder lingered one more moment before he nodded and disappeared from her line of sight. She could only hope he and the other elite guards followed her orders.

Her vision was growing blue with her crackling magic, her body shaking with the force of it coursing through her.

Falling to her knees, she stabbed her swords into the ground, following that deep instinct.

Then she mentally reached into her chest and, for the first time in her life, fully released that careful control she’d been trained to keep on her magic.

It exploded from her, rushing toward that distant magic from her dacha and brother. As it crackled over the ground, the earthworks, the lines of trenches, she kept the barest breath of awareness, enough to incinerate any metal, gunpowder, or armament in her magic’s path. The soldiers she left alone, though she couldn’t guarantee a few of them didn’t get burned by the merest brush of her magic over them.

And still more of her magic gushed from her, a tide she couldn’t stop now that it had broken free. All she could do was shake beneath it, drown in it, until it felt like her very soul might burn and scatter to the winds from the force of it.

This was the magic the legends spoke of, the ancient power that tore apart the land and took its wielders to the grave when they lost themselves to it.

She was losing herself. All of her was a blazing, burning inferno, torn and shredded under the pure power raging through her and from her.

Far away, the leading edge of her magic reached her dacha’s and brother’s. Moments later, Rhohen’s and Louise’s magic, too, crashed into hers. Instead of sparking against each other as they did in practice, the magic blazed together into a roaring storm of power unlike anything the world had seen in thousands of years.

She was fire. She was destruction. She was vengeance and justice. The end of kingdoms and the fall of empires.

And she was lost.

Chapter

Thirty-Nine