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Fieran’s eyes widened, that blasted grin fading from his face.

Merrik turned away, staring at the sky. He told himself that he didn’t care when Fieran withdrew his hand. He didn’t care if he’d just destroyed their decades of friendship.

He just didn’t care.

Chapter

Two

She burned from the inside out.

Adriana Laesornysh, daughter of the legendary elf warrior Prince Farrendel Laesornysh, swung her twin swords in line with the other elven army recruits as the lieutenant barked orders. She struggled to keep her movements modulated and in sync with the others, even as her magic scorched her veins, begging for release.

Yet she couldn’t release it. Not even a few tendrils. The elven lieutenant would yell at her for such a loss of control.

Besides, it wouldn’t satisfy her. Without her father, brother, or sister here to hold her magic back from its full destructive force, she couldn’t fully release her magic the way she longed to.

Their instructor called out the next sword form, and Adry easily switched to it. After years of training with her dacha, this basic training was far below her level. She’d been practicing these basic sword forms since she was a young half-elf barely big enough to toddle.

Unlike the young elf to her left who fumbled to so much as hold his sword correctly. Or the recruit several elves down who wobbled and nearly fell as the lieutenant glared at her.

Even those elf recruits who came from warrior or noble lines didn’t proceed through the forms as fluidly as she did. After all, few elves nowadays trained as relentlessly as her family did. In the past seventy years of peace the elven kingdom of Tarenhiel had enjoyed, the ways of the warrior had slipped somewhat.

More, the modern mechanized warfare with guns, gunpowder, and machines made the old elven ways of sword and bow rather outdated.

Unless, of course, that elf happened to be a Laesornysh wielding deadly, powerful magic that could incinerate bullets, destroy gun emplacements, and blast apart airships in the sky.

Adry put a little too much of her fierceness into her next swing, her sword sweeping faster than the others, putting her off sync with the rest of the line of recruits.

The commander shot her a stern look, and she forced herself to slow back to the same pace as the others.

It was just so frustrating, being stuck here in the peaceful elven capital city of Estyra while her dacha and brother were already at the front, fighting the Mongavarian Empire. From the moment the war had begun, her dacha had been stationed in the active war zone. Her brother Fieran had joined the Flying Corps before the war started, and he was already making a name for himself as a warrior in the sky.

And Adry was stuck here, going through the motions of a training she didn’t actually need. Ostensibly she was here to protect Estyra—and especially the elven tree palace of Ellonahshinel—from a bombing from the air. Mongavaria had already bombed Tarenhiel’s eastern forests, and they’d started the war by bombing Bridgetown, the city representing the alliance that Tarenhiel enjoyed with the human kingdom of Escarland and the troll kingdom of Kostaria.

Yet it was highly unlikely Mongavaria could get an airship this deep into Tarenhiel, especially as the Alliance’s air defenses had gotten stronger. More than that, the thick foliage of Tarenhiel would make it nigh impossible for them to even find Estyra, much less bomb it.

Mongavaria seemed to have realized it. They’d halted their bombing of the eastern forests and switched their focus to Escarland. There, the open, rolling farmland and rippling rivers provided better landmarks for navigating, with the cities standing out even with the new blackout restrictions.

That meant Adry was wasting her time here in Estyra. She’d joined the elven army because she wanted to fight. Not spend her days in useless drills.

But now that she’d joined the elven army, she was at the mercy of its whims. She wasn’t free to just take herself off to the front. She had to be officially stationed there.

And everyone from her uncle, King Weylind of the elves, to the elven lieutenant before her seemed reluctant to send her. They insisted she was needed to protect Ellonahshinel and couldn’t take shortcuts past the proper army training.

No favoritism was one thing. But this was starting to get ridiculous. She was better trained than most of her superiors, and it was a supreme waste of her magic and skills to leave her stuck in peaceful Estyra rather than fighting at the front.

The lieutenant called a halt to the drills before adding, “Pair up.”

Adry glanced over the gathered recruits as those nearest her edged farther away. They’d quickly learned in the past two months to avoid being paired with her. She trounced them embarrassingly quickly.

“Adriana, you are with me.” The deeper voice came from behind them.

When Adry spun, she found the elf colonel in charge of the defenses of Estyra standing there, his long sword belted at his waist. He was a seasoned warrior, someone who had fought in the wars seventy years ago and who had likely fought at her dacha’s and uncle’s sides a time or two.

She told herself that she wouldn’t resent the way he’d addressed her by her first name, as if to avoid calling her Laesornysh. In the ages past, elves had earned titles instead of inheriting surnames. Once the Alliance had been created, they’d adjusted to using their titles as last names to better integrate with Kostaria and Escarland, which had both already used surnames.

But the elves still held those titles in great reverence, and many of the seasoned warriors disliked the fact that she carried her dacha’s title of Laesornysh, meaning Death on the Wind. It was a title for a great warrior, and one she hadn’t earned.