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“I fixed it,” she whispered to him.
He looked like he wanted to ask so many questions, but now was hardly the time. Not unless she wanted Alura to know, and gods, did she not want Alura to know this little fact.
She was so grateful for Cleora. She never would have had time to drop into the spirit plane to call him when she was actually here. It had to be instantaneous, and it was.
Alura sprinted toward her dragon, letting Gemina grasp her in her claws and then send her sailing backward over Gemina’s head. It was what they had practiced over and over again. There was no time for landing and mounting. The battle was ahead.
The rest of their team took off at a sprint. Kerrigan felt the bond strengthen as Tieran grabbed her and threw her backward. She landed into a crouch on his back, steady as an acrobat. A slow smile came to her face. She didn’t care what her part in this was; she was just glad that the last year hadn’t been a waste.
Then, they were soaring west, away from Lethbridge. The city itself was two tier—one level surrounded by the enormous stone wall that protected the House of Shadows and an exposed lower level. Most of the lower level had been decimated by the invading forces, but what still stood housed excess soldiers. On the northern side of the city was a small river that nearly drained during the cold months and filled to flooding as the snow melt ran off of the Vert Mountains. Right now, it ran at a trickle, as the snow wouldn’t melt this far north for at least another month or two. But it was still wide enough to accommodate a few ships.
As they moved easily into formation with Alura at the lead, Fordham off her right wing, and Kerrigan off of his wing with Audria and Roake on the left, Kerrigan could see precisely what Alura had in mind.
Kerrigan was so caught up in where they were going that she didn’t notice what was going on below until an arrow whizzed past her. She gasped and veered slightly out of formation.
“Shield up,” Alura commanded.
Kerrigan fumbled for a second, disoriented. Then, she felt the gentle pull of Tieran’s reassurance.
Breathe. It’s one arrow. We can take them out.
She nodded, sending a tug back, and then dipped into her well of magic. It was still low compared to normal but enough to hold up a magic shield as they flew near their troops. Another arrow bounced harmlessly off of her shield, but she shuddered at the feel of it. The tips had been dipped in something that made her skin crawl. She could practically taste it.
Audria cursed violently, and Kerrigan glanced over to see her shield had dropped. “What the hell was that?”
“Oleander-tipped arrows,” Fordham told them. “I forgot we still had those. They’ve been banned within our halls since I’ve been fighting. If the arrow doesn’t kill you, the poison will burn out your magic.”
Kerrigan’s eyes widened. “Holy gods! What else do they have that you forgot about?”
He glanced back at her, his face hard. “Let’s not find out.”
A scream ruptured the clash of battle. Kerrigan whipped her head to the side and watched a dragon fall out of the sky. It was horrifying. She’d never seen anything like that. She tried to clear her eyes to make the picture make sense, but it simply didn’t.
She was too far away to see where the rider was or if the dragon was okay. But the noise the creature made as it collapsed onto the battlements, crushing House of Shadows soldiers, was enough to make her stomach turn. The sound was deafening.
“Gods,” she breathed. “We need to be in there. We need to be helping.”
Alura didn’t respond. She simply moved them farther from the archers and continued on their route. Someone else would be there to save that dragon. But Kerrigan’s throat closed up as they moved farther away. Had there been more merit to Arbor’s words than she had given credit?
Alura stopped beside the river that wended through the mountains. She gestured for them to land. The shouts of battle were far behind them. Lethbridge wasn’t a long distance from the mountains, which was how the House of Shadows had reached them so swiftly, but far enough for the battle to feel distant.
“Do you think they’re dead?” Audria asked when they were once again on the ground.
“I don’t know,” she whispered back.
“Our mission is to dam the river,” Alura said. “We’ll use our magic and the dragons to hoist rocks in the way of the river. It won’t do anything to stop it once the snow melts, but it’s good enough for us right now.”
It was grueling, backbreaking work. They quickly moved into an assembly line with the dragons hitting the stones to loosen them and the rest lifting them with their earth magic and depositing them in an array that slowly, throughout the hours, began to recede the river.
