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He nodded. “I don’t know how. Jaik always keeps his defenses up around me… I’ve never heard anything but his words when he was talking to me. Even when we were kids.”
“I think it’s the bond between us all. I’m the center—but your thoughts can pass through me to each other.”
“Well, that’s terrifying.”
We rode even harder, outpacing his troops behind us, no matter that Nora rode furiously up to scold us before giving up and falling back.
“It’s my brother,” Caldren had said, and she couldn’t argue with that.
But she could, and did, call him an idiot before she left.
“She’s doing better.” Caldren told me in response to the question I’d been about to ask. “She’s angry all the time. But that’s, you know, Nora.”
“She’s delightful. You need an aide that keeps you in check.”
He pulled a face.
“And Morick?”
“He’s been at sea making sure Kallus doesn’t have even more incoming forces. But he’s doing well. I think the two of them are good for each other.” He seemed to consider. “I don’t think either of them are ready, but… someday, maybe. Briden would’ve wanted to see them happy.”
We reached the edge of the forest that bordered Rylow and skirted along the emerald blue sea. The morning sunrise streaked the sky; it was eerie how nature moved along, relentlessly beautiful, while humans lived and died and fought and suffered. The same beautiful sky saw births and murders, weddings and wars.
We reached Rylow just in time to see Jaik’s forces being pressed against the walls of Rylow. Caldren cursed. “Why don’t they open the gates?”
“It’s too late now,” I said. “If they open the gates… Kallus will push into the city. We have to beat them back.”
“We’ll get Jaik some breathing room,” Caldren promised.
Jaik looked up and saw the two of us. I could feel his despair as he gripped his bloody sword, and then he had to face the many opponents who charged him.
So he didn’t see the sudden wave of prey shifters sweeping down behind us as Caldren led them into the fray.
Nora led an attack from the rear of Kallus’s forces. They’d thought they had Jaik trapped, but now we had them pinned down, attacking them from every direction.
Then dozens of Scourge swept in.
“Did you do this, Honor?” Caldren asked me quietly.
“No,” I said.
Then I caught sight of the man riding behind them. His dark hair was loose in the wind now. He no longer wore a bone crown.
And I grinned.
Lord Zehr had brought reinforcements.
CHAPTER56
Honor
Zehr stoodbeside me as we watched the Scourge tear into Kallus’s forces. Every time Scourge leapt forward toward one of our shifters, their fangs extended, panic rose in my chest. And every time, the Scourge leapt past them and ripped out the throat of another of Kallus’s soldiers.
I turned to look at Zehr. I expected him to look just as he had the last time I saw him, in my dream: tall, with his dark curls wild in the wind, his skin an eerie shade of pale stretched over his sharply beautiful jaw and cheekbones. But his face was badly bruised, a wound half-healed on his temple, a cut across his deep red lips.
Those black eyes met mine as if he’d sensed what I was thinking, and his lips turned up. “Do you still care for me when I’m not handsome, love?”
I ran my fingertips over his face, and he bent slightly, turning his cheek into my palm. I didn’t think he even realized he was doing it. “Always. You’re always handsome to me, Zehr. Thank you for coming to help us.”
