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Leif had to let go of himself to catch Ragnar around the waist and keep him from sliding to the floor. The chair groaned – not built for two men together of their size – and it was too hot, too close, too much. Ragnar shoved his face into Leif’s throat, whining quietly, hands clutching at Leif’s arms, his clothes, hooking into the collar of his tunic and tugging.
“Shh.” Leif let his head fall back, giving Ragnar the access he wanted to nose, and nuzzle, and lick at his throat, the salty sweat there. “Hush.”
“Alpha.” A low rumble, chest to chest, vibrating through them both. “Alpha, alpha.”
“I know. Hush. Shh, shh.”
When he finally lifted his head, the girl was gone, and Ragnar was snoring.
10
Night flying was an entirely different experience than day flying. Once they were aloft, and the camp fires had faded, there was no light save the soft, silver edging of the moon: the humps of the tree tops like mountains, the buckled carpets of clearing and field, gleaming ribbons of streams. The wind was in Amelia’s face, cold and sharp, but she wasn’t blind; her mind’s eye provided her with a constant stream of insight from the drake beneath her. An indistinct shadow below bloomed as an abandoned, wheelless cart in her mind, once Alpha provided a clearer image. Each time her worry jumped hard, a fear that a stand of trees below was a Selesee scouting party, Alpha reassured her that his eyes were keen, and he wouldn’t fail to notice their enemy. He would watch, her eyes and ears, and all she had to do was hold tight to the reins and lean low over his neck, two creatures locked in perfect harmony.
In the end, the plan had come together simply. They could have sat around that table and argued over strategy for days, talking themselves into circles until nothing made sense anymore. It had been Leda, finally, who’d clapped her hands together, snatching all their attentions, and said, “We have drakes, and they don’t. Figure out a way to use them to the best effect.”
And that was it, wasn’t it? There was a reason a fresh battalion of Sels hadn’t marched through the forest to reclaim the Inglewood manor, and she sat astride that reason, now, the night alive all around them with the snap and rush wings.
Above, a cloud scudded past the moon, and its glow swelled, a waxing fat fruit smiling down on the landscape. By this point, her eyes had adjusted, so she barely needed Alpha’s input to tell what was what down below.
Ahead, a stream cut through the trees, fat and wide, swollen with snow melt, very nearly a river; the sort of waterway a man thought he could swim across, but whose current would snatch him up by surprise and whirl him away to dash against the rocks at the shoreline. Beyond it, the trees thinned, and Amelia sat back, drawing on the reins.
Alpha lifted his head, and his next flap pushed him up rather than forward; he slowed, and then stopped, hovering in midair a moment while she got her bearings. The girls lifted up over them, spiraling in circles, the thrust of their wings drumming like thunder. Alpha snorted, steam curling up from his nostrils.
“I know.” She stroked his neck with a gloved hand. “It’s almost time. Almost.”
The tower stood lone and jagged in the midst of a clearing that had been made even wider by the Sels’ axes. They’d cut the forest, burned the stumps back, so five-hundred yards of blackened, bristled scrub had been added to the half-mile radius around it. The burned places looked like a void in the dark; like something evil. The tower itself resembled a stubby broken tooth, its crenelations long crumbled, its walls matted and bumpy in the moonlight, decades of lichen and decay having eaten at the once-smooth limestone finish.
The war machines crouched like beasts on the grass. Not the massive trebuchets of which Oliver and Tessa had written, the sort of weapon needed to batter down palace walls and rupture a castle’s defenses like a boil. No, these were smaller…but far more dangerous for her and her drakes. Scorpions, as Edward had predicted, and not at rest, either.
Alpha offered her a glimpse of them through his strange, gold-tinted vision. The scorpions were loaded with sharpened spears as long as a man was tall, the ropes drawn back tight, ready for the pull of the pin from one of the four men stationed at each. They were tucked down into the grass, wrapped in cloaks, dozing…but they were ready, in their armor and mail. Not the bright gold plate and purple cloaks that struck fear and awe in the hearts of enemies, but a simpler, plainer style, built for efficiency rather than flash.
Amelia steered Alpha to the side, and set all the drakes flying in a wide perimeter, circling the clearing. She knew that someone down on the ground would hear the distant flap of their wings; see their distinct silhouettes against the moonlight. The goal now wasn’t to keep hidden, but to keep out of range – a tricky thing, given the reach of Selesee weaponry.
Careful, Amelia thought at Alpha, at all of them. Marigold sent back a cocky sense of invincibility that made Amelia smile: a drake’s fantasy of picking up a Sel in sharp teeth and flinging him across the tree tops from a great height.Be careful anyway, she thought, and sensed the other females chastising Marigold. A silent drake argument that Alpha settled with a low, crooning call, one most definitely heard at the tower.
She let out a slow breath, trying to calm herself. It was dark, she reasoned, and even though deadly, the scorpions lacked a handheld bow’s accuracy. It took two men to aim, and combing human error with nighttime, it would be only a lucky shot that struck home.
One lucky strike was all it would take, though, and the prospect of losing or injuring one of the five drakes was unthinkable.
It was Alpha who reassured her, then, when she thought it should have been the other way around. Through their bond, he pushed the confidence that they were strong, and quick, and clever.We’ll be fine, he conveyed, without any actual words.
Amelia stroked his neck, leaned low over it, watched the tower, and waited for their signal.
~*~
To Reggie’s surprise, Connor’s stern lecture – even worse, his warm embrace, after, the strength of his arms, the gentleness of his refusal on the grounds that Reggie wasn’t ready – had braced him in a way that lasted. He’d sought his bed that night full of a numbness he’d been careful not to probe, for fear it would collapse and leave him a shaking wreck. But it had stayed: all through the rest of the night, and the next day, and persisted now, as they peered through branches across the shattered landscape, toward the tumbledown tower that was their destination.
He himself had been the one to suggest this particular strategy, though he did miss his armor.
The problem was getting in close enough to disable the scorpions without being spotted, and his own bright plate and mail, his pale blue surcoat, were not made for stealth. Connor was, though; him and his Strangers.
Connor had lifted a brow at the war table. “You want me to send my men to slaughter?”
“No. I want them to do what they do best: sneak. And I’ll join you, as a show of faith.”
The brow had arched higher, joined by the other. He’d read, and dismissed the silent question in Connor’s gaze:Are you sure you can handle that? You won’t go to bits?
No, he wasn’t going to go to bits, thank you very much. His heart hammered, and sweat gathered at his temples, and beneath his clothes, but the numbness persisted, leaving him cold, analytical, and capable.
