AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I can’t wait to tell him he’s into bestiality.” I hold up my hands in surrender. “Not that I’m calling you a beast.”
Her brow furrows and sadness collects on her beautiful face. “I fear you may never have the opportunity to do so.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
ATTICUS
“My arse needs a break,” Kazimir complains.
“Stop whining. We’re almost there. The camp is over that ridge up ahead.” We’ve been riding hard toward the plains. The journey has taken longer than I expected, mostly because the throb in my chest has been too much to bear at times. This is new for me—to have pain linger for so long. Feeding will help, but there are no options until we join my army where several marked mortals wait. If I can bring myself to take a vein from anyone other than Gracen. I sensed the jealousy that swelled in her with the idea that I would take from someone else. It was endearing. I don’t want to disappoint her.
And after tonight, I might not have to.
Hudem’s moon is a silver coin hanging low in the sky, casting its brilliant light over the rolling hills. It’s a beautiful sight, and yet all I want to do is feel Gracen’s naked body against mine. That I can’t be there spikes my rage against these eastern traitors. But anger is good. Anger means I’ll fight harder.
Ryker surveys the hills around us. “Shouldn’t a scout have doubled back for us by now? They knew we’d be coming.” The young soldier is usually the one I send between companies.
“Rhodes probably forgot.” He’s never led an army of men on his own before. Still, I goad my horse to pick up his pace.
We crest the ridge just as the sun tucks behind the western horizon, its last rays bathing the ground ahead.
“What in fates …” Kazimir gasps as we take in the disaster. The field is littered with bodies, some only feet away from us. Tents are slashed, cookfires smoldering. I see a few eastern and Kierish crests on armor, but there are far more of the Cirilean flame.
My Cirilean army, decimated.
Kettling’s green-and-gold banner waves in the breeze high up ahead, staked into the grassy knoll. Next to it, the vibrant silver and red of Ostros flutters.
A sign of conquest.
A declaration of victory.
“They attacked a sleeping camp like cowards.”
Here and there, soldiers wander, searching for dying combatants they can end suffering for and loot they can plunder. Some have noticed us and are sharing looks and shouts among one another.
“Your Highness, we must leave and gather reinforcements,” Kazimir warns.
What reinforcements? They’re all at the rift! But he’s right, we can’t stay here. “We ride back to Cirilea now.” My voice sounds hollow as I give the command.
As one we turn our horses.
Three separate groups close in on us from various directions, fanning out. Where they were hiding, I cannot say. In the thicket and behind the hills, perhaps.
Hiding.
Or waiting for Islor’s king to arrive.
Kazimir shares a somber look with me. “We cannot outride them.” They are nearly all Kierish soldiers. Fierce mortals but mortals, nonetheless. There are at least two hundred of them to our twenty.
“No, we cannot.” I draw my sword and everyone follows suit. I look up at Hudem’s moon one last time. I suppose I will not get the chance to know whether Romeria told the truth or yet another lie.
But at least I will not have to endure the pain of losing Gracen.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
ROMERIA
Thousands of soldiers stand in a grid formation, their knuckles white around hilts and handles and bows, their nervous gazes locked on the brilliant second moon above as it moves inch by inch, minute by minute, to the height of its power.
It’s close now, and the energy that vibrates within this camp is electric.
No one knows what to expect. Will it be as bad as the bedtime stories of King Ailill’s folly? Worse?
Bonfires blaze every twenty feet, fire readily available for arrows and for Zander, and to repel the Nulling creatures who naturally shy away. The saplings stand in their own clustered arrangement, the moon’s reflection gleaming off their black eyes. Perhaps no one is as impatient to see the end of this blood curse as they are.
While I was soaring high with Caindra—Bexley!—Zander stood on top of a wagon and revealed what tonight’s Hudem moon would bring, the good and the bad. But not the doom of Malachi. There is only so much truth people can handle at one time. In that, he and I agree.
“It is almost at its full strength,” Zander says beside me.
My anxiety is a tangled mess. Now that we’ve told everyone about the end of the blood curse, I fear Lucretia has lied to me. But we will all know one way or the other very soon.
Jarek scowls at Caindra, perched on top of Islor’s stone wall. “What exactly is it she said she was going to do?”
