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He tips his head toward the edge of the encampment. I follow his gaze, my eyes trailing the boulder-filled ridge, the grimy bivouac sacks, and the clear paths the men must have picked through the stones. And then I see it.
There’s a series of wooden posts jammed into the boulders. Atop each post, running in a thin line around the perimeter, is a shining silver thread. It’s almost invisible, nothing more than a slip of spider silk, but the soldiers are clearly giving it a wide berth. For some reason, that pretty little silver line sends a shiver dancing along my arms.
“Anything inside that wire,” Anslo whispers, “the scaly bastards can’t see.”
It takes me a minute to understand his words.
“The dragons?” I ask. “They can’t see this?”
Anslo laughs. It’s a quiet sound, like he’s trying to swallow his own fear.
“You think those lizard fucks would have just flown right over us if they’d seen us?” he says, waving his hand down the mountainside.
Those lizard fucks. Wendolyn and Doshir. I shiver again, painfully aware of how small and naked I am under Anslo’s filthy cloak.
“But, how?” I stammer. “That has to be magic.”
Magic. Anslo’s face twists as soon as I say the word. There is no magic in Valgros; it’s filthy, evil, and punished by death. But how could that silver wire be anything but magic?
“The General’s got an elf,” Anslo growls, tilting his head at the top of the ridge.
I follow his gaze, but all I see are soldiers in uniform and stockpiles of weapons. Massive mounted crossbows, bolts, and swords. Kings help me, swords? Another memory swims through my mind, charred lumps of human bodies on the side of the Knife’s Edge Mountains. All that remained of the soldiers who’d tried to murder my mother with their swords.
“There’s an elf up there?” I whisper. Not all of the fear in my voice is an act. Elves were the monsters in almost every story I heard as a child, and that sort of fear dies hard.
Anslo snorts, then spits.
“They’ve got him in chains,” he snarls. “The General’s using his wicked elf magic. Twisting it against the dragons.”
Anslo turns back to me, his smile once more spread across his face like a thick layer of butter on sweet bread.
“Clever, ‘ain't it?” he whispers. “Using magic to bring down magic. Enemy of my enemy, you know?”
I force myself to make a noise that might be agreement as Rensivar’s voice whispers from my memories.How do you defeat a powerful enemy? You find another enemy.
Questions hiss and sputter inside my skull. Who in the nine hells is the General? I can’t imagine Donovan up here; he liked to keep his distance from his Royal Army. Is Rensivar waiting on the other side of that ridge, hidden by elven magic, or is some new enemy waiting for me?
Kings help me, there’s only one way to find out.
“I need to get over there,” I say, trying to force a level of confidence into my voice that no woman wearing only a cloak she’d borrowed from an ex-lover would naturally have.
Anslo nods.
“Course,” he says. “I knew you was delivering a message. It’s not like they’d send you to fight.”
He snorts like he’s just made a joke. I bite the inside of my lip until the urge to punch him between the legs subsides.
“General and the prisoners went over the edge last night,” Anslo says, tilting his head toward the ridge. “It’s not safe to cross over in the light, but I’ll show you the path as soon as it’s dark.”
Sunlight washes over Anslo’s chiseled features, the high cheekbones and rough blond stubble that sometimes still dance through my dreams. He looks older, now, and tired, and something in my chest aches as the light traces the fine lines etched around his eyes.
“Anslo,” I say, lowering my voice. “You don’t have to do this.”
He turns to me, a line deepening across his brow.
“Rayne,” he replies, speaking to me like I’m five years old. “I’m Captain. You know that.”
I glance down, twisting my hands in the folds of his filthy cloak. Anslo has no idea he’s following the commands of the legendary dragon Rensivar the Wicked, or that what he’s doing here has nothing to do with the glory of Valgros. Rensivar is moving these men like pieces on a chess board, and they have no idea.
