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The Horde army had all passed through the village—the last of them would be arriving at the gap now. The absence of them was like a held-breath. Leaving the streets silent. Their tent-flaps billowing in the gentle breeze.
I grabbed Liana by the arm, wincing when the icy chill of her flesh stung my palm and stiffened my fingers. “Liana, stop!”
She tried to jerk her arm free, but I wasn’t about to let go—no matter how much it hurt. I bared my teeth as the frost crept up my wrist, winding around my arm.
Liana gasped at the sight of what she was doing and the cold left her all at once. Retracting from my arm as she forced a healing warmth to radiate over her body. She fell to her knees and cried softly. She was still so very young.
She hadn’t had to see war, or famine, or any of the awful things of the world until only recently. I bet sometimes she wished she’d stayed on that island in the middle of the sea.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“I can’t reach him… he isn’t answering my calls. None of them are,” she wiped at her nose with her sleeve, “Does that mean—”
“No,” I said fiercely, unwilling to believe it myself. It wasn’t only Liana who had become like family to me, and I refused to believe they had fallen… “You would have felt it,” I rationalized, “Alaric said the severing of the bond was one of the most painful, awful things he’d ever endured, and that bond only went one way.”
She leaned into me, and I wrapped my arms around her. We stayed like that for what could’ve been hours. Huddled together in the cold. The snow falling gently around us.
After a time, she jerked, whipping her head up, “I remember Finn saying something about a female who would see through the eyes of her bonded mate without him opening the connection. Do you remember?” she said animatedly, her eyes wide, “The story about the female who bonded herself to a male without his knowledge and was plagued by images of him with another lover in her dreams!”
“That’s it!” she exclaimed before I could answer, “They won’t answer me if they’re in the heat of battle, but if I try hard enough, I should be able to see through their eyes, right?”
I shrugged, “It’s worth a try. Here,” I said, holding out my hand, “I’ll open the connection between you and I—then maybe I can see what you’re seeing.”
She shoved her hand into mine and immediately shut her eyes, her brows pulling together in fierce concentration.Gods, even when she was frantic and had been crying for hours, she was still the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen.
The connection rendered me blind for an instant before the both of us jumped as she latched on to… on toFinn.The Draconian dove through the sky, shooting bolts of ice from his hands like lances—they tore through unsuspecting Alchemist soldiers on the ground, staking them to the cold earth.
I could almost taste the smoke—the metallic tang of blood on my tongue. Corpses littered the battlefield, the carnage jaw-dropping in its magnitude. Bodies, thousands of them—thousandsof lives lost on both sides. As Finn spiraled up through the air, evading from an attack of lightning from another Draconian, I caught an aerial view of the battle below.
We weren’t winning.
Liana’s hand squeezed mine tightly, and I knew she saw it, too. Our dwindling numbers. And their forces pushing through the gap and onto Liana’s territory.
Sparks of foreign power lit the ground below where the Alchemists attacked our Fae. A volley of arrows from our side of the battle blotted out the moon, finding their targets in the advancing troops of the Mad King’s force.
But Finn didn’t see it coming, he dove, but he was a second too late. A stray arrow found purchase in his shoulder—blowing through flesh, muscle, sinew, and bone.
Liana shouted, and the connection broke. She scrambled to get it back, and we were thrown into the battle again, this time through the eyes of Alaric as he cut down foe after foe with his dual wielded swords. Wheezing, his breath puffing around him in great white clouds.
He looked up, and we saw Kade as another Draconian knocked him from the sky, sending him plummeting down to meet the ground.
“Call them back,” I shouted to Liana, “Do it now! It’s a slaughter—we can’t win. You have to—”
But she was already doing it, screaming down the bond to Alaric, I could hear her too.
Fall back!she said.Do it now! Give the order!
The momentary distraction was all the Alchemist needed to strike Alaric across the back with his blade. Knocking the wind from his lungs and us from his mind.
But the connection was still there and after a moment of grating silence, his voice came weakly down the bond,I’ve given the order.
We exhaled together, Liana slumping against me—utterly spent.
The crunch of boots and the flapping of wings preceded the shouts calling for a healer. The wounded had begun to arrive.
I watched as Liana’s focus narrowed and her jaw tightened. After a single shaking inhale, she flew into action, springing to her feet. “Bring the wounded inside,” she told them, and ran back into the mill.
