“Consort, eh?” The Lion Lord asked as he glanced at me. “Were you two together before this mission?”
“Are we going to discuss my sex life now, Hadrian?” Dal smirked at the Lion Lord.
The Lion Lord chuckled, gave me a long look, and then said, “Only so I might offer my congratulations. I'm happy you've finally settled on someone.”
“For now,” Dal murmured.
Something shivered in my chest and my previous happiness vanished. For now? Why did that scare the fuck out of me? I had never cared about how long a relationship lasted. Why did it matter if the Hawk Lord saw me as temporary? He'd just handed me a title that I hadn't expected after giving me a piece of his soul and the immortality that came with it. I should focus on the positive—there was a shocking amount of it.
Help me, the voice came again.
My stomach twisted as I suddenly recognized the voice. It was one of the beasts. I stared at the warlords before me. Was one of their stones speaking to me? Asking me for help? No, it couldn't be. For one, they were safe now. For two, I wasn't touching any of them. I had to touch the Hawk Soul before I could hear it. Which meant that my mind was playing tricks on me. Maybe I was remembering what the beasts had said—all those whispered words that had eluded me. That would make more sense. They had been stolen, so maybe they had been asking me to bring them safely back to their warlords. And now that I had, I was remembering. Weird. But I probably had a very long life full of weirdness ahead of me.
“We have other things to discuss,” Dalsharan went on crisply. “Is everyone here?” he asked General Faron.
“Yes, my lord.”
“Good. I made an unsettling discovery in Alantri,” the Hawk Lord declared, and everyone went quiet. “The first fortress was breached easily and the Corporal retrieved the Lion Soul without issue.”
I bit back my surprised snort just in time. Without issue is hardly how I would have described that shitshow. But it was probably best not to tell the Lion Lord that I'd tried his necklace on.
“But he was captured in the second fortress,” Dal went on.
“What?” The Coyote Lord sat up straight. “You rescued the boy?”
“He is not a boy, Brendallen,” Dalsharan drawled, “and it was the other way around.”
That was met with astonished silence.
“It was a trap. They were waiting for me to fly in and attempt to save him,” Dalsharan said. “They had iron nets and an amulet hook. They removed the Hawk Soul from me before I could access its power.”
“Fuck,” the Coyote Lord whispered.
The Hawk officers—from the Generals down to Captains—all cursed furiously.
“It was Gremara,” Dalsharan said to his fellow warlords. “She didn't care about the stones. She tossed mine to Corporal Ravellar carelessly.”
“But... I don't understand,” the Lion Lord said. “Why steal them if she didn't want them?”
“It was an elaborate plot to get one of us to go after them,” the Hawk Lord explained. “She...” He cleared his throat and started again, “We did not destroy all the creskas fields as we thought.”
“We didn't...” the Coyote Lord frowned and then comprehension lit his features. “By the Moon! She didn't use wild-rot on you, did she?”
“She did. But not to torture me,” Dal said grimly. “Gremara tried to have intercourse with me. She wanted to conceive a child.”
“What?!” The Lion Lord roared.
“They have found a spell that will permit a fae to breed with a Farungal,” Dalsharan announced. “And supposedly, this child—a child born of a Farungal and a Sidhe warlord—would break their curse.”
The whole tent erupted into shouts and cursing. The Hawk Lord let it go on for a few minutes and then lifted his hand. He didn't have to do anything more than that to shut them all up. They went quiet and stared at him as if he had all the answers.
“We need to send forces to Alantri and find those creskas fields,” Dal said. “And we need to burn Gremara's fortress to the ground.”
“Send forces to Alantri?” the Coyote Lord drew back with a pensive frown. “That's risky. Almost as risky as you going there with only a human corporal.”
“And yet that corporal got me out of Gremara's fortress, even as the wild-rot took hold of me and left pieces of me behind,” the Hawk Lord said in a steely voice. “That human corporal tended me and refused to give up on me. And when I gave up, my stone spoke to him and showed him how to save me. That human corporal risked everything he was to make me whole again. So, Coyote Lord, maybe it wasn't so risky after all. Maybe it was the Goddess guiding us.”
The Coyote Lord snorted. “It was luck, Dalsharan, and you know it. You chose the right man for the job, I'll grant you that.” He slid me another lusty look. “But you shouldn't have risked yourself. I think we should stay the fuck away from Alantri for the time being, especially us warlords.”
“How did you resist the wild-rot?” The Lion Lord whispered to Dalsharan.
“I used the lessening spell,” Dal murmured back.
“Fuck, man,” the Lion Lord whistled. “You accepted the rot.”
“It was either that or impregnate Gremara and help to destroy our race,” Dalsharan gave the other warlord a grim look.
“Admirable, my friend.” The Lion Lord smacked Dal's shoulder. “But, fuck! I wouldn't have had the balls to... well, to give up my balls. You are more man than I.”
“So I've heard.” Dal grinned at the Lion Lord.
The Lion Lord burst out laughing. “That was one time after too many glasses of sharani, and she had no business squealing to you. That beautiful, evil tart.”
“That evil tart is your wife,” Dal chided.
“I know.” Hadrian grinned broadly. “And I wish she had never befriended you. You two are vicious together.”
“If you two are done reminiscing, could we discuss our plans?” the Coyote Lord asked sardonically.
“We can make no plans without first speaking to the other warlords,” Hadrian declared. “I will summon them here, Dal, and we can decide together what we should do about that vicious bitch.”
“Very well,” Dal agreed.
“If you would pardon my ignorance, Hawk Lord, would you mind explaining what the wild-rot is?” General Harvis asked.
“Of course, General,” the Hawk Lord said. “It is a potion that was originally created to rape men. The creskas flowers, when made into a paste and applied, give an immediate erection despite whatever that man is feeling. The Farungal loved it for that alone; it meant they could capture males of my kind and force them to participate in their own rape. But then they discovered that the magic fed on the energy of sex and that if they applied the paste and didn't touch the man, the potion would feed on his body. It eats flesh, rotting a living person as if they were a corpse. Another name for creskas flowers is corpse flowers. We believed that we had destroyed all of them, but it seems we were wrong. Gremara kept some in a hidden greenhouse.”