Dean blinked and then seemed to come back to himself. “Halcyon and Sarielle are a two day’s flight from Tenchala. They altered course when they felt the bond shift. Sarielle sounded none too pleased.”
Cyrene laughed. “I’m sure. How are you able to communicate across such distances?”
“It’s simple. I can show you later.”
Cyrene nodded. Two days. Two days until her dragon appeared. She didn’t know how long it would take for a thousand Tyghans to reach her army camped in Aurum. She had been gone nearly two weeks. So much had happened in that time. She didn’t know if they would accept her back, but things had changed. They had changed drastically. She had done no reconnaissance but had learned a great deal about herself in the time. And maybe that was just as important.
“And what will you do, Cyrene?” Rita asked.
She turned her gaze south toward the army beyond. “Prepare us to march and train. Train them all.”
18
The Beast
Ahlvie
Hunger.
There was just hunger.
Ceaseless, endless, eternal.
It ached through him. The him that was not him.
The beast.
The alpha.
Alpha.
He was running.
On a mission.
Kill. Feed. Kill. Feed. Kill. Feed.
The cycle never broke. It was what drove him. The him that was not him.
He had many with him. Hundreds under his command.
Brothers. Sisters. Beasts.
All of them with the same relentless hunger.
And they had one mission.
Find them.
Break them.
Kill them.
The him that was not him smiled. Foot-long fangs flashed. Gold eyes shone.
The him that was him…roared.
Screamed in his bondage.
Tried to force the change.
The change that would never come. That had been commanded out of him.
All those long months where it had become effortless, and now, it was impossible.
The beast had control.
The thing that was not him smiled.
And roared back.
It was stronger.
She was stronger. The goddess of death. The beast’s mistress.
The army came into view. Commands went out. The beasts spread out in unison.
And the thing that was him could do nothing but watch.
Do nothing as the beast sank its teeth into that first scout, leaving a bloody corpse behind, and continued on to the next.
And the next.
And the next.
19
The Enemy
Avoca
Avoca dragged her ice-white blade against the whetstone. The sharp scrape of the metal as she honed it to its deadly point soothing her in a way nothing else could, except utter physical exhaustion.
Orden kept commenting on her overexertion each day. That it’d do her no good to kill herself before they could get to the damn goddess and finish what they’d started.
She’d seen reason.
For that at least.
The tongue-lashing that he had given her for her words against Cyrene was another thing. He had sat by and let her say what they were all thinking. He did not like to admit it. She had had to. Cyrene had had no plan against Malysa or to save Ahlvie. She had risked everything for the woman she was bound to. Who she still owed a life debt. But she had not anticipated what losing her…husband would do to her. How it would hollow her out as if she had taken a spoon and scooped out her insides.
Worse was, in the days that Cyrene had been gone…the regret had settled in. Avoca had not wanted Cyrene to leave. Not really.
She was madder at herself. For she had not been able to stop Malysa either. Nor did she have a plan. In all this time, and she had no bloody plan.
The Eleysian army was in the middle of siege against the Aurum castle. Some imposter had taken the throne, and they had agreed that they had to secure the surrounding area. They couldn’t give up territory.
Avoca thought it as ridiculous as Cyrene had. Their enemy was in the north. But she had no interest in suicide. She had no interest in facing Malysa until she could sink her blade into the goddess of destruction’s heart and watch the life drain out of her.
She dragged the dagger against the whetstone one more time when she heard the first scream.
She was on her feet in an instant. She didn’t wait as she dashed out of her tent. Her jaw dropped momentarily at the horde of black beasts pounding toward them. Then she recovered, her jaw set, her eyes steady, her blades ready.
She sprinted toward the beasts and not away, as many of the pathetic excuse for an army were doing. She had trained much of her first a hundred years to kill Indres. They were her natural-born enemy. Back home in Eldora, the creatures always tested the Leif boundaries and attempted to slay her kind. But none of these other people had probably ever faced an Indres. The war council had been skeptical of their very existence.
And facing an Indres only meant one thing at this point. Ahlvie.
He was her thought as she met the first monster. Huge and ferocious, fangs bared, attempting to take her life. She had no intention of dying today.
She vaulted forward over the beast, turning in midair and bringing her blade across the front of its neck. The thing went down in a heap. She landed easily and continued forward. Her success must have rallied the humans because they were picking up their own swords and calling their magic, joining in the fray.
Avoca didn’t need her magic. Not for the Indres. Not without Cyrene.
She had trained all this time to use her magic as a last resort. And now, it felt like an extension of her bound. Without her, it felt empty. She was deadly enough without it anyway.
She took down three more Indres, as humans fell all around her, before she had a break in the melee. That was when she saw him. She didn’t know how she knew. But she did.
Long before she noticed that he was the largest Indres by far. Towering over her frame. With clear, cunning gold eyes that skimmed her as the predator he was.
Ahlvie.
She lowered into a fighting stance and waited. He was clearly leading this brigade of the Indres army. This trifling of beasts sent to attack the army in Cyrene’s absence. But they were not undefended. They had her.
“Come, beastie,” she cooed at Ahlvie as a taunt.
She had watched Ahlvie over the last couple of months. The days he’d spent in that room in Kinkadia as Sonali tried to heal him. Heal was a very loose term for what that bitch had done to him. She had made the change immediate. No thought whatsoever. If anything, he had become more beast-like in these months, as the Bryonica witch had trained it into him.
Avoca knew everything about Ahlvie—man or beast. Her husband was about to regret picking a fight with his wife.
Ahlvie lunged toward her. She dodged his attack, jumping out of the way before his fangs could slice through her like cheese. He hadn’t held back an ounce.
“I know you’re in there,” she continued. Her breathing was even. She took easy steps sideways.
A circle had opened up around them as the rest of the fighting went on. As if he was keeping the rest of his pack at bay. This was his fight.
Ahlvie just snarled at her words and leapt toward her again. She slid her blade through his shoulder, evaded his swipe, and landed on her feet.