Page 109 of An Empress of Earth & Darkness

Emara shifted on her feet beside him. “Tell me what I can do.”

“When your commander tells you to stay put, that is what you should do,” Gideon whispered.

He could hear the clan pulling steel from their scabbards and weapons from their belts. It was familiar, but it sent the shivers up his spine all the same.

Torin stopped moving, his knees bent, ready to spring. The clan stilled. A bead of sweat trailed down Gideon’s forehead and into his eye, but he wouldn’t dare blink it out of the way in case he missed something. “Do you smell that?” Torin whispered, still not turning his head to engage in the conversation.

Gideon pulled a demonic scent into his nostrils in one inhale. “Sulphur.”

Torin cursed. “Fuck.”

“We’re too late,” Gideon whispered, still aiming his arrow at anything that had the potential to move.

Torin pulled a second sword from his back. “They might already be here, but that doesn’t mean they have found what they are looking for. They could be gone.”

Torin made a good point.

“This is where we part, brother.” Torin looked back for a second to meet Gideon’s stare. “If you find anything—and I mean anything—that could be of use to them or us, I want you to bring it back to the front of these gates. If you hear the sound of a horn, I want you to retreat. I need you out of there regardless of what you have found. And we will do the same. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Gideon acknowledged. “Heard loud and clear, Commander Blacksteel.”

Torin nodded in respect for Gideon.

“From this point on, our unit will split.” Torin’s eyes gazed over the clan that was at Gideon’s back, but he didn’t move to look at them. He kept his eyes on the walls of the temple. Who knew what lurked behind them, waiting to devour? “Coldwell, Kellen, Sybil, I need you with Gideon to search the library. The men from the back half of the formation, you will cover Gideon and his unit. The others, you are with me. This might be my first mission as your clan commander, but it is not my first mission, and you know how our unit operates. There are no differences. We are relentless, unyielding, and uncompromising.” His eyes glittered with danger. “We didn’t come here to spare the lives of the Dark Gods’ army, so should they get in our way, remove them from this earth. That is my command.”

An agreement of brutality circulated from the clan, and Gideon saw Emara take in a huge inhale.

“See you on the other side, brother,” Torin said to Gideon.

Emara smiled politely at Gideon before moving with the men and Breighly towards the gates.

Gideon turned. “Marcus, cover me. We need to move in a different direction and enter from the back.” He glowered over his clan for the first time as second-in-command. “We head north of the temple and we do so under the instruction of the commander. And how do we do that?” he asked.

“Relentless, unyielding, and uncompromising,” the men said in unison.

Gideon’s eyes slid to Sybil’s, the first time she had looked at him all day. Something rushed through him, an energy untouched by this moment. But there was no time for matters of the heart.

“Let’s move,” he commanded as he began his journey to the back of the temple. “Stay vigilant.”

He could hear their feet behind him, but his men were silent. Gideon looked up to the walls that protected the temple and assessed them as he led his unit away from Torin’s.

The wards that had protected the temple had clearly been severed, and it would be quite easy to get over them if they could find a part they could climb.

“Sybil, whose magic normally wards this temple?”

In a second, she was by his side. “I believe it to be a combination of both Fae and witch magic to ensure that it never fails.” She huffed a little as she held out a hand to touch the wall. “It must be someone whose magic is so old that it would surpass any of the new empresses and the Supreme. We know it’s not Deleine; her magic would have died with her. This person would need to be powerful enough to build the wards for this temple without being one of the coven heirs.” Sybil’s bright green eyes lingered long enough on Gideon’s face for his heart to quicken. “I have been reading a lot and studying the old grimoires, including the one that you gave me. There are only a few other witches out there that it could be. One is the Black Widow Witch; she lives in the mountains alone, unwilling to succumb to any coven. Although she did not vow herself to a coven, she still lives from the magic of our world, said to be born of both Fae and Witchling blood. The Fae respect her enough to grant her solitude here in the Skyelir Mountains. Your grandmother’s grimoire seems to reference her a few times. She is alleged to be extremely powerful and maybe even an oracle, but she hasn’t been seen in years.”

“But she could have died in the mountains and no one would have known,” Marcus Coldwell said from behind. “Would the Dark Army know of her and possibly try to kill her?”

“I would know if she had died,” Sybil claimed as she brushed a curl from her petite face. “If a powerful witch like that had entered the Otherside, the whole witching kingdom would be talking, spirits and all. There have been no whispers of her death.”

“It can’t be her, then,” countered Marcus. “Or the wards would still be up.”

“She’s definitely a person of interest,” Gideon muttered. “Leave the wards for now. Torin wants us to look for anything that could shine a light on the Dark Stone.”

“Of course he does,” Marcus said with a spring of jest. “Because the commander can’t just look for one thing at a time. The guy needs to go all in for everything.”

Gideon gave one look at him and said, “He’s a Blacksteel, what do you expect?”

---