Page 228 of Lady of Starfire

“The Witches are at the stables,” Ermir said to her.

“Their forces will cross the main wards within the hour,” Sion was saying to Azrael. “We have all the mortals secured below in the catacombs, along with several Fae to keep them comfortable.”

“The forces are in the locations we discussed?” Azrael asked.

Sion nodded. “Some of our strongest are in the tallest towers, ready to work against the seraphs in the skies, as well as give the Witches any advantages they can.”

“Anything I need to tell Jetta and the others?” Talwyn asked.

“If you can down them, we will make sure they stay down,” Azrael said. “Just knock them out of the sky.”

Talwyn nodded, holding his stare for a moment, before she turned away to prepare with the Witches. She should probably say something in case the worst happened, but they’d never been much for heartfelt confessions.

But Azrael was tugging her to a stop and spinning her back to face him. His hand cupped her cheek, tilting her head back to look up at him. “Meet me on the battlefield,” he said softly, echoing words she’d said to him weeks ago.

She nodded, her eyes closing briefly when he brushed his lips across hers. Then he was turning back to Ermir and Sion, and she was rushing down to the stables.

Someone had already saddled Thorne for her, and he appeared to be as irritated by that as he was about everything else. He let out a loud, screeching cry when she stopped right beside him. The sound had her flinching back, and she glared at the beast.

“Glad to see you are in the mood to be a prick.” He flared his wings wide, sending her stumbling back with the force of it. “Gods,” she muttered.

“The next unit will not be here until late tonight,” Jetta said, coming up to Talwyn and handing over a bow and a special quiver that arrows snapped into so they didn’t spill out when in the air.

Talwyn had figured as much. That didn’t bode well for them. The thirty of them against seraphs with unknown abilities? They were as good as carrion.

“We down as many of them as we can,” Talwyn said, pushing aside the thoughts of imminent death. “Azrael said if we down them, they will keep them down. We just need to keep them out of the skies. There are Wind Fae in the highest towers. If we can keep the seraphs within range, they will help us.”

“Noted,” Jetta said, moving over to her brown and tan griffin. She glanced at Thorne. “Trust your griffin, Talwyn. He’ll know what to do.”

She didn’t say anything in return. Just hoisted herself into the saddle, strapping herself in. She was scarcely seated when Thorne was running and leaping into the sky, clearly ready to stretch his wings. When they were soaring high above the Citadel, Talwyn could see them. The ground forces and the ones in the sky.

At least two thousand troops on the ground, more than one hundred in the air. This wasn’t an attack. It was an extermination. They didn’t have an hour. They had ten minutes at most. There was no way they would withstand this with only the forces inside the Citadel. Five hundred ground troops would have likely been enough to secure their victory. Alaric had overtaken every other part of the Wind Court. When Mordecai had said the Maraan Prince had wanted to squash any perceived rebellion, she hadn’t realized he had meant it quite this literally.

She yanked on Thorne’s reins, forcing him to bank hard as she watched the Wind Court soldiers fall into formations and stations. She didn’t even know where Azrael was stationed in this mess. If they lost this stronghold, Alaric would come for the Witch Kingdoms next; and if the Witches were forced to stay back and defend their own territory, the rest of the continent would fall. Alaric was putting pieces into place for a final move that would end the world as they knew it.

How had they gotten so many seraphs here? She knew they’d been bringing them over for decades, but hundreds of them? Possibly thousands? She’d been part of that. Had helped Alaric in that in some ways. Even fighting on the other side now wouldn’t abate that guilt. It never would.

“We let them come to us,” Jetta was yelling over the swirling winds that were picking up. The griffins were all back-flapping to hold their positions as the Wind Fae worked to shield their home. “They have the numbers, so we force them to make the first moves,” the Witch continued. “Preserve your arrows.”

The Witches said nothing, stoic and cold and ready to shed blood, so Talwyn joined them in that place. She drew an arrow, nocking it to her bow and waited.

Minutes later, she felt the air shudder when the airborne seraphs slammed into it. She could tell there were some with wind magic themselves based on the arrows that made it past the shield too easily. But the griffins were already moving. For their size, they were incredibly nimble and quick, swooping and dodging, somehow avoiding each other. She’d trained with the Witches some, but it had been nothing like this.

The griffins were in their element as much as the Witches who fired back arrows with deadly accuracy, the Fae wind helping them find their marks. But the seraphs didn’t go down easily, even with arrows embedded in their wings.

Talwyn had no choice but to follow Jetta’s advice of trusting Thorne. They developed their own communication system. Talwyn squeezing with her knees when she needed him to hold steady when she was ready to release an arrow. He’d clearly done this before, knowing the precise moment he could move again once the arrow was released. She suddenly found herself thankful for all the times he’d had her stomach in her throat from the free-falls and surprise dives. She was prepared for them now as he banked hard to avoid an arrow that would have struck her in the side.

Talwyn and the Witches managed to force a good number of the seraphs to the ground or face plummeting there if they took another hit. Perhaps a third of them were now on the ground, fighting with the mix of mortal and Fae troops.

But when they finally broke through the wind shields, that was when Talwyn truly saw the strength of the griffins. Cries of fury and wrath came from the beasts as they all flew straight towards seraphs. Talwyn’s hand clamped onto her saddle horn as she hastily looped her bow across her back. She’d drawn her sword a moment before the seraph Thorne had set his sights on was bellowing in pain when talons tore into his torso, exposing bone. Thorne twisted, popping up behind the seraph and giving Talwyn the perfect angle to slice off wings. The seraph was plummeting to the ground, but Thorne was already honed in on his next target.

Maybe she had been wrong. Perhaps this unit of Witches and griffins would be able to do more damage than she’d thought.

She fell into the song of battle as Thorne took her from target to target. They took wounds of their own. Some seraphs got in their own shots before she or the griffin finished them off. She had a deep slice along her bicep, Thorne rolling a moment too late. The griffin had taken an arrow to one of his hind flanks.

Then he’d proceeded to shred the offending seraph entirely with his talons, leaving Talwyn to gape.

“Why haven’t you been doing that this whole time?” she snapped as Thorne shot them into the sky for a brief recovery.

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