Page 20 of A War of Crowns

I’m coming, I’m coming.

He knew they had to move. The sun was down. The moon was new.

Only stars winked in the sky overhead as he crouched low and crept down the hill toward the ridge where he had left the rest of the Sons. The air was chill and damp as it always was this close to the border, leaving Calix feeling as if he were wading through a thick soup as he stalked along.

When he reached the edge of the ridge, he dropped to the ground and rolled off its ledge without a moment’s hesitation. A brief fall and another roll behind a tangle of greenery later saw him lurching back to his feet and coming face to face with a frowning Beck in the mouth of the cave.

“You’re late,” Beck growled by way of greeting.

“Yes, well. Sorry,Mother, but there was a bird,” Calix explained as he dusted himself off.

Talk of a bird earned a concerned hum from young, dumb Sven and a question of, “Did it get away?”

Calix could only scoff. “Of course not.”

He? Let a potential spy get away?

Never.

Not waiting for any further pointless questions, Calix strode deeper into the cave to find their leader.

The Crow of Drakmor cut a strikingly unimpressive figure, especially within the very heart of the gloom. The shortest man Calix had ever met—even smaller than the Kunishi—there was something decidedly disarming about the one-eyed fellow hunched at the back of the cave, sharpening the edge of his glaive.

Something that could easily lead a person to overlook him, to discount him, to underestimate him.

But Calix knew better.

Here was the very reason he had left behind his peaceful life working the Violet District within the capital city of Falwood to join the Twelve Sons.

Not for glory. Not for battle—though that was its own sort of pleasure. Not for any sense of petty revenge against his father, nor his upbringing. No.

It was forhim.

For Aldric Hargrave, the true King of Drakmor.

Chapter five

Aldric

“Father,” a voice greeted him from his blind side, and Aldric jerked a sharp glance upward to find Calix looming in the darkness. The other man thumped his fist over his heart in salute.

Aldric narrowed his one good eye at his half-Kunishi Son.

Calix had been the one to start the "Father" and "Mother" nonsense. But he supposed he’d rather his Sons call him Father in jest than continue calling him Your Highness.

He hadn’t been a prince for many years.

“The camp is quiet,” Calix continued his report. “Any bird stupid enough to fly within my line of sight is dead. I don’t think they know we’re here, sir.”

Aldric huffed a quiet sigh through his nose and returned his attention to sharpening the edge of his glaive. When he was younger, his peers had laughed at his preference for wielding polearms. Asword would have been a more proper choice. A sword was the preferred weapon of a gentleman.

But he was no gentleman.

He knew they needed to move before they lost the advantage of surprise. But the knowledge that a battle awaited him out there in the darkness no longer thrilled him as it once did. He wasn’t a young man anymore. The fire was warm. Outside their cave lay a cold mist waiting to gnaw its way into his very bones.

But this was his lot in life. His one purpose. He was the Crow of Drakmor.

It was his duty to hold the border against the Kunishi horde.

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