Page 190 of Ash and Feather

I wanted so badly to plant it in Andrel’s back.

But I knew how divine trials worked. And the Moraki who had handed me this trial had been clear that the dagger I held was meant for greater things than the filthy blood of this traitor before me.

I would have my revenge before the end.

But not yet.

Not yet, not yet, not yet…

Every inch of my body rebelled against the idea of following him anywhere, but I made myself keep up appearances, trailing a short distance behind him.

He summited a hill and gazed into the distance, toward the Hollowlands, which were covered with a light veil of mist.

“Any and all potential traitors and cowards…” he said as I caught up to him, “they’ll all be crawling back to us soon enough.”

The confidence in his voice chilled me to the bone, but I didn’t let my fear show. I only agreed with him, mirroring that confidence as best I could.

His gaze slid toward me, appraising me a little too closely, so I quickly changed the subject.

“There’s an army marching toward us, coming from the Naudren Pass—I encountered them on my way back to you.” I offered up this information freely—information he likely already knew—just to further convince him we were still on the same side.

He dismissed it with a chuckle. “We’re more than prepared for them.”

“They number at least two-thousand strong,” I said, still calmly. “An alliance from multiple kingdoms.”

“And we number more than double that.”

I tried to twist my tone into one of curiosity rather than horror. “…How?”

He chuckled to himself, as if enjoying some private joke.

I continued to stare at him, until he finally answered me. “I took the liberty of making a few changes to our strategies while you were away. Switching from a defensive to offensive posture, to begin with. As soon as we learned of that marching army of allied humans, we mobilized our own.

“I knew we’d eventually lure them toward our lands—and they have no idea how many we are actually hiding within the darkness of the Hollows, or what sort of alliances we’ve formed for ourselves. They are vain, indeed, to think we couldn’t match whatever forces they conjured up.”

It took everything in me to swallow the bile in the back of my throat and say, “I always said vanity would be their downfall, didn’t I?”

The space between where we stood and where Dravyn and the others were was vast, impossible to see across even if ithadn’tbeen covered in fog.

I stared into the distance anyway, as if I might see some flash of fire or glint of ice—some powerful display that would give me hope that things were not as dismal or impossible as they were starting to seem.

“It should be an easy enough victory,” Andrel said, sounding almost bored.

“…It should be a massacre.”

“Exactly. One that is likely beginning right about now.” He turned to me with a smile. “Shall we go enjoy it together?”

Chapter 43

Dravyn

The king was here.

My arrogant, fucking fool of a brother.

Here.

I’d caught his scent almost immediately after we’d settled onto our vantage point along the top of a cliff—one that overlooked the main encampment being established by a rapidly increasing number of human soldiers.

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