Page 75 of When the Moon Met the Sun

And the earthshuddered.

Originating where his fist hit, a crack formed in the ground, spearing forward rapidly, straight toward the awaiting army.

The males before us paused as they heard the earth groan, crack growing.

Then the screams began, as the earth opened and began to swallow them whole.

They tried to scatter, to run, but the rip in the earth only grew. Some tried to fly, but then Teagan was there next to Byn, using the roots in the earth to wrap around their ankles or torsos, dragging them back into the depths of the sprawling chasm that was still rapidly spreading.

Each one who tried to escape was pulled deeper in, and their screams echoed as they fell.

Without warning, Byn lifted his fist, breaking his connection with the rip in the earth, and the ground once again groaned as it snapped shut, like the maw of a giant beast.

Crushing each and every male inside, now entombed in the ground below permanently.

And cleaving the Northern ground army right down the middle.

Slowly rising to his feet, Byn panted, then stumbled a step. I picked my jaw up, which had fallen due to the display of incredible power just displayed, and closed the distance between myself and my husband. He wrapped an arm around my shoulders, leaning into me as he steadied his breathing.

“That was… incredible,” I murmured to them both.

Teagan shot me a proud look, while Byn smirked. Disentangling himself from me and standing on his own two feet again, he said, “Now the real fun begins.”

***

After Byn’s display of power—which had been the signal our army was waiting for—the battle horn was sounded, and the South ambushed the North in the dead of night. We most definitely took them by surprise, their shock and grief palpable in the air from Byn’s strike, but to their credit, they didn’t back down. They simply raised their shields row by row and braced themselves. They didn’t bother trying to close their lines where Byn had split the earth, likely from fear of him doing it again.

So, as our army pushed forward, battle cries sounding the air, they speared toward that crack in the North’s defenses. If we could get past the grunt men at the front and could reach the weather and lightning wielders closer to the middle and back, we’d have a better chance at besting them.

The clouds above were already being molded by the weather wielders, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before we were all fighting in horrible conditions.

We positioned our fire wielders on the front lines to best combat the air wielders we were confident the North would place at their fronts. After all, they’d simply be fanning the flames.

As for me, we decided my main mission today was to get close enough to my father to take him down once and for all. When discussing what my role would be today, it was deemed I didn’t have enough training yet to fight in the army itself. I’d been trained, yes, but to fight as an individual—not within the army lines. So, I was taking a different approach.

As for the topic of taking my father down, I advocated for Dimitri. That he’d be a better ruler—that he was more reasonable than our father, that he actually had aheart. That he was somebody we could negotiate peace with—fortruepeacethis time.

Byn had objected to me taking this mission on, of course. But the Valwain functioned on votes, and he was overruled. I knew he just wanted to keep me safe, but the rest of the group seemed to understand that I was the only one who stood a chance at being successful.

Part of me wondered if I should feel worse than I did about plotting to end my own father’s life. But if we were being honest, I was angry at him. I believed I had been for a long time. For never being a true parent to me, for never being what I needed him to be, for the neglect and different forms of abuse he had inflicted on everybody in his life.

I supposed I would simply have to hope that anger was enough to push me to follow through. And if not that, then the fact that Byn and everybody else was counting on me to do this would.

The result, we hoped, would be worth the pain I'd feel afterwards.

But one step at a time. First, the issue of Father and getting close enough to him to strike.

I flexed my wings wide, almost ready to take off and join the frenzy of war—which Teagan and Byn had already taken their places in—when I tilted my head to the side to glance at my wings again. It still startled me, seeing my white and silver wings covered in soot to look a drab gray.

We didn’t light many fires while taking cover in the forest, but the one in the main war tent had been large enough to produce just enough soot and ash to coat my wings.

One thing about the Northern army was that their ground troops were always more organized than their aerial ones. It could be difficult with different wing spans to create concise, orderly rows and columns, so that was where we decided to plant me.

Though it was brought to the attention of the group that my wings by themselves might give me away, since Dimitri and I were some of the only ones with dual-colored wings inthe North—hence the soot. Now, my wings better resembled those of Aurora’s.

Along with that, my bright, white hair was tightly braided back, easily hidden in the shadows of my oversized cloak so that it wouldn’t give me away, either.

Just when the battle before me began to grow less organized, I pushed myself off of the ground and into the sky above. I had a bow in my hands already, so it was easy to blend right in with the group above that was firing arrows towards the Southerners below.

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