Page 8 of The Emerald Dragon Prince
“To arms!” several of Osric’s captains shouted as the loyal men who had come to fight by Osric’s side scrambled for their weapons. “The enemy is nigh!”
Instantly, I conjured a magical sword and moved to stand in front of Rumi, as if I could block him from his father’s entire army. The inmost dragon part of me roared at the soldiers that I could now see charging at us from across the field.
“How did they get so close without us noticing?” Prince Leo demanded, drawing his sword and standing in a ready crouch by Diamant’s side.
“It must be some sort of magic,” Prince Selle said. He stood on his toes, trying to get a better look at his father’ssoldiers as he pushed his glasses farther up his nose, but Gildur grabbed him and dragged him back behind the defensive line that was forming.
It was a wise move. Within seconds, another volley of arrows sped toward us.
I reached for Rumi’s hand with my free one, and as soon as I had it, I tugged my beloved mate back through Osric’s wall of soldiers.
“We should stay and fight with the others,” Rumi protested, but through our bond, I could feel that his words were more of a question than a declaration.
I shook my head. “None of us are trained soldiers,” I said. “Not like the men who have rightfully taken their places in the front lines.”
“We can’t just sit back and do nothing,” Leo protested. “This is the battle we’ve all been waiting for.”
“There are other ways we can aid the fight,” Rumi said, letting go of my hand and marching determinedly back toward the camp and its supplies. His brothers all followed him.
I held back, staying near my own brothers as we found a more tactical position to survey the opening moments of the war.
“Leo is right,” Diamant said with a dark scowl. “Freslik’s men should not have been able to reach us so quickly or without anyone noticing.”
“It’s the traitor,” Rufus growled. “We’ve spent too much time on tactics and gathering weapons and not nearly enough on discovering who the traitor is.”
“We know it’s a dark sorcerer,” Argus said, looking particularly frustrated that he hadn’t figured everything out well before that dire moment. “There’s a good chancethat he’s influenced us all with magic to care about other things.”
I huffed and balled my hands into fists, searching out through the lines of Osric’s men as they braced for the arrival of Freslik’s charging army. Magic that manipulated someone’s thoughts and emotions was the very worst kind, as far as I was concerned. I wasn’t even happy that Argus had used that very magic against Freslik all these years, although I was well aware that Argus’s manipulations had kept my mate from grievous harm.
“There’s still a chance we can find the bastard and take him out before he does too much harm,” I said.
“If you think you can,” Diamant said, shifting his sword from one hand to the other then back again, a flash of excitement in his eyes as he stared at the front lines. “It looks as though blood is about to be shed.”
“This entire mess could be cleaned up easily if Mother would allow us to use our magic,” Azurus said with a sigh. “With all of us working together, we could disarm both armies, banish Freslik to the corners of the earth, and install Osric on the throne while the people of this kingdom cheered.”
I didn’t disagree with him. In fact, I wanted exactly what my brother had just spelled out.
“Mother has made it clear that we are not to intervene with magic and that she’ll be forced to punish us if we do,” I said.
“Has Mother seen what we’re up against?” Gildur asked incredulously.
No one had time to answer his questions. Seconds later, the first of Freslik’s men met the front of Osric’s army. With ear-splitting cries and the crash of steel against steel, the battle well and truly began.
I exchanged a look with my brothers before we split apart, each of us going to find our mates to protect them and assist them. Not only should Mother have allowed us to use magic to end the conflict before it began, she should have found a way to keep our omega mates out of the fight.Weshould have found a way to keep them out of the fight.
“Rumi!” I called out when I didn’t find my mate within my line of sight.
“Lord dragon!” Osric’s omega aid, Nikkos, called back, running up to me. “Lord dragon, we need you at the front. King Freslik’s forces are stronger than we thought they were.”
Those few words had my gut twisting. Just hours before, we’d all been confident that we could win this war easily. Now, with the clash of swords ringing all around us and arrows zipping down on us, I was filled with doubt.
I had to protect my omega at all costs.
“We need you,” Nikkos repeated, grabbing my wrist in a wild-eyed attempt to pull me along with him.
I caught the scent of something sweet and familiar. It was like the cherry cordial I had loved so much a hundred years ago, when I was a younger man. A wealth of memories, good and very bad, rose up within me at that scent.
A moment later, the scent was gone and the screams of the first wounded rushed in to distract me.
