Page 92 of Galadon
She glanced at me. “Do me a favor and hold his head up a little, would you?”
Gladly, najeema.
I moved around her to the other side, lifted the sorcerer by his thinning mud-caked hair with my taloned hands, and gave her a nod. He was still trying to stutter promises of power as her blade came down hard, slicing cleanly through his neck. I dropped the head and stomped it flat. My feet and claws were covered in filth afterward, but I hardly cared.
On an open channel, I heard the other leaders inform us that the Kandoran were vanquished. It hadn’t been as easy and swift as we’d hoped, but we’d defeated them. The female Faegud gave me a respectful nod and flew back toward the camp. Rayna jumped into my arms and hugged me tightly. I hoped we could finally put that terrible week of torture behind us and move on to better things. I grasped her just as firmly, proud of what we’d accomplished.
Chapter 34
Rayna
Rayna and Galadon landed at the ravaged Kandoran camp, where the other battle leaders—Aidan, Lorcan, and Falcon—gathered in human form with grave expressions. While her mate shifted, she took stock of their surroundings. There was mud and blood covering everything. While she could see countless dead green dragons throughout the camp and beyond into the fields and woods, she could also make out smaller red and orange-scaled bodies dotted among them.
The battle she’d asked them to fight had cost them dearly after they’d already lost so many in the war. Guilt ate at her. She knew she couldn’t have taken out this nest on her own or ever reached the Kandoran sorcerer without an army at her back, but they were still lives that could never be brought back.
She spotted Morgan twenty feet away, kneeling next to one of the red dragons and pressing his palms onto its stomach. His shoulders tensed, and with a spark of light, the shifter shrank down to human form sans clothing. The center of his bare chest revealed the tell-tale wounds of how he died. Claws had ripped into him until they reached his heart.
“How did you change him?” she asked. It was something she hadn’t seen before.
Morgan rose slowly, sorrow in his gaze as he pushed his glasses up his nose. “At the end of the war, there were so many dragon bodies, and they’re harder to move in that form for burial. We didn’t want to wait a day for them to transition on their own. I decided to try something—a variation of a spell for something else—and it worked. The other sorcerers at the tower found it easy to replicate, and it allowed the shifters to prepare and bury their dead sooner.”
The emotion in his voice told her that since leaving the coalition last summer and coming to Oklahoma, he’d become attached to the Taugud. They meant something to him. She’d noticed over that time he had seemed more relaxed among them and vice versa.
“Show me, and I’ll help,” she said. There was no point in him suffering through this task alone, as he was forced to look at familiar faces one after another. While she had helped with after-war cleanup, she’d focused on assisting the humans and missed what others had been doing.
Morgan gestured across the camp at several more sorcerers hovering over corpses. “They’re doing it, too, but it would go faster with your help. We’ll also need to wrap tarps around those Faegud who can’t shift so that they can be carried by two dragons for the return trip. Lorcan will bring us those after his meeting.”
“Have they gotten a count of the dead yet?” she asked.
He ran a hand through his slicked-back brown hair. “Yeah. We lost twelve Taugud and nineteen Faegud. Ten of them can’t shift, but you’ll know if the spell doesn’t work right away.”
Then he took her to the nearest red dragon, lying in a puddle of brown and red-tinted water with crumpled wings and most of its throat gone. Rayna listened to the quiet incantation Morgan spoke and felt the weave of the spell. It wasn’t complicated.
After the body transitioned to a nude human, he looked up. “This doesn’t work on shifters who are alive and conscious. We can’t override their free will—just so you know.”
She nodded and pointed toward a scorched field beyond the camp where several red dragons lay mixed among many greens. No other sorcerers had gone that way yet. “I’ll start over there.”
“Sounds good. Thank you for your help,” he said.
She rubbed her face. “They wouldn’t be dead if I hadn’t insisted on attacking this place.”
“Don’t.” He narrowed his eyes through his glasses. “They never would have agreed to this if it didn’t need to be done. Letting Kandoran run loose in small numbers is one thing, but this would have become a real threat sooner or later. They were increasing their ranks quickly, by the looks of it. If anything, you saved lives by convincing the pendragons to act this fast.”
Rayna swallowed, having not considered that point with the loss of dead Taugud and Faegud weighing her down. “Thanks. I needed to hear that.”
“Yeah, you did.”
She gave him one last grateful look and headed toward the dead Taugud. She could tell the difference because they had a brighter shade of red, whereas most Faegud were either burnt orange or dark red. The first time she tried the spell, she didn’tget the weave of elements just right, but she managed it on the second attempt.
When the dragon turned human, she vaguely recognized him as one of the western border guards she’d seen during her last hunt. They wouldn’t have pulled him from his duties unless he volunteered. Despite Morgan’s words, guilt still flooded her. They would have had fewer losses if she had anticipated the dome trap. She wished she’d seen the translucent magic hovering above them before it came down.
The following two bodies changed easier, and Rayna thankfully didn’t recognize them. Still, the last was a female whose hard muscles and odd scars told of many years of training and battles. With her head pulverized, she wouldn’t be fighting anymore.
She rose from the mud-splattered corpse and stepped back into a warm embrace, having sensed Galadon coming from behind. He turned her around and kissed her forehead, concern in his gaze. “You feel sadness and guilt for these shifters?”
Rayna glanced down at the body she’d just changed. “I always do when I fight alongside them.”
“It’s not your fault.” Galadon lifted her chin. “Until I knew you better, I always assumed you felt nothing for my kind, and we were simply useful allies in your quest to exterminate us. Now, I see you feel the deaths deeply. But you can’t do that to yourself because everyone here volunteered and knew the risks.”
