Page 163 of Kissed By the Gods
“Hope you’re not too bored at the back,” he teases Thalric. “Taking care of the babies.”
His teasing entices the tiniest, briefest smile from serious, serious Thalric; and then Nyrica laughs, and he’s mounting Caelthar and flying off after Ryot. Thalric turns back to Leif and me.
“Let’s roll,” he says. He mounts Oryndel and drives him into a gallop in one seamless motion, the beast’s mighty black wings pumping, pushing him into the darkness of the sky. Vaeloria gallops after him, lifting off the ground, the ethereal sound of her wings eclipsed by the cacophony that is hundreds of faravars taking to the air at one time.
She follows Thalric and Oryndel as we circle low, heading to the back of the formation and the slightly staggered walls that form a barrier between the fortress and the ocean. Leif and I take up a place at the rear, but we can still see the front lines. At the water’s edge, Aruveth anchors the center of a V-shaped formation, the hooves of his beast stirring the waves that roll onto the shore. Off to his right, the Elder sits tall astride Sigurd, with Ryot and Einarr behind.
I twist behind me, trying to see Amarune in the distance. Lanterns glow in the darkness, and the city looks surprisingly peaceful to be on the verge of an attack. There are no panicked crowds, no one running for shelter. The streets are empty. I pivot back to the Ebonmere Sea, searching the skies as dawn streaks across the horizon, but I don’t see anything. Not even a flutter of movement. My beating heart calms.
“Maybe it was a false alarm,” I say.
Leif winces. “Unlikely,” he answers. “The Kher’zenn normally wait to attack in the daylight, especially if an alert was sounded and they’ve lost the element of surprise.”
The sun has barely started to stretch across the horizon. There’s still more darkness in the sky than light, but only for a couple more minutes.
“Why?”
“Their monsters are white. Our faravars are black,” his eyes slide down to Vaeloria. “Well, most of them are black. Night favors our camouflage. Daylight—especially a cloudy day like this—gives them the edge.”
I rake my eyes across the horizon with new awareness. The sky is blanketed in soft, puffy clouds that appear almost tangible.
“How many Kher’zenn is ‘very many’?” I ask.
Leif chews his bottom lip as he considers. “The most I’ve seen is 35. In that battle, our cast was outnumbered more than two to one, and we lost seven men.” His eyes flick toward me.“I’ve heard of battles of up to nearly 100 Kher’zenn and their draegoths, but that kind of swarm only happens once every hundred or so years. Like they’re saving up ... waiting.”
“How long has it been since the last swarm?”
It’s Thalric who cuts in, his voice low and rough. “It’s been 301 years.” Silence falls around us. The beasts sense it, too, shifting restlessly beneath their riders, their wings twitching.
Three centuries. A cold shiver slides down my spine.
“They’ve been building,” I murmur. Thalric’s knuckles go white where he grips Oryndel’s mane.
As the light spreads, my eyes scan the sky with new vigor. Clouds are rolling in from the horizon, dense, pale, and low. The men around us start murmuring. They shift anxiously on their beasts, their eyes widening in horror.
“Fuuuuuuuck,” Leif says.
The clouds move wrong. They churn unnaturally, folding and breaking apart in ways a cloud never could. A flicker of movement slices through the haze—then another. And another. Wings. Vast, serrated, jagged. They tear free of the clouds, one after another, until the sky seems to rupture. Hundreds of draegoths emerge as if born from the sky itself, their pale scales glinting in the sunlight, blending in seamlessly with the clouds behind them. They move as one, an unholy storm of malevolence, descending on Aish with silent, lethal grace.
My mouth goes dry. I can’t move. I can’t breathe. The sharp blast of a trumpet breaks through my stupor. Immediately, an Aishan rider and his beast peel off from the forward v-formation and they fly with reckless speed for Amarune, sounding another trumpet. This time the alert is different, a high-pitched staccato he repeats.
Amarune answers. People pour from their homes in a flood, clutching babies to their chests, dragging children by the hand. They carry nothing but each other—no packs, no keepsakes,no possessions. Only life. Earth-bound beasts—horses, camels—are mounted in a chaotic scramble, a plume of dust rising as the lucky ones flee north toward the mountains. Those without animals run on foot, desperation driving them. I spot Drennek’s heavily pregnant wife struggling to keep up, her hands cradling her belly as she waddles behind the crowd. An elderly man scoops her into his arms, gritting his teeth as he lurches into a staggering trot.
Four more riders and their faravars peel off from our main group, wings carving great, sweeping arcs across the desert. They soar high over Amarune, the staccato blast of their trumpets slicing the air, as they fly past the city and out into the desert. The unnatural beat echoes again and again. A warning. A plea.
“Where are they going?” I ask, my voice barely more than a scrape of sound. I watch as the four riders fan out.
An Aishan Altor turns grim eyes toward me. “They’re warning the nomadic tribes. Telling them to flee.”
Flee. Because there will be nothing left to save. Beside me, Leif pales even further, the blood draining from his face. I lick at my dry lips, but there’s no moisture left to find.
“They don’t think we’ll hold the city.” The words crack in my throat.
Thalric’s expression is answer enough. He doesn’t offer comfort. He stares ahead—past the chaos, past the coming storm—his gaze catching on Nyrica in the front formation. As if he can sense his gaze, Nyrica turns, too. The way they stare at each other … it’s a farewell stitched in silence.
“We hold it for as long as we can,” Thalric says. His voice is steady, but his eyes aren’t.
A heavy weight settles in my chest, squeezing tighter with every beat of my heart.
