Page 78 of Empire of Death
They’re preparing the cannons. Be ready.
“They’re getting ready to fire, Zehemoth.”
Let them.
I let my body shift over his side as the straps held me in, lying on my stomach with one hand on the horn so I could see down below. “Three ships from the right are about to fire.”
Yes, I see them.
I could hear the muffled boom from below, just like the sound of a cannon.
Hold on.Zehemoth immediately dropped in the air, going into a free fall as the golden spikes shot far past us into the sky then disappeared from sight.
Zehemoth opened his wings and caught himself feet above the surface of the water and immediately climbed back up.
The abrupt shift of my stomach back and forth and up and down should have made me puke up the breakfast I’d had that morning, but the adrenaline was strong enough to combat the sensation.
Another wave of cannons fired, the golden tips of the spears visible because they were so brilliant, even in the low light of an overcast sky. “They just launched more.”
Zehemoth’s strong wings pumped over the wind, making us fly straight up into the sky with breakneck speed. He gave me no warning, but I had my hand on the horn of the saddle in case. I’d never seen a dragon in battle, and it was the first time I’d been able to witness the true strength of these magical beings.
He straightened out again and glided through the air, drawing the enemy ships farther away from our fleet.
It’s working,Xivin. They’re retreating.
“Their ships are faster than ours, so we need to hold them for at least an hour for our men to get away. Otherwise, their ships will catch up to ours. Do you think you can do that?”
He released a plume of smoke from his nostrils.Absolutely.
24
LILY
Zehemoth and I immediately flew back to the Southern Isles, while the fleet sailed back on their own. Instead of a journey of days by sea, we made it back in half a day, and the moment we touched down in the courtyard, I felt the exhaustion in my limbs. Sitting upon the back of a dragon was similar to sitting in the saddle of a horse. It still made your back and inner thighs sore after a long trip.
The soldiers on duty at the castle immediately greeted me with their salute, a clenched fist over their breast plate. “Tell Hawk I wish to speak to him.” The two large double doors that led to the entrance of the castle opened wide to allow me inside before I reached them.
I entered the castle and headed straight to my room, eager to get the armor off because I’d been wearing it for days straight. My muscles were trained to tolerate the weight, but they eventually became exhausted after carrying the protection on my spine for so long.
I was desperate to take a bath and scrub the mud from underneath my fingernails and wash it from my hair, but I knewHawk needed to be updated first. But I took off each piece of my armor then hung it up, wearing only my uniform when a knock from the guards sounded.
“General Hawk Rothschild,” one of them announced.
“It’s open.” I missed the days when I lived in my villa and everything was casual. People could come and go as they pleased. But now I was queen—and we were at war.
Hawk burst inside. “The fleet isn’t in the harbor. How did you?—”
“Zehemoth. I told him not to come, but he did anyway.” I would be more upset about it if, you know, he hadn’t saved me from being eviscerated by monsters.
Hawk gave a slight shake of his head. “It’s hard to be upset when I’m not even surprised.”
I shared the details of everything that had happened, from King Ithaca’s execution to the vampires to the Behemoths, the entire tale.
Hawk didn’t question the logistics of it, like how I went from being in King Ithaca’s presence to being on the battlefield a second later. Either he focused on the important aspects of what I shared, or he didn’t want to waste his time pressing for answers he wouldn’t get. “How many ships did we lose?”
“About half.”
“Damn. What about them?”
