Four simple words, but they were enough to gut the mood.
Eliza groaned and took a step back from Lily. “So, we pick another outpost?”
“We could,” Lily agreed. “But this one’s the closest. And we need supplies sooner rather than later.”
“Except you just said they outnumber us,” Eliza reminded her.
Lily scratched the small crinkle in her nose, her gaze flicking toward me. Ah. So, I wasn’t going to like what she planned to say next. Good to know. I braced myself.
“I can handle the dragon,” Lily said confidently. “Now that I know how to fight it.”
As one, we all glanced at the center of camp, where the dragon skull remained. The rest she’d broken down into raw materials in a stunning display of power I’d never seen from her before. I had no idea what she planned to do with the head. I'd intended to ask, but right now, it seemed hardly important.
“What about the hellspawn?” Levi asked from his rock.
Purrgy shifted his weight, slitting open an eye to look around before falling back asleep.
“They won’t be a problem,” she said.
Silence fell over the camp, except for the crackling of our pitiful fire. Each of us looked to the other while waiting for herto explain. When she didn’t, Vol gave a deep sigh from Eliza’s shoulder and shouted, “Out with it already!”
“I’m going to finish resurrecting my army,” she said. “Thenwe’lloutnumberthem. Once my soldiers are back, the outpost won’t stand a chance.”
Tension ramped. Levi’s questioning gaze leapt from Lily to me. “Resurrect your army,” he repeated. “Do you think you can?”
“I almost had it yesterday,” she said, confidence shining in her eyes. Where that confidence came from, I had no idea. Then again, she hadn’t seen herself convulsing on the ground yesterday, unlike the rest of us.
I immediately wanted to shut this down. I understood her plan and her reasoning. We needed the numbers, there was no denying that. But seeing her yesterday, all aglow with power, only to collapse screaming a moment later was a sight that kept replaying in my head. We still didn’t know what’d happened. She’d been fine one moment, then not the next.
Of course she wanted to try again. She’d already said as much. I guess I’d just hoped… But I should have known better. Lily didn’t know how to quit. In fact, moments like these were how she improved herself. I would wager any amount of money that she’d learned some “life lesson” during the last attempt and would use it to perfect the process this time. Because that was what she did.
So, I kept quiet and let her speak.
“What makes you think you can do it this time?” Eliza asked, voicing my concerns.
Lily’s expression shuttered, and if I wasn’t mistaken a shadow crossed her face. But it was gone so quickly that I wondered if I’d imagined it.
“I know what I did wrong,” she said. “And my magic appears to have grown a little since then. It’ll work this time.”
See? Life lesson. I didn’t say a word—I had no argument. She was right, her magic had grown. The sight of her shadow tendrils shooting out of her palms had impressed me, but even that hadn’t compared to the sight of her flying again, thanks to her new shadow wings. It’d stolen my breath, seeing her take to the skies again. I knew how much she missed it, how the loss of her wings had broken her.
When no one objected to her newest plan, Vol, who had been watching us all chat like we were here specifically for his entertainment, clapped his tiny hands together. “Excellent. You go raise your unstoppable army that your father has, in fact, stopped before. Then we’ll go to the outpost, steal—I mean,procure—their supplies, and then write about it so that history remembers my bravery.”
“Yourbravery?” Lily repeated, scoffing.
“Of course. I’m the bravest of you lot.”
“Says the little beast who hid in a hole while we were fighting the dragon,” Calyx stated.
“I wasn’t hiding,” Vol announced, planting his little hands on his hips. “I was guarding Purrgy to make sure nothing bad happened to him. See? Bravery.”
Lily rolled her eyes.
“And when do you plan to complete the resurrection?” I asked, cutting off Calyx and Vol’s bantering.
Her gaze locked on mine, and without any hesitation, she said, “No time like the present.”
Yeah, that sounded about right.
