“On it!”
I instructed Arava to dive. To weave. To dodge. She took each command easily. Once, we came so close to a giant, within their reach before pulling back to safety. Then we did it again, and again, and again—enraging the giants yes, but also slowing them. Distracting them from the army on horseback that was filling the valley.
“Isolde!” Thyra screamed as she zipped by on Lasvin, the pegasus little more than a white blur at duskfall. “This way!”
I tracked my sister and gasped. One giant was holding someone—a dwarf wearing the colors of Dergia who was alive and thrashing in the creature’s grip.
My stomach twisted at the implication. The bonfire. The time of day. We’d interrupted dinner.
I changed course and called my magic to unleash a hailstorm, each ball the size of my fist. The hail pummeled the giant’s face and his arm dropped. His grip too.
Lasvin swept beneath in time to catch the captured dwarf. Thyra pulled the dwarf into position, making sure he was safe. It seemed like he was, but then the giant’s fist came swinging.
Halladora sent an arrow at the creature’s face, while I directed more winter magic at his body. The giant screamed as the arrow struck along with the hail, and the overly large fae stumbled backward.
“Thanks!” Thyra yelled as she flew by, the dwarf behind her still barely hanging on.
“Get him to safety!” I replied, but my sister was already on it, her pegasus soaring towards the mountains.
“The army is through the defile,” Dora announced.
Arava pulled up, up, up, until we were out of range. I took a good long look back the way we came. Many of those on horseback were already wrapping long ropes around the giants’ legs, pulling them tight, felling one large fae after another. Even as some giants tried to dodge, they also had to keep their eyes to the skies, and they couldn’t do both at once. Most of the giants escaped one trap, only to become entangled in another.
A giant fell. Two. Three. Four. With each creature hitting the frozen ground, my heart soared. A whoop of victory that sounded like it came from Thantrel resonated from below. One by one, our small army fell upon the giants and knocked them out with swift and hard blows to the temples.
“Ten down. Three likely dead,” Halladora said. “We should go that way.”
I took in the area she pointed. Five giants had separated and ripped trees from the ground. They swept the trees in front of them, keeping away the Balik soldiers on the ground.
“Let’s go.” I steered Arava that way. In seconds, Lord Balik, Filip, and Caelo closed in right alongside me. I did a double take. Caelo was covered in blood, presumably from a giant, as I couldn’t find an injury on him.
We converged on the frost giants, and Halladora, Filip, and Caelo took their shot. Filip’s arrow struck true, hitting one’s oversized pupil. The giantess fell, her great form toppling forward, threatening to crush soldiers.
“Move!” Lord Balik bellowed, and maybe because he was so concerned for his soldiers, he didn’t see the incoming attack. No one did. Not until the tallest of the giant’s trees was in the air, smacking Filip off his gryphon.
I waited for the heir to House Balik to use his wings to right himself. To fly away and out of danger. But he only continued to fall, his trajectory straight for the ground. Too fast. And from much too high up.
Tendrils ripped out of me, startling Arava as much as myself when they shot in front of us, aiming at Filip. They caught the squire seconds before he would have hit the ground. My heart thrashed in my chest as the shadows retracted, quick as a whip, only to stop right in front of me. Condemning me.
“By the stars,” Halladora breathed. She was Valkyrja but hadn’t been with us that day in the mountain tunnels. She knew Shadow Fae existed but not my secret, and she wasn’t the only one to learn it at the most inopportune time.
Lord Balik hovered, frozen in the air, his mouth agape. Though the sun was nearly set, it was not yet dark enough to hide what I had done.
“I’ll take him,” someone closer said.
Sian had joined us, and he looked at me with such reproach that it broke my heart. Swallowing the pain, I commanded the shadows to ease Filip on to his brother’s gryphon.
“Get him to safety,” I commanded.
Sian stared at me, and a thousand questions flashed across his face before he soared off with his brother.
“It’s not over.” Dora looked at me cautiously.
I inhaled deeply to steady myself once more and rejoined the fight.
Chapter 24
VALE
