The force of the mast was too strong, and when it reached the male she’d loved since she realized underneath the grouchiness and loneliness was someone afraid to feel again… it pierced the right side of his chest.
Raine flew backward, his eyes going blank, at the same time as Frelina screamed the worst scream she’d ever let out.
Her eyes brushed Elessia’s horrified ones as her sister turned her head over her shoulder before Frelina crashed into the deck for the third time that day. She crawled toward him, rambling words spilling from her lips—prayers and begging and whatever she could come up with—knowing the pool of blood was too large.
Even from a few feet’s distance, she felt it.
There was no fight leftin the red-haired Fae’s body. There were no more emotions that she’d managed to awaken in him again. There was no growl or laughter rumbling in his broad chest. Frelina’s face crumpled as she reached him, and she could only place her cheek on his unmoving body as Amalise roared behind her.
She should have helped her friend.
She should have tried to get vengeance.
But as Raine’s eyes remained closed, Frelina could only watch as Amalise sprinted up to the Fae and, with a strength that she’d seen no human have, the blonde tumbled into the Oakgards’ Fae, taking him with her overboard, into the snake-infested waters.
Chapter 44
Loche
Venko went down first.
Loche didn’t even have to turn around after hearing Ardow cry out his lover’s name, but he did anyway, watching as the council member tumbled to the ground with a white sheet—a part of their sail—wrapped around his neck, the Oakgards’ Fae who was responsible not even giving him another look as he moved on to fight one of Loche’s men.
Air rushed behind Loche. He growled as he turned around, meeting the Fae trying to scale their ship head-on, shoving him off the railing he’d jumped onto, right into the waiting maw of a wyvern that kept circling their ship—probably on Lessia’s orders, as he’d caught a glimpse of her atop Ydren a few hours earlier.
His arms were heavy, but he allowed himself another look at the blond merchant he’d come to consider a friend, fear ripping through him when he realized Ardow was fighting to get to Venko’s too-still body, and that therewas no way he’d make it.
Night had turned into day long ago, and while Loche had begged for the light those first few hours, he regretted it now that it was so clear that Ardow had no clue about the three Fae sneaking up behind him.
“Ardow, no!” Loche roared as he started his way, but Iviry’s soft call stopped him in his tracks.
“You can’t help him,” she said as she kicked a Fae so hard that he stumbled into the wooden railing, and then proceeded to push him off, actually biting him when he reached for her unbound hair.
They had almost run out of weapons. He and Iviry had barely gotten out of their room when the battle started, and while the ship they’d been on had been destroyed, his soldiers and one of Iviry’s guards had spotted them in the water, dragging them onto this one.
Loche’s eyes went from Ardow to Iviry and back again, and when the first sword slashed behind Ardow, the regent screamed again, “Behind you! Ardow, behind you!”
But it was too late. Ardow’s brown eyes latched onto Loche’s as the former stumbled, and Loche knew he’d never forget the look in his eyes—the pain and the rage—as he fell.
Ardow’s chest was still moving as he landed on the deck, but he did nothing to defend himself; he only reached a dirty, heartbreaking hand toward the blond lying too far away as another sword pierced him. Then another.
Until his outstretched hand relaxed and his brown eyes saw no more.
Until the two men who’d only yesterday danced and drunk and loved each other were together once again.
“Fuck!” Loche screamed, wondering if it would even be possible to heal from the pain of this battle.
Everywhere he looked, people fell. It didn’t matter whether they were Fae, human, or shifter. There was so much death.
He could smell it on the wind. He could see it in the eyes of the people still breathing around him. He heard it from the other ships—even over the fire and the cries and the sound of wood that kept breaking and breaking and breaking.
Loche screamed again, a cry of outrage that should have bounced against the too-clear sky hovering above them.
They wouldn’t win this.
Loche caught Iviry’s eyes and rushed up to her in a rare moment of relief. They both whirled when a heartbreaking screech echoed through the air, one that Loche felt in his soul, dragging its sharp nails down his back.
A wyvern had been pierced by one of those massive masts from the Oakgards’ ships, and her family screamed in unison—a raw human voice that could only be Lessia joining them in their sorrow.
