It wasn’t just Ydren whose movements were becoming more sluggish with every moment that passed. Lessia could feel every wyvern slowing down, and she knew it was the reason some of them had lost their lives. She also knew she was the one behind the deaths and the fatigue and the fear that had begun building in the creatures who would fight for her until they died.
The bonds that were so clear in hermind flickered, and not because of the hours on the battlefield but because they were battling to keep Lessia and Merrick alive.
The wyverns were dying because Lessia and Merrick were not.
Lessia blinked away the tears threatening to blind her, swallowing the sobs wanting to weave up her throat when Ydren let out a soft whimper. Her fingers tightened around Ydren’s spikes when it felt like she might break apart right there and then.
As if the image of Zaddock’s broken and cold body refusing to leave her mind wasn’t enough.
As if her sister’s scream as Raine fell still ringing in her ears wasn’t enough.
As if Amalise’s empty gaze as she threw herself toward her death flashing before her eyes wasn’t enough.
As if sensing the other souls—ones she knew and loved—losing their lives around her wasn’t enough.
As if the fires and chaos where ships collided ahead, and the fact that they were losing this war—quickly—wasn’t enough.
The only reason she hadn’t crumbled yet was that strange pull within her, the one that told her Merrick wasn’t dead, the one that had her skin peppered with goose bumps as she sensed this, this horrible battle, was… just the beginning.
Merrick needed her. Her friends needed her. Havlands needed her.
So she continued. Forcing down the lumps in her throat, she ordered the wyverns to break the ships they could, finding weaknesses in the enemy lines and taking the opportunity every time, refusing to let herself thinkabout the hundreds of bodies falling where she and Ydren swam.
By now, most of the battle had gathered to her left, where a large rock formation had risen from the water. The majority of the Havlands’ remaining ships were pushed against it, in danger of being broken apart by the hard stone or by the Oakgards’ vessels, which surrounded them in all other directions.
But the people of Havlands still fought bravely—and from the cries coming from the Oakgards’ Fae, they were dying and falling as well. And Lessia was quite sure a certain Death Whisperer had something to do with it.
“Do you have one more fight in you?” she whispered as she leaned over Ydren’s head, not believing the wyvern when she let out a soft screech—trying to calm Lessia’s worry.
We will fight to the end, Elessia,Auphore broke in.
While she sensed the other wyverns agreeing—their bonds to her so strong after they’d deemed her soul pure—her voice broke as she found Auphore’s golden eyes. “I… I don’t want you to die. I’ve asked so much… so much of you already.”
We don’t want to die either,Auphore replied as he took the lead toward the chaos before them.But sometimes we must accept what we cannot change, and we knew what could happen when we followed you… But we did it nonetheless. This world… this better place you and your friends are fighting for… it will require sacrifice. To forge a new path, you must leave what you know behind: shed it like snakes shed their skin in the summer, or wake up from it, wake up from what you thought was a nightmare, and realize it was true all along—but that not everything unknown is evil.
Lessia forced her eyes forwardwhen tears filled them, fixing her blurry gaze on the Havlands’ ship in the middle, where she thought she could make out something silver flying across the ship.
Auphore was right. Even if they won this war, her world and the people in it would never be the same. She just… she just didn’t want to accept it. Couldn’t stand that the perfect night she’d had yesterday might have been the last time she’d see some of her friends smile—that she would have to walk around with hundreds of souls that she’d now killed on her conscience, that she might never be able to look in a mirror again and not see the Rantzier darkness, which must be the thing keeping her on this path of destruction.
She shook her head as the sounds around her that had muted returned, her eyes finding that sliver of silver once more.
It was Merrick—and he was fighting for his life.
Moving at a pace few could keep up with, Merrick spun two blades in his hands, single-handedly keeping two ships of Oakgards’ Fae away from their own, holding down the bow while screaming orders at the Fae in the back.
There was something beautiful about the brutality with which he parried blows, severed heads, and whirled out of the way of every dagger and arrow shooting at him. It made it impossible to look away.
Lessia knew he and his brothers were feared in all Havlands and beyond—had seen it in the last war. But watching him right now? She’d never seen anything like it.
Merrick was always surprised that she accepted him fully, that she was never scared of him, that she never looked away when he did what he believed he had to.
But to her… it was so obvious. He’d become the Death Whisperer not because he wanted to, but because he had to. He wasn’t like her uncle, who killed for amusement, or even like Loche and Iviry, who were forced to kill to gain the respect they needed as leaders in wartime.
He fought because he believed in something, and somehow, by some lucky stroke of fate, the thing he believed in was Lessia.
She’d felt it already in Ellow, when he’d sighed and growled but still had forced her to train.
She’d felt it again as he’d kept her together in Midhrok.
