The wind whipped his body again, and he closed his eyes.
Aydra’s smile radiated through his bones, and he felt a tear stretch down his face. His toes curled around the edge of the stone floor, and he pressed the horn to his chest.
“Nothing less,” he whispered.
Wind met his falling body.
And the only noise of his death was the splash his body made in Arbina’s pool.
The Rhamocour cried out only once more.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
MAGNICE WAS LAID in ruins.
The shops and homes of the bottom levels were nearly unrecognizable. Rubble crowded the streets. Some Dreamers and Belwarks had managed to get to safety below the Temple where Lex had forced Nyssa and Dorian to hide.
Two boats arrived in the dark of the morning two days later.
It was Lex and Aydra’s old company that met the strangers on the beach and struck them down. Lex spared one for interrogation. Dorian was the first to meet them on the beach.
He slowed his horse upon seeing Lex pointing her sword to the throat of a stranger, men’s bodies strewn across the sand.
“Find the King,” he instructed Corbin.
Corbin lingered only for a moment and then set off towards the ruins of Magnice again. Dorian hopped down off his horse, his blue cape billowing in the wind from the beach as he strode across the sand to Lex.
“How many?” he asked Lex.
Lex’s jaw was taut. “Two boats. Fifty,” she replied.
Dorian looked around to the women and men Belwarks obviously tired from the massacre. “Raid the boats. Then burn them. Make sure there is nothing of value before you set it ablaze,” he instructed them.
The guards bowed and set off to do as he asked.
More hooves sounded around them, and Dorian looked up to see Nyssa as she arrived on scene. Her eyes widened between the pair, and she dismounted her steed at an instant.
“What’s happened? Is it the strangers?” she asked.
“Savages!” the man on his knees dared say.
The pommel of Lex’s sword met his nose.
Nyssa balked and grasped Dorian’s arm. “Have you asked it about where it came from?” she asked him.
“I haven’t,” he replied, eyes flickering up the beach where he could see a string of Belwarks coming towards them, a carriage in tow. “Waiting on him.”
His glare met Lex’s, and as the Belwarks lined up on their horses and the carriage came into view, Dorian had to avert his eyes.
Rhaif’s blind and injured figure held on to his Second as he helped him to his feet.
Dorian wasn’t sure how Rhaif was alive. But when asked about it, he was told Rhaif had managed to get himself into Arbina’s pool, and that her waters had at least been able to heal the burns on his body in the time he was able to stay under.
But what it had not healed was his now absent eyes, and the limp of where the phoenix had broken him. Nor had it truly healed the appearance of his mangled skin.
Bard stood at Rhaif’s limping side, and he straightened Rhaif’s crown on his head as he wobbled to Dorian and Nyssa’s right.
The stranger’s cackle radiated through the still air.
