“What will you do?” asked Ash.
Aydra’s jaw tightened. “Don’t bother yourself with what I will do, Captain,” she said with a sigh. “I can take care of myself.”
Ash’s hand touched her arm gently. “I will not allow my Queen to be without a guard. I will stay here with you. Fight for you.”
A brow raised on Aydra’s face and she looked past him at Lex. “Do you see my Second Sun behind you? Turn around. Look at her,” she asked Ash. “She is the only person on this land capable of taking care of me. So when I tell her to wait and charge with the Venari and not behind me, I mean you as well.”
“But—”
“Wait with Lex for my signal,” Aydra demanded again. “That’s an order from your Queen.”
Ash’s jaw tightened, but he gave her a slow nod nonetheless. “Yes, ma’am.”
The pair disappeared down the hill then, and Aydra hugged her arms over her chest. Her heart was beginning to beat harder in her chest as the sky began to lighten. Her fist clenched and unclenched at her side, one hand around her bow. She closed her eyes and felt for the cores of the creatures around her, of all the birds she knew had followed her through the woods that morning.
The feeling of a warm body suddenly at her side didn’t make her jump this time. She sighed into the navy world and willed her breaths to relax.
“Not bad, Sun Queen,” Draven muttered at her side.
Aydra opened her eyes, but she didn’t look over to him. “Not bad for a Sun Queen or for a woman not versed in battle?”
Draven pulled one of his short swords from its sheath and held it up to the moons light, allowing it to reflect off the silver. The jagged edge of its blade cut the air, and she noticed the ivory on the handle. “Both,” he replied.
“Are those bones?” she asked about his sword.
He laid the blade in his hands, allowing her to see the handle more clearly. “Portions of phoenix breastbone as the handle.”
Her gaze narrowed. “Phoenix?” she repeated. “There hasn’t been sighting of a phoenix in decades.”
A small smile rose on his lips, and he reached down into the bag she’d been curious about earlier. The skeleton head he pulled out of it made her eyes widen. A phoenix skull, complete with black horns and sharp bone over the open eyes. It narrowed down to a sharp point at the beak, and would have covered his entire face.
“Your true crown,” she realized.
His smile widened as he held it by its horns and then looked out at the scene before them. “Is your raven already down there?”
“She will tell me when the Honest have taken the boats,” she replied. Her eyes narrowed then as she started to see centuries dropping like flies down the dunes away from the strangers’ camp.
“Do you have a before battle ritual you usually do?” she asked him as her nerves began to heighten again.
She heard him huff amusedly under his breath, and she looked sideways just in time to see his hair to fall over his shoulder. He fumbled with his hand a moment, and then watched as he turned the ring on his finger three times.
“Ah… Not really,” she knew he lied. “What about you? Were you praying to our Sun mother for help earlier?”
“The only being I ever pray to for salvation is myself,” she smarted.
A low growl that she didn’t recognize emitted from his throat, and she saw his fist tighten around the blade in his hand.
“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that,” he muttered in a raspy voice.
“Why not?” she managed.
He turned to face her fully then. Her eyes met his darkened gaze, and she felt her heart arrest at the sight of the smolder resting in his features.
“Because restraint lives poorly in my core,” he growled. “And I don’t have enough time before this battle to fuck you fitly into oblivion.”
If it hadn’t been for the sudden screech of her raven overhead, she would have pushed him to the ground right then, had him hold his hand over her throat as he railed her maniacally like the Venari King stories of old— damn whoever was around them.
But she would have to settle for the fantasy of it.
