“I came as soon as I heard,” Kaelen said quietly enough for only Draven and me to hear.
Accusations bled into the air, the warriors snarling and shifting uncomfortably as they stared down the Stormbreak clan.
“The king did not abandon me when my family was in need,” he said, through panting breaths. “That is not a debt I will forget. Especially not when I’ve seen what’s coming.”
Kaelen gestured toward the forest, then up to the foothills of the mountains.
“Whatyouallhave called here. The monsters are on their way, and they are hungry for blood, for mana.”
As if in answer to his words, the ground began to quake beneath our feet. Twisted howls sounded in the distance, followed by blood-curdling screams.
Both armies shifted nervously, soldiers and warriors from all sides unsteady, as the sounds and cries poured in from every side, but Kaelen wasn’t deterred.
“For the first time in thousands of years,” he continued, sweeping his gaze across the gathering, “we have a chance at peace. We have one of our own on the Winter throne.”
His wings twitched once, restless with conviction.
“And I will not throw it away for a blood debt,” Kaelen said. “Nor could I face the family I have left if I stood by and let innocents be slain by our own actions.”
Several of the Skaldwings exchanged shamefaced looks, while others straightened with something like pride.
“My clan will stand for honor,” he vowed, voice ringing out like steel. “And we will stand with Winter against the real monsters… before we let ourselves turn into them.”
He lifted his hand again toward the horizon, toward the rippling shadows growing larger by the heartbeat, dark figures racing across the snow, coming straight for us.
Screams filled the air, growing louder with every passing heartbeat.
Hundreds of voices. Thousands. Children crying for parents. Soldiers shouting commands that dissolved into gurgling pleas. Familiar names ripped from throats in sheer terror. The sounds rolled toward us in a living wave.
And I realized, with a sickening sort of clarity, that many of those voices were already dead…
My attention snapped up toward the treeline just as Wretches spilled out in a writhing tide.Their elongated bodies twisting and jerking as they ran, limbs bending at the wrong angles, shadows clinging to their scaled flesh like rot to corpses.
Like living nightmares, their movements were too fast, too wrong. They skimmed over the snow instead of sinking into it as they continued to scream with the voices of the dead.
Tharnoks followed on their heels. Brakhounds and Ice-lurkers as well.
The ground gave another lurch, and this time it sent rows of warriors scrambling backward.
“Please,” I said once. The word was nearly lost to the chaos unfolding, to the monsters surrounding us on every possible side.
Another great quake shook the earth for several long moments, and then it split open entirely. The shrieks of Korythids filled the air, their spindly legs stretching out from the trench as they hauled their bodies up from the ground.
We were out of time.
The sun set fully over the horizon, and the monsters flooded the night.
Chapter 51
Everly
The ground wouldn’t stop screaming.
More Korythids burst free of the earth in heaving waves, their massive bodies tearing through stone and ice as chitin-plated legs unfolded and hooked into the snow.
Skeletal tails scythed down in brutal arcs, shattering shields and bodies alike. Snow erupted in geysers of ice and blood as they slammed into the line, hooked limbs punching through armor and mana, dragging screaming fae beneath them.
The armies didn’t hesitate now. Whatever they felt about one another, there was no doubting who the monsters were now. They shot into action, Winter and Unseelie alike, mana and weapons flashing through the night. Draven’s wolves joined the fray—all but Lumen, who I hoped was getting Wynnie somewhere safe.
