If there was supposed to be some threat to accompany that command, Coreto never voiced it. He never had the chance. Because in the next moment, Olivia spurred her horse between the two of theirs.
And drove her fist into the duke’s jaw.
“We surrender!” Lord Bennett cried out, flinging himself from his saddle and falling to his knees before her. “In the name of House Threston, we surrender.”
A flicker of panic flashed through Coreto’s eyes as he reeled, her reins slipping from his hand. Though he shot Olivia a venomous look, he made no move to strike her in return.
Instead, the duke turned his head and spat a bit of blood from his mouth. “You have no authority to surrender in my name,” he coldly reminded his son. “If you were half the man your brother was, you would know that.”
In the distance, hoofbeats pounded against the turf.
A rider approaching hard and fast.
Olivia tensed, turning to face the latest threat. Coreto’s attention shifted that way as well. Whatever he saw made him blanch further.
Far overhead, Alyx let loose with a piercing cry—a happy chirp. The greeting of one usuru to another. Seraphina knew that sound. She didn’t even need to lift her gaze to know what it meant.
But still she did. Still she glanced upward to see the black-scaled usuru now swooping through the air alongside hers: Soot.
The approaching hoofbeats thundered to a halt. From just behind her, a masculine voice unfurled. “Touch my wife or her horse again, and you will lose your hand, Coreto,” her Crow growled, his every word vibrating straight into her chest, her heart, her soul.
Aldric. He was here—not where she had asked him to be.
But where she needed him.
Turning her head, she tracked her husband’s approach as he rode closer until he finally came alongside her. His one-eyed gaze blazed in its fixation upon the duke, full of dark promise. Without so much as a glance spared her way, he angled Mourn in front of her own horse, joining Olivia in using his body as a shield.
“Surrender to my wife on your knees, Coreto.Now,” her Crow continued, his tone alone threat enough. But even so, he made a point to add, “Or my man just up ahead with the northern forces will drive an arrow through your skull.”
Chapter thirty-nine
Seraphina
Without waiting for Coreto’s answer, her Crow lifted his arm in the air, his fingers splayed wide. From the grove in the distance, a rider emerged. One not dressed in black.
She recognized Master Fitzjesmaine’s silhouette at once.
A strange, dizzying mixture of relief and annoyance fluttered through her chest. She should be angry. Aldric should not be here. He should be over there—with Master Fitzjesmaine. He had disobeyed her. He had ignored her wishes.
And yet she couldn’t find it in her heart to be angry.
Because some traitorous part of her was grateful beyond words that he had.
Without yet glancing her way, her Crow asked as casually as if they were discussing the weather, “Shall we shoot him, wife?”
We.
For a moment, her heart forgot how to beat. “I am not sure,” she murmured, doing her best to imitate Aldric’s casual mien. To pretend as if this had all been part of her plan. “It would be terribly rude to shoot a man who was just about to surrender to me.”
Olivia drawled, “Was he? I don’t see him kneeling.”
Coreto narrowed his eyes, his icy gaze shifting between her and Aldric. “You are bluffing. Your man cannot possibly shoot me from that distance—”
Before the duke could finish speaking, Aldric closed his fist.
A whistle through the air was all the warning any of them received before an arrow thunked into the earth right next to Coreto’s horse, so close it nearly scraped the creature’s front hoof.
The stallion snorted and tried to bolt toward the ridge where her godparents and Queensguard now waited—silent watchers. Further reinforcements.
