“Who’s there?” Orielle asked, lost eyes peering up at Azaleen.
“It’s me, Mama,” she answered with a loving smile.
“No, no.” Confusion flickered across her face. “I don’t have any children. They’re all gone. Just me … and that redbird over yonder.” She pointed a shaky finger at the cardinal perched on a concrete birdbath, streaked dark with age.
Azaleen’s heart sank. Some days, they could talk—reminisce about her and Thalen’s childhood, laugh about Edric’s courtship. Today wasn’t one of those days.
“Mama.” The word barely left her lips—a dry trickle in the heat of August. She couldn’t stay. Better to face Luther Irons himself—alone, surrounded by howling enemies in an Iron Realm arena—than sit through this slow heartbreak.
“Let’s talk weapons.” Luke Moreau leaned his elbows on the table, keen gaze fixed on Lark.
She had said goodbye to Leif and Milena, sending them home with the promise that help would arrive soon. She didn’t dare hope. Even if that manipulative queen came through, it could already be too late. Frost might be drop-dead gorgeous, but she lived up to her name. She even looked like Elsa from that children’s storybook.
Ice Queen doesn’t begin to cover it. Coercing me into this—and I’ll bet, when I get back, she’ll concoct another excuse. Lies. All lies.
“How long will this mission take?” she asked instead. They sat in an upstairs room, away from spectators and distractions. A mixed-race woman about Lark’s age, her long black hair snatched into a high ponytail and sporting camouflage fatigues, slouched in a chair across the table, munching on an apple.
Captain Moreau gave Lark a granite stare. “As long as it takes. Now, have you ever fired a rifle?”
“I shot old man Tucker’s shotgun once. Can’t miss with that, but it packed a kick,” she answered. She scratched a spot on her arm impatiently. “But a bow is my weapon. Won competitions and everything.”
“That so?” questioned the woman opposite her. She crunched into the apple again.
“Yeah, it’s so,” Lark snapped. She wasn’t about to sit here and take it. It’s not like she raced to Nelanta to volunteer for their stupid squad. The captain had handpicked her. She glared back at the woman.
“OK, you two.” Captain Moreau shot them disapproving glances. “Lark Sutter, Lieutenant Skye Navarro. Behave.”
Navarro shrugged. “I’m communications, hacking, stealth, and speak four languages. Comes in handy when we run into those Core Cult nutcases.”
“Hacking? What does that even mean?” Clearly unaware of the lingo, Lark gave Skye a sarcastic expression. These two were wasting time. They should be on the road to this target, not shooting the breeze. Tommy needed those antibiotics now.
“Those people to the north have computers—some, anyway. Working radios, rechargeable electronic devices,” Skye expounded like she was the expert on everything, and Lark was some hillbilly who had trouble slopping the hogs.
“Not all of them, mind you, but they’ve got more tech than we have,” she continued, “and no plans to share a lick of it.”
“Well, I’m a badass fighter with gravity-defying acrobatic skills, a crack shot with a bow, and more grit than you could dig up in a quarry.”
“Good,” the captain declared. “Let’s act like we’re all on the same team. Now, Lark, I’ve got something I think you’ll like.”
She watched him move to a trunk along the wall before shifting a glare at know-it-all Skye Navarro. Moreau set the weapon on the table in front of Lark, and she examined it while he talked.
“This is a rapid-fire crossbow developed by our weapons designers. It might be a tad heavier than your wooden bow, but it packs a punch. See this cylinder? It holds eight composite bolts. We’ve got a factory that melts down scrap and pours it into molds, so we’ve got plenty. Still, retrieve the spent ones when you can. Anyway, you set the bowstring like this, then aim and pull the trigger. It fires the bolt, turns the cylinder, and readies the next one in under two seconds. Then you’re ready to fire again. Run out? Simply pop out the empty cylinder,” he demonstrated as he explained, “and click in a full one. Reload time, tenseconds if you have a spare handy. With this bad boy, you can fire twenty-four shots in a minute, once you’ve practiced a few times.”
Lark took the crossbow in her hands, tested its weight, aimed it at a vase across the room. “I’d like to practice with it.” She didn’t want to appear too eager, but she couldn’t hide the gleam in her eye at the prospect of what this bow could do.
“We have guns, just have to ration the ammo,” Skye said. She tossed her apple core into a wastebasket two meters from her chair. It rolled in like water down a drain. Lark wanted to roll her eyes.
“So, how are we getting there?” Lark asked. “Horses?”
“You want to move fast, right?” the captain asked. She nodded. “We’ve got a Jeep and two dirt bikes, adapted to run on ethanol. We’ll carry fuel. Half of the trip will be over usable roads, which will help speed up the timeline. Still, it’ll take a few days.”
Skye leaned in, expression grim, bravado and brash joking aside. “We’re raiding an abandoned old hospital. Our scout said it didn’t look like anyone had found it, so we could hit a jackpot. You understand the stakes, don’t you?”
“I do.” The words grounded her. There was still a chance.
Chapter eleven
Dominion
