Azriel careened into another Caersan man, holding his opponent’s sword hand out to prevent it from swinging back on him. With his combination of sharp dhemon teeth and long vampire fangs, he ripped into the soldier’s throat. “They taste the same.Disgusting.”
“Ha-ha,” Razer said humorlessly. “Focus,you two.”
“You’re no fun,” Madan teased.
Brutis was the one who prodded back as Azriel laughed before cutting into another soldier, looking very much like he did all those years ago when they were still raiding vampire villages. “Stop encouraging him.”
“He needs the distraction.”
Fae magic tinged the air as all around him, dhemons released their hold on their new powers. Bursts of vastly different emotions caught the Valenul soldiers off guard, drawing them in with surges of hope and peace or forcing them back with wafts of despair and fear.
Madan blinked hard, doing his best to not allow the emotions that did not belong to him to control his actions. He glared at the nearest dhemon with his odd, stark-black eyes, who wielded what Madan could barely decipher as doubt. A doubt that crept into his bones and warped his thoughts into a mess of negativity.
What if they lost?
What if something happened to Whelan?
What if, even if they won, they could not piece together a new alliance in Valenul?
Feeding the onslaught of uncertainty, Madan stumbled over the shifting ground beneath him. He turned to snap at the high fae in charge of the magic to find Pol laughing as the Caersans tripped over one another before him. The boisterous man he’d disliked for being so close to Whelan.
Then a thought very much unlike Madan struck. HehatedPol.
What if Madan died and Whelan found comfort in the high fae?
Deeper and deeper the doubt dripped into his bones. Madan gripped his sword hard, ready to cut it through Pol’s throat himself, just before a small blade flipped tip-over-end past his face from the Valenul soldiers.
Pol’s eyes widened in shock as the dagger sank into his neck, the soil beneath their feet shuddering to a sudden stop, before sinking into the snow. One moment, the high fae was laughing as he taunted the soldiers. The next…
Had Madan’s own thoughts caused this?Fuck.
“Focus,” Brutis said. “There was nothing you could do.”
But Madan sucked in a sharp breath and blocked another soldier, guilt seeping through him at the one thought of which he could not dispel: he wasgladPol was dead. If he was truly happy for it, though…why did he feel so horrible?
Emillie. Edira. Haen. Luce. They would suffer for this as he silently celebrated.
“It isn’t real,” Brutis reminded him. “Those feelings aren’t your own.”
Were they not? How could he be so certain?
All the same, Madan clung to the idea that the sudden waves of horrible thoughts were as Brutis claimed. They were not real. Every question his mind developed was fabricated through magic. Every terrible ending he wished for people who should be his friends were not his own. As such, he grit his teeth and swung his sword at the crimson-clad soldier who’d thrown the blade at Pol before dodging and weaving his way through the slick snow and mud to where he could breathe again. Breathe and release the heaviness that accompanied such wretched bouts of doubt.
The battle had barely begun, and yet exhaustion had Madan dragging. Perhaps the dhemon had been right: he’d been a pampered guard for too long and grown soft in his time in Laeton. Real battles had been put behind him for far too long. Now, if they did not put an end to this soon, he didn’t know if he could keep up the pace necessary to see the end of it.
“Block it out,” Brutis growled. “The dhemons are getting to you.”
Madan shook his head. “I am.”
Then his bondheart did something that Madan never even considered to be possible. Brutis’s mind stretched over Madan’s, layering over him like a mental shield against the onslaught of magic around him. All at once, the doubt and paranoia and despair slipped away, allowing the energy and strength to floodback through his veins and enliven his muscles so that when he parried the next attack, he did so with full force.
“What are you doing?” Madan asked.
But Brutis did not respond with words, giving Madan only a nudge of encouragement.
Rather than press the dragon to do more, he pushed the idea through the vinculums connecting him to the others across the battlefield. The dragons and their respective bondhearts latched onto the idea, and all at once, mental shields blanketed the minds of the soldiers.
No sooner had Madan regained his traction than more magic surged from high fae and mages, lighting up the snowy night as blasts of power shot through the Valenul army in waves. Wolves howled in delight as they rushed forward, clearing out the stunned and writhing vampire soldiers. And for the first time since he stepped onto the battlefield, Madan believed full-heartedly that they could win.
