It was his own twisted thinking and nothing more.
By the time Madan paused long enough to breathe and take note of his bearings, the dragons had been tormenting the battlefield for more than half the time they had been fighting. He pivoted, scanning the faces of those around him—dhemons and high fae, mages and lycans—and could not find the one for whom he searched. Somehow, in the haze of his own thoughts, he’d lost track of Azriel entirely.
With no means whereby he could pick his way back through the fray to his brother’s side, Madan focused instead on continuing forward. The central line had long since begun pushing the Valenul forces back toward the Hub with the help of the dragons. As such, he assumed himself to be mixed in with the forces they’d stationed in the west.
And it didn’t take long before such thoughts were confirmed.
Ehrun and Luce had somehow stayed together throughout the battle. The massive dhemon swung a familiar ax—Kall’s ax—and cleaved a vampire nearly in half with the force of his strike, not unlike what he’d done to the Crowe. For the first time in decades, Madan found none of the deep-rooted ire that he recalled from raids and attacks across Eastwood. Instead, it was a steady determination. Focus. Control.
How strange to be the one fighting from a place of anger while the dhemon he’d come to know as the most crazed was now a calm, concentrated force.
Beside the blood-sprayed dhemon, Luce leaped from an unmoving Valenul soldier to the next, not hesitating to lock her massive maw around the vampire’s neck and shaking her head violently. The soldier didn’t even have a chance to scream before collapsing beneath the weight and force of the lycan. She moved on, her fur catching snowflakes as she went, quick as ever.
Madan worked his way through the field toward the duo, blocking with the buckler before striking with his sword. They seemed to thrive together, and though he didn’t want to interfere with the rhythm they seemed to have taken up over the course of the battle, there was also no safer place than beside friends—
No.
No, Ehrun could never be his friend. No matter how long they traveled together, no matter how many times they laughed at one another’s jokes, no matter how well they seemed to get along, Ehrun would never be Madan’s friend. It was a betrayal of Kall to let the man who murdered him into their circle.
Golden eyes flickered to him as he fell into step beside Luce. She gave no indication as to whether or not she appreciated his sudden appearance, but rather continued her streak of terror through the soldiers before them.
A blast of light ignited the sky as an indigo dragon flew overhead. Madan watched Dhanin dive, ripping into the crimson-clad soldiers that turned and ran from his shadow. Until a silhouette stood on the dragon’s back and, after throwing two knives that each took down a vampire, jumped into the middle of the sea of red.
“Jakhov,” Madan called, “what thefuckare you doing?”
Nothing but pure, chaotic humor responded. Mirth unlike anything he’d felt in the middle of a battle poured back through the vinculum.
“Get him out of there,” Brutis said to Dhanin.
But, like his bondheart, the dark purple dragon said nothing as he swung in an arch to rake through the Valenul soldiers. Only when a silver net was flung through the air, shining like icicles in the snow, did Dhanin sweep back to the sky, yanking the soldiers from the ground. He spun through the air, tossing the steel net from his wings before barreling down to Jakhov so the dhemon could run, then launch himself onto the dragon’s back.
It all happened so fast, the entire hazardous interaction occurred between one motion and the next. As much as he wished he could mount Brutis and rain hell down on his enemies, jumping into the middle of them was not ideal. Yet had they not been so reckless, he would’ve never known there were soldiers positioned on the field with nets made to entrap a dragon.
He passed the information on to the others, warning them against landing.
Then a sudden, animalistic shriek ripped through his thoughts and dropped him right back into the present. Madan cracked his buckler across the Caersan’s face before him, drove his sword down into the crook between the vampire’s neck and shoulder, and turned to see who’d been injured. The sound was clearly lycan and—
“Brutis,” he called, stomach dropping at the sight before him, “get herenow!”
Luce writhed and yelped several feet in the air, suspended by a pike that impaled her straight through the chest. Paws beat at the snow, but each twist of her body only sank her lower and lower on the massive spear.
Madan wouldn’t wait. Couldn’t wait. This was Emillie’s partner—the one who’d saved his younger half-sister from the mercenaries that would’ve sent her to Loren. If she didn’t come back from this battle, Emillie would be beyond devastated. Though they hadn’t spent nearly as much time together as he and Whelan, he knew just how deep that connection went. As though, despite no actual bond, there was somethingmorethat tied them together.
A handful of Valenul soldiers stood between him and the one impaling Luce. He let out a guttural cry and dove in, weaving with as much speed and strength as he could muster. Smacking the first blade aside, he ducked a swing from a second soldier and drove his elbow back into the second’s gut. While that vampire choked from the impact, he used the momentum he’d gained in the strike to bring his sword back through and slice the first soldier’s inner thigh behind the plate of armor.
Within seconds, Ehrun was there, bringing his ax down on the second soldier from behind before turning with a roar and taking down a third. While he worked on the next obstacle, Madan met the first soldier’s swing with his blade, twisting his wrist and forcing the vampire to drop the sword.
Hands empty, the Valenul soldier had nothing to block the buckler to the face before Madan wrapped the crook of his amputated arm around the vampire’s neck, swinging himself onto the man’s back, and forcing his chin high with the small shield. He brought his blade across the soldier’s throat before he could even realize what was happening.
Then Madan turned to the final soldier between him and Luce, and at the same time, Ehrun dispatched the fourth vampire and followed suit.
“Get her,” Madan said in the dhemon tongue. “Keep the pike in place.”
Ehrun didn’t need the instructions, of course. He knew battle just as well, if not better, than Madan. Though he’d been a peaceful man until Rhana’s death, his spiral into darkness meant he spent every waking moment training or killing.
It wasn’t unlike the way Ariadne turned her focus to such practices when Azriel had been imprisoned in Algorath. A similar madness had overtaken them both, though one succumbed to it while the other harnessed it.
And his sister never let anything control her for long.
