“The King!” one called and surged forward.
But another crimson-clad vampire threw out his arm, eyes wide as he looked up at Azriel. “The King?”
Stepping aside, Ariadne gestured for Azriel to come forward. He shrugged the corpse from his shoulder, then threw it into the crowd, where it landed in a heap of gold, putting an end to the fighting that continued farthest from them. “The King of Valenul is dead!”
A hush fell amongst the vampires while, simultaneously, the dhemons and fae and mages broke into a loud cheer. Familiar, steady pounding began as the dhemons stomped their feet in their war beat. A cry went up from them, and, picking up the wordvhaltrin, Ariadne could only guess that they were repeating Azriel’s declaration in their language.
The cheers rose from outside the tower as the news was passed throughout the Hub. Slowly, oh so slowly, the fighting ceased. The vampires looked around for their officers, waiting for the latest orders. Caersans nearest Loren’s body crouched and turned him face-up, then looked between one another in shock.
“Surrender,” Azriel demanded. “Or I will bring this entire kingdom to its knees by force.”
Not one of the Caersans moved at first. They turned, still looking for their commanding officers, to find no one draped in a red cloak nearby. Then, one by one, the vampires dropped their swords. The metal clattered as it fell to the stone floor, echoing off the walls in a finite proclamation of their acquiescence.
“I want every Valenul soldier on the training grounds,” Azriel ordered, his voice booming off the walls. He switched into the dhemon language, speaking directly to his people, who moved into action immediately by taking hold of the nearest crimson-clad soldier and pointing out the open doors.
As the tower emptied, the commands were echoed by Caersans and dhemons alike across the Hub, their voices carried by strong wings to bring an end to the last of the fighting. Ariadne watched them go, stunned at how quickly the vampires yielded.If anything, she anticipated a greater push-back once they saw proof of Loren’s death.
They followed the soldiers’ exit into what had become a near-white-out blizzard. Ariadne paused, still protected by the tower entrance’s overhang, and stared out as everyone marched towards the training grounds, dragons now swooping low overhead in a steady reminder that Azriel’s words were a viable threat. With this massive faction of the army now surrendered, they controlled both Eastwood and Central Provinces. Only Waer and Notten remained standing, and those stationed there would be brought back soon enough.
“What are we going to do now?” Ariadne looked up at her husband, interlacing her gloved fingers with his.
Azriel’s throat bobbed, then he turned his red gaze to her. “We build something new.”
Emillie did not know how long she sat at Luce’s side once she had been permitted to reenter the medic tent. Minutes spanned into hours, yet she tucked her fingers under her partner’s unmoving paw and laid her cheek over the soft brown fur. A hollowness unlike anything Emillie had ever felt before threatened to swallow her whole, each heartbeat an ache akin to dying.
Again and again she heard Phulan’s words from those first few horrible seconds of staring at Luce’s too-still lycan body on her cot.
“I’ve done all I can,” the mage had said as she took Emillie’s hand and led her through the tent flaps. “Now it’s up to her.”
Up to her.
As though Luce, in her right mind, would ever choose to leave. At least…Emillie did not believe she would want anything of the sort.
The pike had been removed from Luce’s broad wolven chest, which now moved in slow and shallow breaths. Every drop of blood was cleared away so her fur clumped and glistened with salve. The sharp scent of healing herbs, usually soothing in this tent as a reminder of their medicinal effects, now buried in her nostrils with aggressive determination to scar her memory.
“Stay with me,” Emillie whispered, throat burning around each syllable even as no tears dropped from her eyes. She had cried too much already; there was nothing more to give. Still, she was not above begging.
After all, she could not lose someone else she loved. She sent Ariadne to Algorath without knowing if she would ever see her sister again; a different type of pain and sorrow that had been relieved upon finding her sister in the mountains. But that had not compared to the very real and evident loss of her father, murdered before her eyes mere minutes after she claimed to want him dead. Kyra left not long thereafter, followed by Alek’s brutal fight and subsequent death.
Four of those she held closest in all the world had been ripped from her, some by her own doing, and to lose another?
Emillie could not fathom walking back out of that tent. Not when she had found the woman with whom she wished to spend the rest of her long life beside. The thought of walking away from her partner…gods, hermate? Someone who loved her and whom she loved more fiercely than she could ever imagine?
No.
She would not.
Could not.
“Please, Luce,” Emillie breathed, stroking back the soft fur at the lycan’s neck with her free hand. “Please do not leave me.”
“She has not left you,” said a soft voice just behind her. Emillie did not need to look back to know who stood there.
Sucking in a sharp breath, Emillie slipped her fingers through the soft brown hair and gripped. “I am so frightened, Margot.”
The old Caersan settled in beside her. “I know precisely how you are feeling.”
Emillie’s heart throbbed, and she bit back the harsh words that attempted to slip free. Of course Margot Caldwell knew all too well the pain of losing those she loved. After all, she had lit her own daughter's funeral pyre. Lit those she believed to be her grandsons. Then, most recently, she said farewell to the man to whom she had been married for millennia.
