In her mind, she wasn’t alone. Arms wrapped around her waist from behind and pressed her into the low stone wall that lined the veranda, surface warm from the sun. Her midriff was bare, loose breeches tied at her belly button. Her inky hair lifted in the breeze.
Reid placed his chin on her shoulder.
As they neared the fortress, she was still there in another time, another place, another world.
And in that vision, she turned her head and laid her cheek against Reid’s, neither of them having anything pressing to do but stay right where they were.
CHAPTER
4
Reid spun, thrusting his polearm between the plates of an enemy soldier’s armor. A hook at the end of the weapon caught in the man’s gut, tangling his intestines. Reid yanked the weapon back. A scream tore from his opponent’s throat before the man fell to his knees and then onto his face in the viscous mud that coated the edge of the Innisjour riverbank.
If people ran, they lived. If they stayed in their homes, they lived.
If they fought, they died.
The first village that Reid’s forces took left a crimson stain upon the Asteryan map. It had taken weeks to cross the continent this way, though his initial descent into northernAsterya had lasted only days. Civilians had been displaced, the northern provinces of Asterya studded with the bodies of Asteryan mercenaries—Reid would carry that choice until the day he died. The shared border between Asterya and Icruria was now blurred, having been stretched to the point of snapping.
A scream sounded to the right. One of his men’s fire lances ignited, sending flames directly into the face of an Innisjour soldier. Another man darted at Reid from the left. He turned, driving the blade into the man’s gut. Sweat dripped down Reid’s forehead. He’d been blinking it from his eyes and wiping mud from his face for weeks now. Asteryans functioned on organized assaults; Icrurians did not fight that way. It was madness the way Reid’s men broke through the Asteryan lines all around him, weaving and turning in formations that to someone with inferior training might appear random. To his left, men fell into the water to put out the flames from the fire lances, but fights raged from vessels upon the river, too.
The dam built in Innisjour by Vaasa’s father had choked the water supply to eastern Icruria. It had been the key to the late Emperor Kozár’s strategy; to cut Icruria off from the water was to cut the east off from its agriculture. The resulting drought and famine had left the region in shambles and given rise to the rebellion that had almost ruined Reid’s claim to headman. At the election, Ton of Wrultho had conspired with Reid’s own advisor to stage a coup. Both of those men were now at the bottom of the Settara, the salt lake Reid had called home his entire life.
The fissure between Icrurian territories was still wide. Which meant that if Reid wanted to gather an army large enough to conquer Asterya’s capital, he needed more than their central forces. And their navy. He needed militias—and there were no better militias than the ones trained in Wrultho and Hazut.
He needed to make amends with those cities, which meant Innisjour’s dam would need to fall.
And fall it would.
There was a singular thrill that coursed in Reid’s veins as he moved, sinking his weapon into the side of another man. Adrenaline beating, heart thudding against his own breastplate, mud and blood spraying upon his face; violence was easy, dancing in tandem with his anger and fear. It took energy to be gentle. Most of the time, Reid thought it worth the effort.
Not now.
Not with his wife halfway across the continent, locked in his greatest enemy’s capital.
The thought of Vaasa’s raven hair, her indigo eyes alight with fear, blood smeared across her cheeks and hands, fueled each thrust of his weapon. Two more men fell. A third. Reid could practically hear his father’s voice in his ear as he fought, guiding him, warning him, providing him the sixth sense that told him to spin and lift his polearm, the axe blade settled beneath the protruding, deadly hook at the end of the spear slicing through the arm of a soldier with a raised sword.
With each enemy vanquished, he wondered if it was enough. If anything would ever be enough to sate his rage.
Body after body approached, and each one fell. Reid left a trail of them as Innisjour shook with his force’s descent. And then whispers threaded the air, turning to a billowing white flag as the young lord of Innisjour instructed his men to retreat.
Weary and battle-worn, Reid approached Lord Rezek of Innisjour outside the grounds of his estate. The young man could only be at the start of his third decade, his inexperience only serving to make him seem younger. Fear washed over the lord’s soft features—his clean, bloodless, untouched face.
Lord Rezek wore clothing Reid recognized as classically Asteryan, similar to the ones Vaasa had arrived at Mireh in, the long pants and threaded cloaks like her brother and Ozik had donned when they visited. Pristine, expensive, entirely kempt.This lord had not fought today. He’d hidden in his estate upon the river, protecting his wealth instead of the lives of his people.
Reid gestured his forces forward as the sky turned shades of red and orange, the day transitioning into night. The young lord protested in frantic Asteryan as Reid’s men pulled at his arms and kicked him to his knees before the iron gate that protected his gray stone manor. Now kneeling, the man stained the front of his pants dark with urine.
Reid towered over Rezek, unmoved by his whines. “Take what you need—give every servant quarter,” he instructed his men, who marched through the iron gates.
“I have a message for you,” Lord Rezek said in shaky Asteryan, Koen translating quietly beside Reid. “You cannot kill me.”
Reid was too tired to play games. His arms felt heavy, his weapon even more so. “Speak, or your head will roll.”
Koen translated again, and the lord’s eyes went wide. “I have papers,” he rushed. “In my coat pocket. A delivery from Mekës itself. I was instructed to give these to you. I was told it would save my life.”
Reid froze as Koen translated the words.
The lord had waited until his city crumbled, until the riverbank had turned red from all the spilled blood, before playing his final card. Reid waited wordlessly as one of his men pulled the documents from the lord’s pocket, handing them to Koen.
