“An hour or two. Agravayn’s forces will push in from the west, while General Ache leads from the sea.” They had not given him any more particulars. His task was to assess the disposition of the enemy—the succubus horde that had attacked the humans who’d taken up residence on the Spit in the last several months.
There had been no sign of the darkness as they crossed the plains. No ruined bodies—not the skeletal black monsters that the succubus became once they’d inhabited a body long enough, nor the eviscerated remains of their human victims. The absence was almost eerie. How many humans were on the Spit, that they could keep the horde occupied for so long? The humans could not possibly be holding them back. Did that meant that succubus were… feeding?
Evander suddenly wished he’d remained back with the army to hear the human’s report in full.
But Mya had begun to move. Up the bluff, her steps steady despite the miles they’d walked. She reached the apex—the sound she made sent a knife of fear straight into Evander’s gut. A terrible gasp. A keening. Mourning.
He closed those feet between them in seconds.
If he made a sound to match Mya’s, he did not hear or notice it.
“You asked if sealing the sea was a mistake.”
He should have known. He may have never fought in a war—he’d been a Goldstone Guard, not a solider. But he understood what it meant to be outmatched. He’d fought against the succubus enough to know that even joining forces with the elementals, they were fighting a war that they were destined to lose. Their enemy did not tire. They did not retreat.
Below them, the bluff dropped down in a sheer cliff face. The natural barrier was the reason they had not seen any destruction. Evander could just make out the trail down, but it was winding and narrow. He could see why the succubus had not bothered to scale it. There were plenty of humans to feed on below, on that narrow strip of land that stretched out like a finger into the Split Sea until it disappeared into the distance.
Or at least, there had been.
As far as he could see was darkness.
Evander reached for Mya’s hand. “No, I don’t think it was.”
47
VEYKA
Void.
Rift.
Portal.
I went through the void. I brought others through a rift. I created a portal.
I was the darkness of the void between realms and the light that waited on the other side. I was infinite, spinning through the darkness and then commanding it, bending the realms to my will to create safe passage not for one, but for thousands.
I was power.
The first portal I’d opened in Eilean Gayl was difficult—painful, even. I’d felt the weight of each body that passed through. But it became easier each time.
The cost has already been paid.Arthur had died for me to have this power. I would not waste it.
Arran did not hold any of our forces back. All twenty-some thousand terrestrial troops came through the portal rift I opened on the hillside above the eastern end of the Crossing. I did not ask his reasoning because I did not want to hear the wordsspoken aloud. If we were defeated here, there would be no second battle.
But if this war ended with our loss—our deaths—at least it would be in defense of life.
The female who’d raged against the humans, who’d tried to murder a messenger in her own throne room, was gone. The queen who’d taken her place… I was still not sure that I truly knew her and all her facets. But she loved and was loved in return—a reality I could not have fathomed even a year ago.
If I died defending the humans, then so be it.
But I wanted to live.
As the last line of terrestrials stepped through, I let the portal close behind them. Only Lyrena and I remained in the deserted war camp.
She lifted one golden eyebrow. “Fancy a nap?”
I burst out laughing. Only my golden knight could have managed such a thing, with the tension coming off of me in waves. “Maybe later,” I smiled.
