No. Not if Graves never left Faerie. And I well and truly doubt he did.
“They’re using siege formation.” I’d know. I created it. With Davis. With my team. It’s what we were good at, howwe survived. “Standard encampment purge protocol. Surround, suppress, eliminate.”
Everyone turns to look at me.
“How do you know that?” Orion asks.
“Because I helped design it.”
Shame burns the back of my neck. How was I so lost in myself that I was blind to the world around me?
I taught four teams that formation. Watched them drill it until it was muscle memory. Then I signed off on the final assessment myself.
I thought I was protecting my country.
I was building the machine that ate my own people.
The guilt is there for exactly one second before rage swallows it whole.
“They don’t know who’s here,” Morrigan says, with a touch of excitement that should terrify me. Instead it energizes me. “They think this is just another encampment.”
“Then let’s educate them.” Badb’s smile shows too many teeth. “I do so love teaching lessons.”
We pause just inside the tavern. Peering out I see the tree line, the hidden men in trees.
Always above. Always. Especially if you have an easy cover like trees. People always forget to look up.
From here I see a few in the first row of trees, some deeper.
“They probably have us surrounded,” I whisper, trying to count the odds. “A dozen at least I’d say.”
But they’re not expecting three war goddesses, a father god, an Unseelie prince, a Wild Court guardian, and me.
Whatever the fuck I am now.
Morrigan moves first. One moment she’s standing beside me, the next she’s a blur of black feathers and ancient fury. Her body shoots through the air right at the top of the trees, cuttingthrough the first unit like they’re made of paper. Blood sprays in arcs that catch the purple twilight.
Badb laughs, actually laughs, as she tears into the second unit. Her form shifts between woman and something else, something with too many angles and not enough mercy.
Macha doesn’t make a sound. She just kills. Efficient. Methodical. Bodies dropping in her wake like leaves in autumn.
Dagda... Dagda is terrifying in a different way. He doesn’t fight like a warrior. He fights like a force of nature. The ground itself rises to meet the attackers, roots erupting from soil to drag them down, stones launching themselves with bone-shattering force.
Kieran’s shadows consume everything they touch. I watch a mercenary vanish into darkness, his scream cutting off mid-breath. For one second our eyes meet across the chaos, ice-blue finding whatever color mine are now, and something passes between us that doesn’t need words.
I see you.
I see you, too.
Then I’m moving. Fully outside in the open. They’re everywhere. Maybe three dozen.
Orion burns. That’s the only word for it. His fire isn’t the controlled flame I’ve seen before. It’s wildfire, hungry and indiscriminate, turning attackers to ash before they can get within twenty feet. His fire arcs past me close enough to singe my hair, and he doesn’t apologize. Just grins. The wild thing in him recognizing the wild thing in me.
And me?
A Seelie warrior breaks through the chaos, blade aimed at my throat. I raise my hand instinctively?—
And thorns explode from my palm.
