“Luca.” Amarande wasn’t sure how loud her voice was. Nor how loud it needed to be—they were finally getting close to Geneva now. “Do you hear her? Alasne is screaming at Tala, accusing him of being Jericho—”
“I hear it, Ama,” Luca gritted out, yanking his sword out of the gut of a fallen Warlord woman. “We cannot litigate this now.”
“But what if he joins them? How many of your resistance fighters will—”
“I don’t know.” Luca grabbed her hand. “All I know is we must focus on those who come at us. Whether they’re the Warlord’s or Talmage’s they’ll show themselves the moment they cross our blades. Come on, I have a plan.”
Amarande ran with him but couldn’t help herself and tried to geteyes on Tala.Talmage.Koldo was right about this, too. She shouldn’t have come. They shouldn’t have trusted him. And now—
“Warlord!” Luca screamed at the top of his lungs—as loud as Alasne, as loud as the thundering hooves and agonized wails—and dropped Amarande’s hand to wave both of his arms up high and obvious. “Over here!”
Amarande’s feet and heart skidded to a stop.
Luca’s plan to end the battle wasn’t simply to rush the Warlord, it was to use himself as bait.
Just as Geneva expected.
CHAPTER 21
OUTINGand shaming Talmage after his absence, silence, and apparent betrayal was indeed enjoyable, but it was not why Geneva was here.
No, the wolf cub with noble blood and the right ink was priority number one. The key to the Torrent was the murder of the Otsakumea. They weren’t here to make a statement. They were here to act—stamp out, quash, kill.
Alasne could torment Talmage. Geneva would end the Otxoa once and for all.
One quick slash against this rebellion—an assassin’s smile. Over and done. And the Otsakumea was all butaskingfor it to happen.
“Warlord!” Again, the voice called as Geneva wheeled her stallion toward where she’d first heard his call. She was more satisfied than she should have been that he was using her title rather than her given name. That boy could stoke her reputation all he liked before he bled out. “Leave my people be! You want me.”
Yes. Yes, she did.
And she would have him.
But first, she had to find him. The battle was chaos, even from a high vantage point atop her silver steed. For all her fearsome reputation, Geneva actually had very little experience in a battle of this magnitude. The ruins of bodies mingled with the ruins of the camp, the stench of burning flesh competing with the smell of blood in the new morning air, everything a haze as the sun rose about her shoulders. The play of shadows and the smoke of the firepit cast every body—moving or otherwise—in the same thick gray haze.
Geneva needed him to speak again. The best bait to use was something of a dare and a jest.
“As many of you can call my name as have working tongues, but you cannot pull the same trick you did before, wolf cub,” she warned,fierce grin flashing against the pewter and fire. “I’ll know those dimples when I see them.”
Her voice was as loud and full of showmanship as Alasne’s—it was a trait every Warlord learned to wield—and Geneva knew her people and his were following the course of her horse, bracing for a confrontation.
In the end it didn’t matter that she had that boy’s handsome face memorized well enough that if she set eyes upon it even in the chaos, she’d know it on sight. It didn’t matter because instead of calling out to her and testing her knowledge, the Otsakumea simply stood, waving both hands in the air, the sword in his grip reflecting the firepit flames with white flashes of light.
A beacon.
“Warlord!” For the third time he shouted her preferred name—asking for a fight.
Asking for the end.
It was so overt that Geneva reflexively scanned the perimeter around him, wondering if he was trying to set a trap. Instead of members of the Otxoa resistance lying in wait, she found a panting black wolf—and Amarande.
Of course, she was here.
Of course, she was with him.
Foolish girl.
Her daughter stood next to the wolf cub, tense and scowling. She wore a full ball gown, bleeding red and wrinkled from sleep. But the formal wear did not deter Amarande as she crouched, on guard, a clearlyusedsword up in a mid-block, slick blood and shining steel shimmering against the firelight as if it were aflame itself.
