He could feel her restlessness, could sense her unease.
She blasted out of the sky and landed in front of him. The gust of her wings sent the trees into a whirl of motion like a coming storm as the ground cracked and splintered, spreading out in a web beneath her taloned claws. Her golden eyes seared into him with a warning.
Wordlessly, he gripped the knotted rope on her side and jumped onto her back, settling himself into the leather saddle with ease. She pushed off the ground, barreling into the sky. He held on, determination coursing through him as the view below turned from pure forest green to dry, cracked lands, then clouds. After a half-hour flying north, he could finally hear the screams—could smell the flesh that burned.
A horn blared, followed by a softer blow several miles away. The horns would blow across the entire kingdom, alerting each village of the attack. There were different cadences for each warning; the first blare to alert which territory, the next to indicate which direction from the centermost point of the territory, and the last to tell how many miles away it was.
He paused, listening intently to the horns—a pattern only the warriors had been taught. And as the first horn blew again, he knew.
Drogheda was being attacked.
The outskirts of Drogheda dipped into the western waters of the Andronicus, where the rebels must have finally broken past, overwhelming the naval unit with their sheer size. They’d been trying to advance further past the border for years, hauling cannons, swords, and weapons of all kinds, pushing countless amounts of fae onto this side of Zenovia in their campaign north. But so far, Daimon, his fleet, and the ground soldiers stationed at the mountains had kept them at bay. Each force had its own stronghold firmly planted on either side of the long mountain range that split the continent.
Making it this far into the border was their boldest move yet. Usually, any one of the fleets should have seen the shipscoming… Daimon cursed this morning’s foggy weather blighting any chances for that.
Zephyr roared, an alpha calling her unit to the skies, as Daimon directed their flurry of motion toward the coast. He would kill every damned one of the traitors he came across. His nostrils flared and his blood rushed in his ears.
Coming down from the clouds, water came into view. The Andronicus Sea thrashed with the onslaught of vengeance and fury, the wind tossing waves and the current violently sweeping ships side to side. The empire’s fleet was chasing the rebel ships to shore, the Undine aboard manipulating the currents to push them back. One of the rebel ships had already made a clean break from the skirmish, anchoring near a shoal. Soldiers were exiting on a wide plank, carting cannons through the shallow water onto the beach. The Valon soldiers jumped from their ships, fighting to take down the cannons being brought to shore.
The rebels held fast to their weaponry, circling it and raising their swords. Cries of the wounded pierced the air, mingling with shouts of rage. Where one rebel fell, two more took their place, blade in hand. In mere seconds, bodies lay scattered along the shore, some still and lifeless while others writhed in pain.
Daimon hovered with Zephyr above the water’s edge, calculating to determine what his first command would be. The calm he felt in this moment always accompanied him before a battle. His heart beat swiftly in anticipation, but his mind was quiet. Ready. Zephyr perched them atop a rocky cliff, large enough to spy on the chaos below but covered enough that they weren’t spotted. She shifted beneath him, growing restless as the screams intensified.
The rebels fought relentlessly, most of their troops at sea but close to anchoring more to breach land. Their clothing was simple, not even a cheap metal armor to cover them. But one thing they all had in common: they werefurious, their faces twisted with rage.
Death came swiftly in these battles—enough to make anymale second-guess running into the chaos—but that wasn’t why Daimon always paused before entering the fray. It was because his shadows seemed to hum in anticipation every time he was close to a rebel, a reminder of the same darkness inside him.
Zephyr stretched her wings out, sending a shot of restlessness into Daimon’s chest.
“The fleet is almost here,” Daimon soothed, then, quieter, said, “Come on, just hold on a little longer.” He could feel them, and from the way Zephyr kept glancing behind them, he knew she felt their nearness, too.
They were the Alpha Fleet, the head aerial legion he commanded. He was in charge of ten beta fleets, most of them closer to the palace, but this was his pride. The finest weapon of the Valon Empire. And the closest thing to family he’d ever had.
Early in the war, the fleet didn’t have a solid strategy. Whoever made it first to the battle would charge in to save as many as they could. Without hesitation, they rushed into the fray to keep the enemies at bay until the rest of the unit arrived. Fearless against any opponent. For a time.
Before Graddock.
The ground troops had been held back trying to save those aboard a sinking Valon fleet, leaving Graddock to face the long lines of archers alone. His wyvern was felled, struck alone by at least a hundred arrows. The rest of the fleet arrived just in time to watch their comrade plummet out of the sky, falling into the Andronicus below.
Graddock died with his wyvern in the graveyard beneath the waves.
It was the hardest lesson Daimon had to learn in the early days of the war. Now, they waited for the rest of the unit to arrive, no matter how their instincts screamed to jump into battle. The wind whirred in a loud, unnatural groan, and the clouds grew darker beneath the shadows of soaring Riders. He rolled his neck, cracking it from side to side. Zephyr stretched her wings out, preparing for action.
His flight had arrived.
Vero—Brielle’s wyvern—was the first beast to descend from the clouds, a solid wall of leathery muscle and the biggest of the flight. The rest of the unit quickly emerged from the misty white clouds, their wings swirling the air around them as they lowered out of the sky.
With a grim look of determination, Daimon patted Zephyr’s neck and said, “Wings up, Z.”
She shot into the sky, eager to join her fleet. Brielle guided Vero over to settle on Daimon’s right, her cropped hair covered by a wyvern-scale helmet that formed into a sharp point down the middle of her nose.
Keir, leader of the Aegis, joined just behind Daimon on his left on the wings of Codax. Keir was brash, ready to fight at every breath. He was Daimon’s third, ready to listen to his every word.
“Ranick and Elias, take the beach to help any of the wounded,” Daimon barked over the wind, and then turned to his left. “Keir and Willow, take air above the reef as the naval units roll in.”
“Yes, Commander!” the four shouted as they broke apart from formation, diving downward in pairs of two as they always did.
Alwayswatch your partner’s back—those were the rules.
