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Twenty-Two

Adry’s fingers shook as she tried to lace her vambrace. Her stomach squiggled, all fluttery and knotted at the same time. She hadn’t been able to choke down more than a couple of bites of breakfast. Probably just as well. From what she heard, she was likely to vomit whatever she’d eaten once the battle was over.

She’d wanted this. She’d dreamed of this day for most of her life. And yet she hadn’t anticipated the intensity of her fear. What if she got out on that battlefield and froze? What if she couldn’t be Laesornysh like her father?

“Let me.” Her dacha’s quiet tone wrapped around her as he reached for the laces of her vambrace. With gentle and strangely steady fingers, he tugged the laces tight.

“Linshi.” Her voice squeaked past the tightness in her throat.

“It is all right to be scared, sena.” Dacha’s eyes remained on her vambrace rather than lifting to hers.

“I know. It’s normal.” She sucked in a deep, shaky breath. She could do this. If Merrik and Fieran could fly into battle in the skies over and over again, then surely she could do the same at Dacha’s side here on the ground.

Once he’d tied the laces of her left vambrace, he started on her right. As he finished, his gaze finally lifted to meet hers. “You do not have to do this.” He searched her face, his expression both hard and somehow aching. “You will never be forced into battle.”

No, she wouldn’t. Her dacha would destroy himself fighting before he let any of his children be forced into war.

And yet she had been born with the magic of the ancient kings. In her veins ran a legacy of death and destruction, the proof that she was born for war.

She couldn’t shirk her duty, nor did she wish to. She would stand at her dacha’s side and fight this battle, no matter what it cost her soul.

“I know. But I need to fight.” Adry straightened her spine and faced Dacha squarely. “I need to do this.”

He heaved a sigh and looked away again. “I wish you did not. I would keep you from ever experiencing war if I could.”

She swallowed, her throat tightening even more at the underlying pain in her dacha’s voice. She’d caught glimpses of his scars over the years, both the ones etched into his skin and those on his soul. There had been those mornings when she was little when her mama would quietly tell her and Fieran to give Dacha space for a while. The times she’d flung herself into her dacha’s hug with all the confidence of a little girl, only to have him flinch.

Would she become like that? She’d seen the way war had left her brother harder and sharper-edged than before. It had left a deep mark on Merrik, even beyond the loss of his leg.

She would never be the same after today. She knew that. Accepted that reality and what it would mean for her future.

That still didn’t make it any easier to face her dacha, nod, and step away. “I’m going to be all right, Dacha. You’ve trained me for this.”

From the time she’d been young, he’d drilled her with both her sword and her magic. Shortly before war broke out, he’d taken both Adry and Louise to the bomb range at Fort Charibert in Escarland. There, he’d had them practice incinerating machine gun bullets and deflecting the shells from the large guns. He’d even had them incinerate pig carcasses so that they’d know what it would feel like to destroy flesh and bone with their magic.

“You are trained, but no one is fully prepared for their first battle.” Dacha’s jaw worked, his voice going rough. “But you will do well, of that I have no doubt.”

The pride in her dacha’s voice warmed her, helping to still some of her trembling. Her dacha trusted her to go into battle at his side. She wouldn’t let him down.

Uncle Iyrinder and the other six guards stood by the entrance to the bunker, ready and waiting. All of their gear—from their bedrolls to their spare sets of boots—had been packed up and now lay in a pile. Some of the support personnel would move the gear forward once the front lines were stabilized that night.

She wore her fighting leathers, made of flexible, padded leather with sections of metal armor plating. It was perhaps a relic of an older time and previous war, since the metal plating wouldn’t stop modern bullets.

But she and her dacha didn’t need their armor to stop bullets. They had their magic for that. The padding and plating were to protect them during hand-to-hand combat.

Dacha reached over his shoulders, touched the hilts of each of his swords, and strode toward the cluster of guards.

Adry followed close at his heels, the guards parting and assembling into pairs behind them as they made their way from the bunker and into the narrow trenches.

Aunt Vriska met them before a ladder that led upward out of the trench and into the empty stretch of land between the two armies. Behind her, a mass of trolls and elves assembled, packing the trenches and waiting to follow her into battle.

Dacha nodded to Aunt Vriska, and she gave a solemn nod in return. It seemed that was the only exchange that the two experienced warriors needed.

Then Dacha grasped the rungs of the ladder and climbed up, rolling to his feet at the top.

Drawing a deep breath, Adry followed, rising to her feet at his side.

Dacha glanced at her, that aching pain in his eyes. “Sena…”