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“I’m not going to change my mind.” Adry held his gaze without flinching. “I will fight at your side.”

He nodded and drew his swords, something about him changing in a blink from her loving dacha to the hardened warrior Laesornysh. The aching pain vanished into a hard edge. His posture shifted from gentle to lethal.

Adry drew her swords as well, the hilts familiar in her hands, the newly honed blades whispering against the leather sheaths. Every time she’d drawn these swords before, they’d been dull practice blades. Now, they were weapons, capable of killing.

Something deep within her soul had always known that she was destined to face war. She had been born for bloodshed.

Was it bad that she also knew, deep down, that she could handle it? She could handle taking a life, and it wouldn’t break her. What did that say about her as a person?

Dacha’s magic crackled down his hands and along his swords. “Stay behind me and to my right. I will cover the broader front with my magic. You can add your magic as you are able.”

While she and her dacha were skilled with both hands, they were slightly dominate with their right hands. He would be covering her left side, leaving his own left side more exposed. He was also covering the entire front with his magic instead of giving half of the front to her.

But this was her first battle. It was, perhaps, the wise thing to avoid splitting her concentration until she had more experience.

“Understood.” She mentally released the tight grip she kept on her magic. It surged through her, crackling down her swords and pooling on the ground her at feet.

After so long of holding back, she could finally unleash her magic fully. It blazed outward, and she had to work to keep it somewhat contained to the area around herself.

As she and Dacha set out at a jog across the open land, the large guns across the way boomed, puffs of smoke marking each blast. A whistle sounded overhead, and Dacha motioned with one of his swords. His magic wrapped around the shell and slung it back the way it had come, slamming it down into the enemy lines.

Uncle Iyrinder and the other elite guards followed behind Dacha and Adry, leaving plenty of space so that they weren’t in danger of being incinerated by Dacha’s or Adry’s magic.

The trenches on the far side, with their coils of barbed wire, glinting machine guns, and line of rifles pointing their black muzzles in their direction, loomed closer with each step. The machine guns’ bullets were a flash as they incinerated in the storm of Dacha’s magic. After that first shell had been slung back at them, the larger guns remained silent, as if they realized that firing more would just harm their own men more than the enemy.

Adry’s heart pounded in time with her footsteps, her palms going slick on her swords’ hilts.

Dacha’s magic flashed over the barbed wire, eating through it in a blink. With a yell, a handful of Mongavarian soldiers lunged from the trench, deciding to meet their deaths head-on rather than cower in the trench. Or, as a few others were doing, run screaming in terror.

His twin swords glinting, Dacha sliced into the oncoming enemy soldiers, even as he blasted outward with his magic.

Then two of the Mongavarian soldiers charged at her, the bayonets on the ends of their guns gleaming.

No time to think. No time to regret. She reacted as she’d been trained to do, her body taking over. The sword in her left hand came up, sweeping aside the bayonets. Laced with her magic as her blade was, it sliced right through the barrels of the guns.

With her right hand, she stabbed forward, the tip of her sword slicing through fabric and meeting the harder resistance of flesh and bone. Yet her sword plunged deep, her magic sizzling.

This close, she heard the gasp and saw the moment the light in the man’s eyes left. His body dropped, and she had to yank her sword free in time to slice it across the throat of the other soldier.

There was no time to process what she’d just done. All she could do was fight her way forward.

Rather than jumping into the trench before them and pinning themselves into a narrow area, Dacha swept his magic down into it, flushing out the Mongavarian soldiers. Those that weren’t killed outright by his magic, that was.

Dacha leapt the trench, landing lightly on the other side even as he swept his swords into the knot of soldiers facing him.

Gathering herself, Adry jumped the trench, her ankle nearly turning in the loose, slippery dirt on the far side. She regained her balance just in time to get her swords up and fend off the enemy soldiers rushing her.

She’d known battle would be awful. But she hadn’t known the way the blood would spatter, landing wet and hot on her face. She hadn’t known the stench of internal organs or flesh seared by her magic. She hadn’t known the jarring feel of her sword slicing into a body or her magic incinerating a beating heart.

Yet she pressed forward at her dacha’s side, merging her magic with his more and more as she gained a better sense of the battle. Together, they cleared the network of trenches and destroyed the abandoned machine guns and larger guns.

Behind them, the rest of the Alliance army pressed forward, protected by their magic. The few Mongavarian soldiers who remained were quickly dispatched or captured.

She sank into her magic, losing herself to its raging fury and letting that carry her forward through each blow dealt, each death wrought at her hands.

“Sena. Adry.”

She blinked, struggling to pull back from the all-consuming ferocity of her magic.