But there was no truth or lie that might soothe her.
No truth or lie to save the army on the plain.
Elide found her companions and their allies not in a council room, but gathered on the battlements. As if bodies and gore didn’t lie around them.
She cringed at each step through blood both black and red, trying not to meet the sightless eyes of fallen soldiers. She’d been sent by Yrene to see how Chaol fared—a panting, fearful question from a wife who had not heard anything of his fate since the battle began.
After hours helping the healers, Elide had been desperate to escape the room that reeked of blood and refuse. Yet any relief at the fresh air, at the ended battle, had been short-lived when she saw the bloody battlements. When she noted her companions’ pale faces, their tense words. All of them were gazing between the mountains and the battlefield.
Something had gone wrong. Something was wrong.
The battlefield stretched into the distance, healers darting amongst the felled bodies with white banners high to indicate their locations. So many. So many dead and wounded. A sea of them.
Elide reached Chaol’s side just as Nesryn Faliq leaped atop her beautiful ruk, launching into a dive for the army below. No—the other ruks.
Elide laid a hand on Lord Chaol’s shoulder, drawing his attention from where he watched Nesryn fly off. Blood-splattered, but his bronze eyes were clear.
And full of terror.
Any message that Yrene had given Elide faded from her memory. “What’s wrong?”
It was Aelin who answered, her bloodied armor strange and ancient. A vision of old. “The dam is going to break,” the queen said hoarsely. “And wipe away anyone on the plain.”
Oh gods. Oh gods.
Elide glanced between them, and knew the answer to her next question: What can be done?
Nothing.
Ruks took to the skies, flapping toward them, soldiers in their talons and clinging to their backs.
“Has anyone warned the healers?” Elide pointed to the white banners waving so far out into the plain. “The Healer on High?” Hafiza was down there, Yrene had said.
Silence. Then Prince Sartaq swore in his own tongue, and sprinted for his golden ruk. He was spearing for the battlefield within seconds, his shouts ringing out. Kadara dipped every few moments, and when she rose again, another small figure was in her talons. Healers. Grabbing as many of them as he could.
Elide whirled to her companions as soldiers began running for the keep, trampling corpse and injured alike. Orders went out in the language of the southern continent, and more soldiers on the battlefield leaped into action.
“What else—what else can we do?” Elide demanded. Aelin and Rowan only stared toward the battlefield, watching with Fenrys and Gavriel as the ruks raced to save as many as they could. Behind them, Princess Hasar paced, and Chaol and his father murmured about where they might fit everyone in the keep. Those who survived.
Elide looked at them again. Looked at all of them.
And then asked quietly, “Where is Lorcan?”
None of them turned.
Elide asked, louder, “Where is Lorcan?”
Gavriel’s tawny eyes scanned hers, confusion dancing there. “He … he went out onto the battlefield during the fighting. I saw him just before the khagan’s troops reached him.”
“Where is he?” Elide’s voice broke. Fenrys faced her now. Then Rowan and Aelin. Elide begged, voice breaking, “Where is Lorcan?”
From their stunned silence, she knew they hadn’t so much as wondered.
Elide whirled to the battlefield. To that endless stretch of fallen bodies. Soldiers fleeing. Many of the wounded being abandoned where they lay.
So many bodies. So, so many soldiers down there.
“Where.” No one answered. Elide pointed toward the battlefield and snarled at Gavriel, “Where did you see him join with the khagan’s forces?”
“Nearly on the other side of the field,” Gavriel answered, voice strained, and pointed across the plain. “I—I didn’t see him after that.”
“Shit,” Fenrys breathed.
Rowan said to him, “Use your magic. Jump to the field, find him, and bring him back.”
Relief crumpled Elide’s chest.
Until Fenrys said, “I can’t.”
“You didn’t use it once during the battle,” Rowan challenged. “You should be fully primed to do it.”
Fenrys blanched beneath the blood on his face, and cast pleading eyes to Elide. “I can’t.”
Silence fell on the battlements.
Then Rowan growled, “You won’t.” He pointed with a bloody finger to the battlefield. “You’d let him die, and for what? Aelin forgave him.” His tattoo scrunched as he snarled again. “Save him.”
Fenrys swallowed. But Aelin said, “Leave it, Rowan.”
Rowan snarled at her too.
She snarled right back. “Leave it.”
Some unspoken conversation passed between them, and the hope flaring in Elide’s chest went out as Rowan backed down. Gave Fenrys an apologetic nod. Fenrys, looking like he was going to be sick, just faced the battlefield again.
Elide backed away a step. Then another.
Lorcan couldn’t be dead.
She would know if he were dead. She would know it, in her heart, her soul, if he were gone.
He was down there. He was down there, in that army, perhaps injured and bleeding out—
No one stopped her as Elide raced inside the keep. Each step limped, pain cracking through her leg, but she didn’t falter as she hit the interior stairwell and plunged into the chaos.
She had made him a promise.
She had sworn him an oath, all those months ago.
I will always find you.
Soldiers and healers fled up the stairs, shoving past Elide. The shouting was near-deafening, bouncing off the ancient stones. She battled her way down, sobbing through her teeth.
I will always find you.
Pushing, elbowing, bellowing at the frantic people who ran past her, Elide fought for each step downward. Toward the gates.
People screamed, a never-ending flood surging up the stairs. Still Elide pushed her way down, losing a step here, another there. They did not even look at her, even try to clear a way as they flowed upward. It was only when Elide lost another step that she roared into the stairwell, “Clear a path for the queen!”
No one listened, so she did it again. She filled her voice with command, with every ounce of power that she’d seen the Fae males use to intimidate their opponents. “Clear a path for the queen!”
This time, people pressed against the walls. Elide took the small opening, and screamed her order again and again, ankle barking with every step down.
But she made it. Made it to the chaotic lower level, to the open gates teeming with soldiers. Beyond them, bodies stretched into the horizon. Warriors and healers and those bearing the wounded rushed toward any stairwell they could find.
Elide managed all of five limping steps toward the open gate before she knew it would be impossible. To cross the field, to find him on the endless plain, before that dam burst and he was swept away. Before he was gone forever.
He was not dead.
He was not dead.
I will always find you.
Elide scanned the gates, the skies for any sign of a ruk that might carry her. But they soared to the upper levels, crawling with soldiers and healers, some even depositing their charges onto the mountain face itself. And at ground level, none would hear her cries for help.
No soldiers would stop, either.
Elide scanned the other end of the gates’ entryway.
Beheld the horses being led out from their stables by frantic handlers, the beasts bucking at the panic around them as they were hauled toward the teeming ramps.
A black mare reared, her cry a sharp warning before she slashed her hooves at the handler. Lord Chaol’s horse. The handler shrieked and fell back, barely gra
sping the reins as the horse stomped, her ears flat to her head.
Elide did not think. Did not reconsider. She limped for the horses and the stables.
She said to the frantic handler, still backing away from the half-wild horse, “I’ll get her.”
The man, white-faced, threw her the reins. “Good luck.” Then he, too, ran.
The mare—Farasha—yanked so hard on the reins that Elide was nearly hurled across the stones. But she planted her feet, leg screaming, and said to the horse, “I have need of you, fierce-heart.” She met Farasha’s dark, raging eyes. “I have need of you.” Her voice broke. “Please.”
And gods above, that horse stilled. Blinked.
Horses and handlers streamed past them, but Elide held firm. Waited until Farasha lowered her head, as if in permission.
The stirrups were low enough thanks to Lord Chaol’s long legs that Elide could reach them. She still bit down on her shout as her weight settled on her bad ankle, as she pushed, and heaved herself into Farasha’s fine saddle. A small mercy, that they had not even had time to unsaddle the horses after battle. A set of what seemed to be braces hung from its sides, surely to keep Lord Chaol stabilized, and Elide unhooked them. Any weight, anything to slow her, had to be discarded.
Elide gathered the reins. “To the battlefield, Farasha.”
With a whinnying cry, Farasha plunged into the fray.
Soldiers leaped from their path, and Elide did not stop to apologize, did not stop for anyone, as she and the black mare charged toward the gates. Then through them.
And onto the plain.
CHAPTER 60
Rowan knew his magic would merely delay the inevitable. He’d debated flying to the dam, to see if he might hold the structure in place for just long enough, if he could not halt the river entirely, but the force of the thing on the other side … it could not be stopped.
Soldiers and healers raced for the keep, the ruks darting across the battlefield to bear those first in the water’s path to safety. But not fast enough. Even without knowing when the dam would break, it would not be fast enough.
Was Lorcan currently amongst those running, or had he managed to get onto a ruk?
“The power,” Fenrys said quietly to him, gripping the gore-slick wall. “It was the one thing Connall and I shared.”
“I know,” Rowan said. He shouldn’t have pushed. “I’m sorry.”
Fenrys just nodded. “I haven’t been able to stomach it since then. I—I’m not even certain I can use it again,” he said, and repeated, “I’m sorry.”
Rowan clapped him on the shoulder. Another thing he’d make Maeve pay for. “You might not have even found him, anyway.”
Fenrys’s jaw tightened. “He could be anywhere.”
“He could be dead,” murmured Princess Hasar.
“Or injured,” Chaol cut in, wheeling to the wall’s edge to survey the battlefield below and distant dam beyond it.
Aelin, a few feet away, gazed toward it as well, her blood-soaked hair ripping free of its braid in the harsh wind. Flowing toward those mountains, the destruction that would soon be unleashed.
She said nothing. Had done nothing since Nesryn and Sartaq brought the news. Her exact sort of nightmare, he realized, to be unable to help, to be forced to watch while others suffered. No words could comfort her, no words could fix this. Stop this.
“I could try to track him,” Gavriel offered.
Rowan shook off his creeping dread. “I’ll fly out, try to pinpoint him, and signal back to you—”
“Don’t bother,” said Princess Hasar, and Rowan was about to snarl his retort when she pointed to the battlefield. “She’s already ahead of you.”
Rowan whirled, the others following suit.
“No,” Fenrys breathed.
There, galloping across the plain on a familiar black horse, was Elide.
“Farasha,” Chaol murmured.
“She’ll be killed,” said Gavriel, tensing as if he might jump off the battlements and chase after her. “She’ll be—”
Farasha leaped over fallen bodies, weaving between the injured and dead, Elide twisting this way and that in the saddle. And from the distance, Rowan could make out her mouth moving, shouting one word, one name, over and over. Lorcan.
“If any of you go down there,” Hasar warned, “you’ll be killed, too.”
It went against every instinct, against the centuries of training and fighting he’d done with Lorcan, but the princess was right. To lose one life was better than several. Especially when he would need his cadre so badly during the rest of this war.
Lorcan would agree—had taught Rowan to make those sorts of hard calls.
Still Aelin remained silent, as if she’d descended deep within herself, and gazed at the battlefield.
At the small rider and the mighty horse racing across it.
Farasha was a tempest beneath her, but the mare did not seek to unseat Elide as they thundered across the body-strewn plain.
“Lorcan!”
Her shout was swallowed by the wind, by the screams of fleeing soldiers and people, by the shriek of the ruks above. “Lorcan!”
She searched every corpse she passed for a hint of that shining black hair, that harsh face. So many. The field of the dead stretched on forever, bodies piled several deep.
Farasha leaped over them, cutting sharp turns as Elide pivoted to look and look and look.
Darghan horses and riders ran past. Some to the keep, some to the distant forest along the horizon. Farasha wove between them, biting at those in her path.
“Lorcan!” How small her cry sounded, how feeble.
Still the dam held.
I will always find you.
And her words, her stupid, hateful words to him … Had she done this? Brought this upon him? Asked some god to do this?
Her words had all melted away the moment she’d realized he was not on the battlements. The past few months had melted away entirely.
“Lorcan!”
Unfaltering, Farasha kept moving, her black mane streaming in the wind.
The dam had to hold. It would hold. Until she brought him back to the keep.
So Elide did not stop, did not look toward the doom that lurked, waiting to be unleashed.
She rode, and rode, and rode.
Atop the battlement, Chaol didn’t know what to watch: the dam, the people fleeing its oncoming destruction, or the young Lady of Perranth, racing across the battlefield atop his horse.
A warm hand settled on his shoulder, and he knew it was Yrene without turning. “I just heard about the dam. I’d sent Elide to see if you were …” His wife’s words trailed off as she beheld the lone rider charging away from the masses thundering for the keep.
“Silba save her,” Yrene whispered.
“Lorcan’s down there,” was all Chaol said by way of explanation.
The Fae males were taut as bowstrings while the young woman crossed the battlefield bit by bit. The odds of her finding Lorcan, let alone before the dam burst …
Still Elide kept riding. Racing against death itself.
Princess Hasar said quietly, “The girl is a fool. The bravest I’ve ever seen, but a fool nonetheless.”
Aelin said nothing, her eyes distant. Like she’d retreated into herself at the realization that this sliver of hope was about to be washed away. Her friends with it.
“Hellas guards Lorcan,” Fenrys murmured. “And Anneith, his consort, watches over Elide. Perhaps they will find each other.”
“Hellas’s horse,” Chaol said.
They turned toward him, dragging their eyes from the field.
Chaol shook his head and gestured to the field, to the black mare and her rider. “I call Farasha Hellas’s horse. I’ve done so from the moment I met her.”
As if meeting that horse, bringing her here, was not as much for him as it was for this. For this desperate race across an endless battlefield.
Yrene clasped his hand, like she understood, too.<
br />
Silence fell along their section of the battlement. There were no words left to say.
“Lorcan!”
Elide’s voice broke on the cry. She’d lost count of how many times she’d shouted it now.
No sign of him.
She aimed for the lake. Closer to the dam. He would have chosen the lake for its defensive advantages.
Bodies were a blur beneath, around them. So many Valg lying on the field. Some reached pale hands for Farasha. As if they’d grab her, rip her apart, beg her for help.
The mare trampled them into the mud, bone snapping and skulls cracking.
He had to be out here. Had to be somewhere. Alive—hurt, but alive.
She knew it.
The lake was a gray sprawl to her left, a mockery of the hell to be unleashed at any moment.
“Lorcan!”
They’d reached the heart of the battlefield, and Elide slowed Farasha enough to stand in the stirrups, biting down on the agony in her ankle. She had never felt so small, so inconsequential. A speck of nothing in this doomed sea.
Elide dropped back into the saddle, nudged the horse with her heels, and tugged Farasha farther toward the glittering silver expanse. He had to have gone to the lake.
The horse plunged into motion, her chest heaving like a mighty bellows.
On and on, black and golden armor, blood and snow and mud. The dam still held.
But there—
Elide yanked on the reins, slowing the charging horse.
There, not too far from the water’s edge, lay a patch of felled Morath soldiers. A swath of them. Not a single set of golden armor. Even where the khagan’s army had swept through, they had lost soldiers. The distribution across the battlefield had by no means been even, but there had been corpses in golden armor amongst the mass of black.
Yet here, there were none. No arrows or spears, either, to account for the felling of so many.
A veritable road of Valg demons flowed ahead.
Elide followed it. Scanned every corpse, every helmeted face, her mouth going dry. On and on, the wake of his destruction went.
So many. He had killed so many.
Her breath rasped in her throat as they neared the end of that trail of death, where golden bodies again began to appear.
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