by S. M. Boyce
“Someday.”
“Someday.”
“Try to get some sleep, Braeden.”
“You, too.”
Richard nodded and opened the book. “One more chapter.”
“Whatever makes you happy.”
Braeden stood and offered his hand to shake, but Richard pulled him into a hug. Braeden leaned over and wrapped his arms around his adoptive father—the only father he truly had.
“Goodnight,” Richard said.
Braeden nodded, a knot in his throat, and turned to leave. He smiled to the darkness as he returned to his room, gratitude rushing clear down to his toes. Between Richard and Kara, Braeden had finally found his family.
Chapter 14
The Final Battle
After fourteen hours of travel, Kara and her team had made it to the Stele. She sat in a patch of underbrush, the twigs tickling her bare arm. Her grimoire sat open for hours as she waited for her vagabonds to find their positions throughout the Stele. She took a slow breath, and her heart calmed. She hated being first. Waiting sucked.
Flick yawned, his body sprawled over the dirt at her feet. He pawed the air, ears darting about as he toyed with the breezes darting by.
A page in Kara’s grimoire flipped on its own. Her heart skipped a beat, and she sat up straighter. The book turned to a note from Richard, just two words covering the page in his loose scrawl.
We’re here.
She took a deep breath. Now, she simply needed to wait for the Hillsidians and isen to find their positions among the Stele’s forests and mountains. The sun hung low in the sky, creeping toward the horizon too slowly for Kara’s taste. She wanted to get this over with.
Braeden crept to her, crouching as he adjusted the Ayavelian uniform on his body. Her eyes lingered, wondering what he’d thought as he’d pulled on the colors of the woman he hated, but she understood why he did it—the uniform could stretch as he changed form, which his Hillsidian clothes could not.
She and Braeden’s elite group of vagabonds camped out just beyond the outer wall to the Stelian capital. The black stones rose high above them, taller than even the fort in which they’d played their war game. Kara swallowed hard, suddenly debating if they’d prepared enough for this.
They hid in the trees with only about a hundred feet between them and the start of what would be the bloodiest battle in the war. The black trunks of the Stelian forest towered around them, the gray leaves of the Stelian canopy shifting in the breeze. Nothing sang. Nothing ran through the dead leaves of the forest carpet. Only silence with a dash of tree chatter.
Leaves blocked out most of the day’s remaining light, allowing only enough to outline her team’s faces in the dark. A gap in the canopy showed her the mountains, revealing enough sky for her to monitor the day as it passed. The mountain snow burned with the last red rays of the evening. Kara shifted her weight and muttered a silent wish that the day would end already.
She eyed her elite fighters—or what she could see of them in the shadows. Remy hunched by a tree, his black wings curled around his body as tightly as they would go. Four other Kirelms huddled close to him, his trusted friends and fellow isen hunters. Demnug and two other Hillsidian soldiers knelt a short way off, their eyes scanning the forest for intruders. Three Ayavelian soldiers sat in the shade, eyes closed but brows furrowed in focus. They would shift into Stelians if needed. No Lossians had been selected simply because this mission didn’t suit their strengths. No one objected because no one but these eleven knew much about the mission at all. Though the Bloods knew Braeden would enter another way, they didn’t know from where or with whom.
That was the plan, at least.
Kara’s hands shook with nerves. She rubbed them on her shirt and hugged herself to stop the shaking. Everything about their expedition risked lives—theirs, the soldiers’, the Bloods’. She eyed the recruits that would bring her and Braeden to Carden’s throne room to end the tyrant once and for all.
Eleven in total. She hoped they would be enough.
The Grimoire hummed in her hands. New handwriting appeared beneath Richard’s note, followed by new script in a flurry of entries. She scanned them, making a mental checklist of everyone who notified her they were in place: Richard with Hillside and the isen, Elana with Aurora and the Kirelm army high in the mountains, Roj with Frine and the Lossian army in the aqueducts below the city, and Rieve with Evelyn and the healers shortly behind Richard’s line.
Kara shook her head. She didn’t want Rieve anywhere near Evelyn, but they needed a vagabond to monitor the young queen. She had no choice, and it was too late to change anything now.
“Everyone’s in place,” Kara whispered to Braeden.
He nodded. His eyes shifted to hers. A rush of joy fluttered up her spine at having him close, but a flash of panic chased it away. She would have smiled if they weren’t about to go into war.
A gush of wind rushed from behind the wall. Kara flinched. Flames licked the air, only the tip of the fire peeking above the edge of the wall.
Braeden set a hand on her shoulder. “It’s just the night fires.”
Kara nodded. Of course. This was part of the plan. The night fires illuminated the darkness within the castle walls. Nothing sinister.
He pulled gently on her arm. She leaned back, turning toward him. He kissed her, his mouth lingering on hers a few seconds more than was probably appropriate given their company and purpose.
“Don’t die,” he whispered.
She laughed. “If you insist.”
“Shall we?” he asked.
She nodded and shifted the Grimoire in her lap. Flick jumped up, setting his paws on the base of the book as she fumbled with the inkwell on her neck. Black dots already lined her skin from when she popped open the cork. She pulled a short quill from its hiding place between the cover and final page and dipped it in the ink.
Let’s begin, vagabonds.
Chapter 15
Second Chances
A setting sun lit the snowcapped mountains of the Stele with a red glow. Richard, former king and now a vagabond, watched the spectacle with tired eyes and an open grimoire in his hands. He stood in a clearing on a hill overlooking the black castle, its spires towering over the wall surrounding it. The black stone fence cut into the dark forest, circling the Stelian land for who knew how long. As he waited for the command to attack, Richard tapped his finger on the portable inkwell hanging from the chain around his neck, its matching quill stuffed into the folds of the pages open before him.
Gavin stood a dozen feet off, while the muse Garrett watched from the edge of a small cliff in the hill. Patches of the Hillsidian army crouched in the trees nearby, tense as they waited for word to attack. Many of Kara’s isen brothers and sisters waited as well, though in separate groups from the yakona.
He rubbed his face, the tension of the last few months leaving bags beneath his eyes. Perhaps when this war ended, he would get a good night’s sleep. Until then, the nightmares of failing Kara and his people kept him awake. In some of his dreams, the lyth turned on the village, devouring the vagabonds he’d recruited. In other dreams, his own son Gavin marched into the camp, burning everything and everyone in sight. Every dream ended the same way: Richard sitting up in bed, drenched in sweat.
But tonight, he had to focus. Tonight, this war ended.
The black forests of the Stele stretched out all around him, endless in their growing shadows. Braeden had warned of the creatures living in the woods, but Richard had no intention of remaining outside the Stele’s walls after sundown. He waited for Kara’s command to strike, and soon the Stelian fortress would be occupied by Hillsidians.
Richard rubbed his thumb over the spine of his grimoire, his dream come true. He was a vagabond, and he had most of Ourea’s knowledge between his fingers.
The hairs on Richard’s neck stood on end. Shivers of warning shook him, tickling the back of his head. He turned in time to catch Gavin’s eye as the Blood examined Richar
d’s grimoire from a dozen feet off.
Gavin looked away, eyes scanning the forest as if he hadn’t been caught. The boy must still want the book’s knowledge. And while Richard once believed the Grimoire to be a fearsome power, he now realized it wasn’t full of dangerous magic as the Bloods always feared. It was an enchanted journal made by a powerful man—a symbol more than anything, and not to be coveted or controlled.
“Still after this thing?” Richard asked his son.
Gavin’s jaw tensed, but he shook his head. “I already learned that lesson, Father.”
Richard’s shoulders relaxed despite the brewing battle. He barely recognized his son anymore—the selfish boy was finally a man.
A breeze swept through the black leaves, the whoosh of air knocking together branches in the canopy. Gavin approached the base of a tree. Richard hesitated, unsure if this was a trick, but joined him. As they both lingered in the Stelian forest, about to attack one of the best-guarded castles in Ourea, Richard couldn’t restrain the question burning on his tongue. He paused, not wanting to distract his son before a battle, but he had to know the answer.
“Do you still hate me for leaving you?” Richard asked.
Gavin shook his head. “I did for a while. I knew the second I couldn’t find you that you’d left for the life of a vagabond, and I felt you betrayed Hillside. You betrayed me. I swore I’d never forgive you. But—”
The Blood crossed his arms and sighed. Richard waited, allowing Gavin the time to process his thoughts and decide whether or not he wanted to share further.
“I assume you know of my love for Evelyn,” Gavin said.
Richard nodded. Both he and Gavin’s mother had known, assuming it was an attraction that would fade with time. Only recently had Richard realized how wrong they were.
Gavin continued. “When we captured Kara, I freed her in the middle of the night. It just so happened that Evelyn was coming to pay Kara a visit of her own in the middle of the escape. I knocked Evelyn unconscious to allow Kara time to get out. For a brief moment, I held everything I wanted in my hands: my Evelyn and the Grimoire, which she had on her for safekeeping even if she couldn’t use it. I had both but could keep neither. Evelyn wouldn’t have me after her aunt gave her the Ayavelian bloodline, and the Grimoire was useless without Kara to read it. When I returned the Grimoire that night, I gave up on them both.”
“A wise thing to do.”
Gavin shrugged and stared off into the trees.
“Why did you let Kara go?”
“She listened to me when no one else would. I offered her a compromise to end the bickering, and she refused it, but at least she listened. In the end, she did what was best for her people. It’s all a leader can ever do.”
A wave of appreciation crashed through Richard’s chest. His son had truly grown into something amazing. He wished he could have been a part of it, but the growth only came after he’d left. Perhaps that was his contribution—forcing Gavin to realize even family couldn’t condone the selfish man he’d become.
Richard opened his mouth to tell Gavin he was proud and impressed, but the pages of his grimoire flipped to a half-filled page. Gavin examined the book, eyes focused on it.
“What does it say?” Gavin asked.
Richard studied the page to find a single line of Kara’s handwriting at the top of the page, ordering Garrett to begin the siege. Gavin’s army would follow.
“It’s time,” Richard said.
Gavin nodded and stood, shoulders tensed. Richard jumped to his feet and set a hand on his son’s back, stopping him. Gavin turned, face still tense and focused even as he waited patiently to hear what Richard had to say.
“I’m proud of you, son.”
Gavin’s eyes softened, and his mouth twisted into a small smile. He set a hand on Richard’s shoulder in what Richard assumed to be thanks.
The Hillsidian Blood turned to his troops, signaling his commanders with a wave of his hand. A silent command followed, the controlling order of a Blood to his people willing them into battle. The compulsion to charge ahead swam through Richard, and a hum of excitement bustled within at the realization he didn’t have to obey. It was the first command he’d felt in his time as a vagabond, and he could disobey it if he wished.
Gavin headed for Garrett, who still stood on the edge of the small cliff, watching the Stele. Richard joined them.
“It’s time,” he said to the muse.
Garrett turned to Richard, who nodded in confirmation.
The drenowith took a deep breath and grinned. “Let us begin, then. Step back.”
Richard obeyed, and Gavin followed shortly after. Garrett began to shift, his body twisting as it took on another form. It swelled, the bones in his spine sharpening into spikes as he expanded. They poked through his skin, darkening as they grew. His skin blackened until it became nothing more than a shadow. White teeth popped through his lips, and a muzzle expanded from his face where his mouth once was. His nails became talons, his arms massive wings.
Hillsidians dodged out of his way as he grew larger and larger, consuming the small clearing in which they’d congregated. His body pressed against tree trunks, snapping them with its weight.
If the Stelians were paying attention, they may have noticed the unnatural bend to the trees as Garrett grew, but Richard assumed they didn’t. No one in the Stelian castle knew of their attack.
A rush of fear sank deep into Richard’s toes. He continued inching backward, mouth agape despite himself. He’d seen blood. He’d gutted isen and sliced through necks. He’d witnessed a lyth appear from thin air and stood still as a stone as it joked about snacking on his arm. Yet now, as a wyvern appeared before him, a twang of anxiety hummed through his body. He swallowed hard.
The growth of Garrett’s body slowed, his head now nestled just above the canopy. The muse chomped his massive jaws, the snap like a crack of thunder. The trees shook. Richard shuddered. The muse pumped his wings and lifted off the ground with a scream that rattled Richard’s bones.
The wyvern flew toward the castle like a flash of lightning, another scream barreling through the air. Thunder rumbled, though Richard couldn’t tell if it was a storm or the wyvern’s wings. Garrett darted ahead, a black cloud racing for the castle. Distant yells echoed from the wall. A stream of fire rained from the wyvern’s mouth, tunneling through the stone work on the wall. Smoke billowed upward in plumes, thick enough to hide the mountains beyond. Fires crackled along the walkway where wood or bodies remained exposed.
Garrett dove into a section of the wall, his body crushing the stone beneath him. The rumble of shattering rocks shook the ground beneath Richard’s feet. He staggered, eyeing the melee even as he hugged his open grimoire and waited for his cue to join the fight.
With several pumps of his wings, Garrett once more took to the air, leaving a massive hole in his wake big enough for an army. More screams and yells poured over the wall, thin and distant compared to Garrett’s periodic screams.
The wyvern flew around to another side of the structure, drawing attention away from the first opening. He dove again into the stone, breaking open yet another hole in their defenses. This would allow the Hillsidian and isen forces two means of entry and twice the element of surprise.
The scent of isen wafted across Richard’s nose. Out of habit, he snapped his head around and reached for his sword before he could stop himself.
Several of the isen elders stood a short ways off, eyes on Richard as they waited for the order to strike. He swallowed hard, forcing himself to relax his shoulders. One of the isen frowned and looked to Gavin instead.
Richard marveled at the irony—Ourea’s best-known isen hunters, paired with isen in a war for peace. He still didn’t know quite what to make of it.
Gavin nodded to the isen elders and sent another silent command to the Hillsidian forces.
Attack.
The Hillsidians drew swords and slipped into the forest, disappearing into the dark wood.
In seconds, nothing remained of the green shirts—only silence and an empty field. This was war with Hillsidians: no yelling, no announcement. They simply appeared, swords swinging, and left only blood and bodies in their wake.
The isen followed suit, though their footsteps echoed louder, and they trotted down the hill with less grace. Richard sighed, somewhat relieved—he couldn’t bear to have an isen sneak up on him in a tense moment like this. United or not, old habits were hard to break.
A thrill raced through him. He hadn’t seen war in ages, and he missed the rush that came with each attack. He dipped his short quill in the ink around his neck and scribbled a note into his grimoire. Before the ink could dry, he closed the book and wished it into the grimoire pendant.
Time to see if this old man had any fight left in him.
Chapter 16
The Handmaiden
Elana, vagabond and former handmaiden to Blood Aurora of Kirelm, sat on a rock with her boots in the snow. A trickle of melting ice water seeped through her socks near the shoelaces. She shivered and rubbed her arms, her grimoire open in her lap. She and the rest of the Kirelm army waited on the many snowcapped mountaintops of the Stele for Richard’s command to strike. The wind caught a page of her book, flipping it the wrong way. She let it go and breathed into her hands for warmth. Her book would flip to the correct page on its own when Richard wrote his entry.
The sun began its descent for the day, casting shadows over the men sitting around her. Most leaned against short cliffs in the rock, their ankles submerged in the white powder covering the mountain peak. Elana could barely fathom snow in summer, but the Stele had entirely different weather than any kingdom she’d yet seen. Several Kirelms sat in the snow, their wings stretched into the air, feathers ruffling with each gust from the cold mountain. Warriors often left the castle and slept outside, so they must be used to this. But handmaidens like Elana rarely left the city, much less endured the elements. A shiver raced through her, so violent she gasped.