Both Mirages whooshed low, gaining speed as they flew down the mountain slopes. The treeline grew more prominent, and the Grand-Master's green plaits caught Kinna's attention; he was one of the figures toward the rear of the Seer Fey procession.
“There he is!” she called.
Ember whizzed past overhead, and Luasa cut to the left, Chennuh to the right to circle around. Steady movement filtered from the trees; cloaked figures moving up the slated mountainside in a slow, steady tromp, and... music.
“No!” Kinna gasped. She cut a glance at Kayeck, who still rode on Luasa's back behind Ayden. “Kayeck!”
Already, the Seer Fey had straightened, her gaze seemingly on what lay ahead, but what could one Seer Fey do against a hundred? Powerful Ancient that Kayeck was, she still opposed a hundred or more of her own kind working their way up the slopes.
Sebastian had found Paik. He snatched a knife from his belt and whipped it at the Grand-Master, catching him in the shoulder. Only a moment passed before Sebastian launched himself at the Seer Fey, and the men fell to the ground, struggling and wrestling, sliding along the slippery shale.
Instead of a song spilling from Kayeck's lips, her whitened eyes began to glow. Rising, brilliant light burst from her fingers, her mouth, from beneath the folds of her robes, issuing outward in a blinding arc as she uttered words unintelligible to Kinna's ears. A single, high note rang throughout the entire scene, and Paik, who wrestled on the ground with Sebastian, released the Amulet.
It skittered across the stones, out of reach of both Sebastian and Paik.
“Ayden!” Kinna shouted. “Now!”
Luasa dove. The she-Dragon landed, scrabbling on the shale only spans from the Seer Fey Grand-Master and the King, and her talons snatched up the Amulet, sliding it upward along her torso until Ayden could reach it.
Ayden's gaze fastened on Kinna, his eyes a silver fire, brilliant in the mid-afternoon sun. “For peace, Kinna,” he called. He tucked the Amulet into his tunic. “Bring Sebastian, Kinna! I head to the four Great Dragons!”
Kinna pointed at Sebastian. “Down, Chennuh! Bring Sebastian, but don't destroy him. We need him for the Amulet's destruction.”
Chennuh dove.
Sebastian rolled onto his back, gasping for air, his eyes wild as the Mirage closed the distance to him. Both hands rose in defense.
Fire, ice, and ash slammed into Kinna and Chennuh with such force, Kinna lost her grip on the Dragon's back.
Chennuh banked wildly, and Kinna clung with one hand to his fin. She struggled to reseat herself, but a whirl of Griffons surrounded them, their talons outstretched, shrieking as they aimed for her.
Help!
At her one silent plea, Chennuh's wings snapped outward, scattering the Griffons. He soared toward the ridge, Kinna clinging frantically to his fin. Chennuh's talon came beneath her, and she pulled herself back on, but as Chennuh crossed into the Rebels' lines, a careful search behind her showed her Sebastian had disappeared.
Panic set in. They needed him for the ritual. Ayden needed him.
She thought of Ayden's face when he'd finally closed his hold on the Amulet. Blank stillness had darkened his eyes. She'd seen the hesitation and then the dread. Jubilation had quickened his expression, but also—his look had been a farewell, of sorts.
The agony of her discovery that Ayden might die in this ritual twisted Kinna's stomach, and she closed her burning eyes. A tear escaped her lid, tracing down her cheek.
Chennuh turned his head all the way, placing his hot muzzle gently in her lap. He huffed, and warm smoke caught the wind.
Kinna smiled weakly, her hand stroking his soft muzzle. “Have no fear, Chennuh. We will find Sebastian; it will just take longer than we'd hoped. Take me back to headquarters. We need to regroup our forces and drive Sebastian's army in two.”
The sun had begun to sink over the western horizon by the time Lanier stood with Tristan, Lord Fellowes, and the rest of the Ongalian nobles at the fire where Kinna huddled against the cold. Cedric's hands clasped behind his back as he stared at the flames. Most of his weight was on his left leg; his other leg was bulky beneath his leggings where a bandage bound his arrow wound. His face was pale but determined. “Do you have your orders? Each one is clear what his position is?”
“Aye, Your Grace.” The voices answered in unison.
“Good,” Cedric nodded. “Then let us finish this battle once and for all. We have the numbers with the Ongalian Dragons and the soldiers the Ongalian nobles have brought to us. Sebastian, too, has numbers, but our cause is just. To war, we go, to rid the earth of Sebastian's scourge forever. Remember, Sebastian must be captured alive and brought through our lines at all costs.”
To Kinna, each man looked battle-weary and exhausted. Smoke blackened their faces where they were not protected by helmets. She herself was in a haze of exhaustion. She had not slept since just before the battle had commenced at the beginning of the previous night. But the fighting would not wait. She had to keep going.
Sebastian's forces had called a retreat first, but Kinna and Cedric's forces had grown sparser than they had anticipated on the mountain's crest. The Ongalian Dragons had mostly settled atop the ridges, perched like birds overseeing the enemy forces on the western slopes, awaiting commands, resting in the meantime. The four Great Dragons were nowhere to be seen. Cedric said they had moved to safety closer to the Marshlands of Cayne, but at least two fieldspans and an outcropping of one of the mountain ridges stretched between them.
Ayden and Luasa and Kayeck would be with them, wherever they were, beginning the ritual to destroy the Amulet, Kinna hoped. Kayeck had taken the Seer Fey knife from Chennuh before they had gone, but she'd said nothing to Kinna, simply disappearing with it. Kinna wondered if the Seer Fey was nervous Kinna would try to stop the ritual.
I want to, Kinna admitted, if only to save Ayden's life. But she couldn't. No matter her own wishes, no matter her hopes for happiness and a lifetime with Ayden by her side, the Amulet had to be destroyed.
But Sebastian had yet to be captured. Kinna gnawed on her lip, worried. To complete the ritual, Sebastian would need to be there, but Kayeck had told them early on that it was essential that he not be brought until the last minute, because any interference in the ritual, and the destruction would reverse, making the Amulet indestructible, solidifying its power beneath the influence of the Stars.
Cedric stopped pacing and turned to Kinna, the flames flickering off his face in the gathering darkness. “Are you ready, sister?”
Kinna nodded. “I am.”
“Then let's go.”
Chennuh waited for Kinna in the shadows, a waver of heat distorting the cold air around him. When Kinna drew near, he lowered his head and butted it against her chest, rumbling as she stroked his scales and scratched lightly across his muzzle.
“Are you ready, Chennuh?” she asked in an undertone.
Her only answer from the Dragon was a derisive snort.
She climbed onto Chennuh's back, waiting for Lincoln as he hurried across the meadow to her and settled into his place behind her, his hand squeezing her shoulder reassuringly.
She inhaled slowly, calming herself as she turned to look up the slopes toward the ridges high above them where many of the Ongalian Dragons cut silhouettes against the darkening sky. Turning, she glanced across the long grasses of the Marshlands of Cayne, where smoke rose in thin streams, hundreds—thousands of them. It took longer than a glance to see the source of the smoke.
She narrowed her eyes, nodding with satisfaction as she made out the sleek, shiny heads of hundreds of Dragons from the Great Valley.
All of them waited for her and Cedric to lead them.
Cedric and Ashleen burst into the air, both of their Embers beating their flaming wings as they arched upward. Chennuh rose immediately behind them. Kinna felt his sense of emptiness without Luasa by his side.
“Let's win this battle, Chennuh, and then we'll come back to Luasa,” Kinna murmured.<
br />
As they crested the mountain, Kinna blanched. Sebastian's armies had regrouped in the valley far below, and more had arrived from the south.
Cedric shook his head. “We knew he had troops in waiting to the south; we just weren't sure how sizable his army was.”
“Do we have enough?” Kinna called.
“It will be close.” Cedric set his jaw.
Kinna glanced over her shoulder. The Marshlands were no longer an expanse of waving grass and water with tendrils of smoke drifting skyward. Now the whole sky behind them was filled with Dragons, and each Dragon ranked themselves with their own kind. Poison-Quills, the slowest and most lugubrious, took the center where their size and bulk would run over anything in their path. The Embers flew on one side of them, the few Mirages on the other. Nine-Tails, the quickest Dragon, flanked both sides of the mass.
The Ongalian nobles led the ground forces, their horses scrambling up the steep mountain pathways, wending their way toward the crest.
Once they hit the top, they split, six nobles and their soldiers to one side, and six nobles and their men to the other. From the trees, hundreds of soldiers marched after them. The company grew and swelled as more and more nobles became visible.
Hope sparked inside Kinna. “I'll take the northern flank!” she yelled to Cedric. “Remember, Sebastian must be captured and brought to our side, no matter the cost!”
Cedric waved, and he and Ashleen veered to the south. Behind them the Dragon horde in the air formed a wedge, driving straight toward the Lismarian forces on the far side. As they reached the crest of the mountain, they split into three sections.
The Ongalian Poison-Quills, like a battering ram, picked up speed and noise. They became a shrieking mass, and as Kinna and a third of the Dragons circled to the north, the Poison-Quills and half the Embers and Mirages smashed into Sebastian's aerial forces with a noise like thunder. Dragonfire ripped across the heavens in a hot inferno, whooshing beneath Chennuh in an outward trajectory.
The ground forces engaged Sebastian's on the crest of the mountain, spreading themselves all along the top of the ridge as far as the eye could see.
The world was on fire. Kinna felt it and knew it.
Sebastian's aerial horde was enormous, but they were gathered in one mass, and while the rebel Poison-Quills effectively routed the front ranks, Kinna and her Dragons closed in from one side while Cedric and Ashleen closed in from the other.
“Sing, Linc!” Kinna yelled as she motioned the signal to attack. “Sing us to victory!”
Across the uproar of the battle, Lincoln's voice rose like a powerful ocean, full of treacherous currents and dark depths. It washed over the furor, calming Sebastian's Dragons, his Griffons, his Phoenixes, all the winged creatures that made up his army. They grew dull, listless, their eyes growing heavy.
In the distance, Kinna could hear the shrieks of Sebastian's Sirens as they tried to conquer Lincoln's voice, but they were no match for it.
Kinna's Dragons tore into the force with bone-shattering roars, and Dragons began to drop from the sky onto Sebastian's still-advancing troops, flattening men and horses where they marched.
The ground troops scattered like roaches in the light of Dragonfire, their panicked screams echoing beneath Lincoln's voice.
Chennuh dove into the throng, leading the way as Kinna, once again, slammed her knife into Dragon muzzle after Dragon muzzle, through the throats of Griffons, gutting the wings of Phoenixes.
It sickened her, the carnage. She hated that any creature had to die in the quest to extinguish Sebastian's power. With each one she struck down, she blessed them beneath the Stars.
Night carried on for hours, and Kinna's arm had long since wearied. Lincoln's voice had grown rusty and hoarse, and it no longer reached the same pitch it had.
But they were winning.
Kinna knew it; she could feel the disheartened stares of the beaten creatures, the Dimn as they rode on the backs of their beasts, and slowly, victory crawled into Kinna's heart and nested there.
The sun had begun to set when the final retreat sounded for Sebastian's forces, and the few ground and aerial troops that remained pulled back, winging into the gathering dusk.
Cries of exultation rose from the rebels.
Kinna raised her sword with a victory cry undercut by fear. She had not found Sebastian in her hours of fighting. She had to hope one of the other rebels had. She twisted on Chennuh's back, searching the sky for Cedric and Ashleen.
She saw no sign of them. “Chennuh,” she called, “find Ember and Sperah.”
Chennuh turned in the air, circling through the remaining ranks of Dragons who flitted in victorious tumult. Embers circled, too, but none of them belonged to Cedric or Ashleen.
“Cedric!” Kinna called, beginning to truly panic. “Cedric!”
“Set me down at headquarters, Kinna,” Lincoln called. “I'll find Marigold. We can search for him together.”
“Linc, what if—”
“Don't say it.” Lincoln's face was grim. “Concentrate now on gathering the nobles and Lanier and finishing off any final skirmishes on the ground. Kinna.”
She raised her gaze to his.
“We'll find him. Don't worry. I won't let you down.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ayden
Ayden's hands trembled just a little, the tiniest quiver before he steadied them again. He stared at them, pulling in a calming breath as he laid his hand on a dry log he'd pulled from the forest, watching the wood curl and smoke beneath his fingers before it erupted into flame.
“And so it begins,” he whispered.
The flame furled upward, a single tongue licking the air. Ayden turned away and began piling branches around the fire, listening to the snapping wood as the fire quickly caught and ate the fuel he fed it.
“You have done well,” Kayeck spoke from where she sat on a rotting stump at the edge of the Marshlands. “Not many would do as you are—giving up all for the sake one thing.” Behind her, lengths out into the Marshlands, the four Great Dragons paced, restlessly, smoke wafting from their nostrils. Now and then, one of them would stop his movement, stare at Ayden for a moment, and then resume his pacing.
Ayden knew they were necessary for the ritual, but he wasn't sure when they would be implemented. He returned his stare to the fire. “It is the right thing to do.” He glanced at Kayeck. “I half wish I had never connected in psuche with Luasa.”
Luasa snorted at her name, nudging him in the back with her hot muzzle. He turned and stroked the scales just under her eye.
“She knows it's right, too, Dragondimn. She is prepared.”
“Are you?” Ayden asked.
“For the ceremony? Aye.” Kayeck's grunt rumbled through the clearing. “It will take hours; it takes time for blood to work its taibe.”
Ayden made a fist, his knuckles whitening. “What happens if Sebastian is not brought here for the end of the ceremony?”
“You'll die,” Kayeck said, shrugging, “and Sebastian will reign unchecked. You and this ritual are our only hopes, Ayden Dragondimn. Since you gave Sebastian the Amulet to cure the Ash-Hex, its power split between the two of you. While you both live, you each command balanced shares of the Amulet's powers. If you die alone, and the Amulet remains, the share of power you currently command will revert to Sebastian. He will be... unbeatable.”
Ayden nodded. “I guess I always knew it would come to this—he and I in a final struggle. Ever since the day when he cursed me as a child, I've known it.”
The fire was blazing, leaping eight to ten spans into the air. Ayden sank back onto the earth and pulled the Amulet from his tunic, holding it up, staring at the eye that watched him from its center. It could have been a trick of the light as the sun settled closer to the west, flaring in his eyes, but the eye seemed to come alive, and the black outlines that etched the wood glowed a fiery orange.
Ayden dropped it.
“Careful!” Kayeck warned. “It
must be handled with the utmost care.”
Ayden carefully picked it up, cradling it in his hand. It burned. “Why?” he asked.
“The Amulet wishes for dominion; it's why Cedric hated it so terribly. He was in line for the throne, and he felt the power that pulled at him through it. The degraded Amulet wanted to use that power for evil, but Cedric is good—thoroughly good—and he resisted it with everything he had.”
“But—I don't have access to power, not over a country, at any rate,” Ayden said. The Amulet flared painfully in his hand, and he carefully placed it on a rock.
“Aye, but you do, as King Consort of the lovely Queen Kinna. Did you not hear me prophesy in the Seer Fey Council that the Ancients would one day bow before you?”
“I want nothing to do with the throne,” Ayden warned. “I would marry Kinna because I love her. I would—if—”
“If. Yes.”
There was silence.
The roar of battle was nearly silent here over the mountain and far away from Kinna and Cedric's headquarters.
“Shall we begin?” Kayeck asked.
“Ready, Luasa?” Ayden asked, dismayed when his voice shook. He cleared his throat. “Let's begin.”
Kayeck rose to her feet, her back hunched and bowed. Behind her, the four Great Dragons drew closer, their eyes reflecting the leaping flames. Kayeck leaned heavily on her staff as she approached the fire.
Her dim eyes closed as she raised her arms to the sky, calling in a loud voice:
Stars that cast on us their glow,
See, we gather here below.
Seer and Man and Dragon meet
To rid Sebastian's royal seat.
Andrachen blood will rule, but free
Of past agreements. Let it be!
Sacred bond, release us now,
By Touch and Blood, take back the vow.
One half, represent for life,
Death the other. Wield the knife!
Dragon Blood, Seer Fey's, too,
Unleash the Inferno (Heart of a Dragon Book 3) Page 35