Band of Breakers Page 17
She sighed. “Thank you, Arc. Truly.” She poked him in the ribs. “So I’m pretty much immortal now, hmm?” She wiggled her eyebrows. Earth Queens were known to live a very long time regardless, and with this spell…
He grinned. “Unfortunately not. This spell will only work once. And it doesn’t always function correctly. You merely took a year from my life.”
Vahly’s heart seized. She reached for him, then fisted her shaking hand. “Take it back. I can’t accept that. Take it back. That’s a command. From your queen.”
“Apologies.” Arc bowed his head. “The spell cannot be undone. I have had many years. I’ll have many more, if our plans go well. If not, one year will make no difference.”
Vahly’s chin dropped, and she stared at Kyril’s huge paw print in the sandy dirt beside Arc’s black boots. Heart swelling, brightening, she met Arc’s gaze. “I’m a smuggler, a liar, a gambler, and at times, a thief. Nonetheless, the Source has rewarded me with you.”
“The Blackwater weighed your soul. You are balanced.”
Vahly shrugged. “You could come up with a better line than that, couldn’t you?” She huffed. “Balanced.”
Arc’s fingers danced down the side of her neck. Her pulse ticked faster and faster. “Perhaps I should simply show you how I feel.” His half-lidded eyes studied her face, his gaze like a touch on her lips, her ear, the hollow of her throat.
Kyril and Nix emerged from the cave with supplies.
Nix’s bag dropped to the ground. She shrieked—frozen in terror.
The world tilted.
Arc flew backward, struck by an unseen force.
Kyril galloped toward them.
Before Vahly could even turn to look, arms grabbed her from behind and a cold spear’s edge bit her neck and the salty, sour smell of the ocean swamped her nose.
Holding the Earth Queen tightly, Ryton angled the spear just under her chin. With one move, one small jab of that sharp steel across her artery, she would be dead, and the war would be over. The dragons could never win without her. Astraea was too powerful.
But then Ryton’s gaze drifted over the Earth Queen’s messy braid and Selene’s voice pierced his mind. A memory of her at eight years of age gripped him. Selene’s hair had been braided just like this, chaotic and drifting around her ears.
Memories assaulted him.
“I want to try out the dragon language on dragons,” young Selene had said long ago, her chin raised defiantly at Ryton. “It would be a real test of what I can do.”
He had gone to his knee and grabbed her little arms, panic lashing his heart like a stingray’s tail. “Never. They’re murderous beasts. Filthy and vicious. Their only true passion is to spill our blood. Are your tutors not explaining the truth to you properly? Perhaps we need to visit and remind them of their duty.”
Selene kissed his nose with her tiny lips, then pulled away, a spark in her eyes. “I’m not afraid. And if I could talk to them, maybe they would be nice. You don’t know. You never tried.”
“Many have tried. And were burned to death for their efforts.”
“That was a long time ago. Now is now,” she had said with all the ignorance and optimism of youth.
And here Ryton was in the present, with Selene dead and her optimism gone with her. When Ryton slayed this Earth Queen, there would never be another chance for talking as Selene had first wanted to do as a youngling. It would be over. Astraea would reign, and everything here on land—the elves, the small simplebeasts, the mountains and trees—it would all be drowned forever. Gone.
Ryton’s killing blow waited.
He could do it now. Return a hero.
Or he could wait.
Just a while. And try to talk to others about the possibilities here, the finality of the whole thing.
It would not hurt to pause, to consider.
He would take her prisoner. Maybe he would kill her tonight. Maybe not.
Arms clenched around the Earth Queen, he leapt backward.
As Vahly was lifted and went soaring over the cliff’s edge, she saw three things: Arc’s magic flaring, sun-bright and shadowed, chasing them; Nix’s dragonfire rippling in time with the ocean’s crash; Kyril wailing and taking to the sky.
And then the sea swallowed Vahly and her captor whole, and she knew no more.
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Other books by Alisha Klapheke
Uncommon World Series
Claimed
Waters of Salt and Sin
Fever
Plains of Sand and Steel
Forests of Silver and Secrets
Rune Kingdom
The Edinburgh Seer Trilogy
The Edinburgh Seer
The Edinburgh Heir
The Edinburgh Fate