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8

Dranian Evelry Being Epic

There weren’t words to explain what had happened the moment Dranian laid eyes upon the woman of his dreams. For a split second, he’d thought he wasn’t actually awake when she’d appeared in front of him in the cabin. He thought he was stopping an intruder, that someone from the village had followed them in hopes of kidnapping the human under his charge. He’d locked spears with her—the female. He’d nearly fought with all he had left until he realized…

It was her.

The girl with no name stood before him.

His surroundings hadn’t been teetering and stormy and nightmarish. Everything was bright and the air was crisp. He was awake. He was awake and she was there and she was looking at him.

Dranian would relive that moment every second of every day. He stole another glance at the girl with no name now where she stood on the hill beside him. Her throat constricted as she watched the enemies in crimson flooding the valley. As she prepared to face the very souls who had imprisoned her these last years. How his blood boiled with fresh rage when he thought about all she’d been through in her time. He’d hardly been able to sit still when she’d told him mere bits and pieces of what had happened in her life since they were separated in Ashi-Calla village.

Him. Enraged.

Feeling feely things.

Dranian’s chest had gotten warm the last few days. He couldn’t make it stop, even when he’d tried plunging into a cold healing pool. He feared his chest might heat to oven temperatures and bake his insides if he couldn’t make it stop. That his body would turn to a tasty meat stick for the birds and he’d die like that.

A meat stick.

Dranian rubbed his chest when he thought about it. He decided to forget about his troubles though as he watched the girl with no name’s fingers fidget around the short spear he’d once given her for slaying a hogbeast. A thing she’d kept all these years like a trophy.

She was visibly nervous. And for that, Dranian wanted to defeat the House of Lyro all the more.

He opened his mouth to say something consoling, but he realized two things. The first was that he didn’t know what sort of nice consoling thing might work. The second was that he didn’t know what to call her. The others called herMycra Sentorious, but Dranian wouldn’t. He knew what that name was. He knew the horrors she’d faced on that ship, and why she should not label herself with such a bad memory.

He would choose a new name for her someday. But today…

Dranian turned his attention to the crimson swarm. A hoard of fae he had once worked for. Friends of the House who had joined in beating him up and tormenting him for fun. Friends who had been able to get away with it at the time, until Shayne had done something about it.

But not today.

No, Dranian wasn’t going to smile or anything outrageous like that. But maybe he was looking forward to facing these fae again in a body like Cress’s. Maybe he would give them all a taste of their own faeborn medicine. And he would look dazzling doing it, too, in this fashionable suit.

Dranian should have been worried about the retaliation for what he was about to do. Cress would lose his mind if Dranian brought any harmful scrapes to the Prince’s well-kept body.

But he wasn’t worried.

Today, Dranian wanted to be epic.

Today, he was Epic-Dranian.

Cress could shove it.

9

Shayne Lyro and Paper Cranes

Red fire rained from the sky as the paper birds burst into flame and plummeted toward Shayne every two seconds. He growled when a cinder burned across his back, but he kept his eyes open, half his attention on the human shooting her fairy-killing gun at fae hunters wearing the colours of his former family. She was supposed to stay on the hill. She wassupposedto stay back and hide with Mycra. But somehow she’d been sucked into the cursed middle of the army along with him.

Dranian in Cress’s stolen skin was a sight to behold. The fool raced through the hoard with his fist turned to stone and punched everything in sight—deer and fairy. He thrust his spear into a neck, then shot himself into the sky. Shayne wanted to laugh, wanted to tell Dranian he was better at being Cress than Cress was. But smiles were a luxury for whoever survived this chaos, and Shayne couldn’t find his laugh amidst the fear of his own family destroying the things he cared about most.

A head of silken red hair flashed before him, appearing and then disappearing in the blink of an eye. Luc stabbed fast and ruthlessly; Lyro’s allies didn’t know what had hit them. The fox barely stood still long enough to impale a duo of fairies at Shayne’s back before he was onto the next victim. But Shayne saw him stop before a silver-brown-eyed fairy. Luc’s opponent had a fairsaber raised, but after he stared at Luc for a moment, he dropped his blade and surrendered. Luc’s lips curled into a smile, and he disappeared again in a flash. It was suspicious—

Shayne almost yelped when Luc appeared before him with a crossbow in his hands. “For you, North Fairy,” he said, extending the crossbow and a quiver of arrows. “I know it’s your favourite.” There was an edge to his words as he tapped a very specific spot on his chest where an arrow had once pierced.

Shayne grunted and took the bow. The second he did, Luc was gone again, leaving a path of destruction through the hunters until one of them managed to toss a net around him. Shayne watched, raising his crossbow to fire as Luc was bound, asking himselfwhyhe wanted to save Luc, when Dranian appeared and ripped the net clean in half with Cress’s brute strength. So, Shayne slung the crossbow onto his back and drew up his fairsaber to slash a nearby hunter instead. The fairy fell off his deer, and Shayne stole it, mounting the creature in one leap and turning it to face his blood brothers watching from the hill.