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But Dom knew it was not to be. He was a Prince of Iona, and his duty lay below, with his people. With the army. To hold off Taristan for as long as they could, however they could.

Gently, he shrugged off Corayne’s hand, and took a step down with the other Ionians, his aunt among them.

To his surprise, Sorasa moved with him. She looked straight ahead,refusing to meet his eye. Instead, she fussed with the chain mail beneath her jacket, trying to adjust the metal rings. Clearly she despised it, her usually fluid motions slower and more stilted.

He opened his mouth to taunt her, to say anything, to grasp one more second at her side.

“Thank you for wearing armor,” he growled. It was the only thing left to say.

He expected a quick, poisonous retort. Instead, Sorasa looked up at him. Her copper eyes wavered, filled with all the emotion she no longer cared to hide.

“Iron and steel won’t save us from dragon fire,” she said, all regret, her mouth barely moving.

Again, Dom wanted to stay, lingering one last moment, his eyes locked on her own.

“I know you don’t believe in ghosts,” Sorasa murmured, holding her ground. She did not move closer, or move at all, letting the crowd of Elders break around her.

A Vedera who falls in this realm falls forever, Dom thought, the old belief a sudden curse.

Sorasa’s eyes shimmered, swimming with tears she would never allow herself to shed. She looked like she did on the beach after the shipwreck, torn apart by grief.

“But I do,” she said.

His chest filled with unfamiliar feeling, an ache he could not name.

“Sorasa,” he began, but the crowd surged around them, his Vederan soldiers too many to ignore. Every part of him wanted to stay rooted, though he knew he could not.

She would not reach for him, her hands pressed to her sides, her chinraised and jaw set. Whatever tears she carried faded, pushed down into the unfeeling well of an Amhara heart.

“Haunt me, Domacridhan.”

The tide of the army swelled before he could muster an answer. While Sorasa stood against it, Dom let himself be carried. While his body marched, his heart stayed behind, broken as it was, already burning.

Her last words followed him all the way down to the city gates. They echoed in his head, lingering like Sorasa’s tiger eyes, like Corayne’s face. He tried to push it all away as Sorasa could. But there was no forgetting. Not Sorasa’s voice, nor Andry’s concern. Charlie small against the steps, sweating in his armor. And nothing in the realm could wipe away Corayne’s heartbreak as he turned to go, every instinct screaming to stay behind.

She will be safe, he told himself, repeating it over and over, as if that might make it true. Indeed, she had Sorasa and Andry both, not to mention her Kovalinn guards.She will be safe.

Then he glimpsed the black snake of the legions curled down the mountains, the dragon moving with it. His belief shattered, his hope scattering like leaves in the cruel wind.

Safe until the moment she isn’t. Until the second all this comes crashing down, and we die scattered, separated from each other one last time.

An arrow in the heart would be less painful.

One thousand Vedera of Iona marched around him, the sound of their armor like the ringing of a thousand bells. All were outfitted with swords, arrows, as many daggers as they could carry. Wagons brought up the rear, carrying stacks of long pikes. Male and female alike fought, leaving most of the city empty but the few Vedera too young to fight, and the rest guarding the city walls. The Vedera of Sirandel and Tirakrion saluted them as they passed. They stood, silhouetted against the red sky, watching as their immortal kin marched to their doom.

It felt like a funeral procession, and Domacridhan one of the dead.

Beneath a cloud of dread, the Vederan company reached the city gates at the base of the ridge. Stone jaws opened wide, and they marched onto what would become the battlefield. Ditches ran out along either side of the gates, forming a bottleneck. Sharpened stakes lined the bottom of each, tipped red by the odd light. They looked like too-long mouths of crooked jaws, ready to consume anyone who came too close.

Dom tried not to see what he knew the future held, what the field before him would become. Bodies and ragged earth, burn scars and a swamp of blood.

Instead he focused on Isibel, a gleaming star as she marched in silence. His anger toward her did not dissipate, but he did understand the anger at least. Like Isibel, he wore the mantle of command across his shoulders. It grew heavier with every passing second.

His stomach turned. A thousand immortals of Iona marched together.How many of them will be dead by morning? Is it even possible to mourn so many lost?

He despised Isibel’s cowardice, but he could not blame her for it.

“To the head of the field,” Dom called in High Vedera, raising his sword to rally the army.