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“Yes?” he answered quickly but seemed distracted.

“Can you go find Zaria to make sure she’s safe?”

“Sure. What’s going on?” he asked, and I heard him make excuses to the fae he was with.

I filled him in on the basics. It was only a matter of time before it spread around the palace.

“What do you think of all this?” Kol asked in my mind.

“I don’t know. I have a hard time imagining the Vestar ships making the voyage.” They had one of the best navies in all the realms, but no one built boats to withstand the North Sea for long. It froze often, and the shifting ice plateaus broke up even the best wood and craftsmanship.

“Did you know any of the flyers at the outpost? Who was assigned there?” Kol wasn’t privy to the movement and assignment reports I was, being on the council.

I nodded before I realized I had eyes on me. “Two of them were in our training year.”

“Goddess. Who?”

“Torrence and Atara.”

“How many flyers?” Kol asked solemnly.

“Eight, at least. But I haven’t seen the?—”

“EIGHT!” The pain in his voice hit me in the chest.

“I know. It’s a colossal blow.”

“In a time when we get fewer dragons every year…” Kol sent me a mental image of Zaria sitting in the mess hall. “She’s safe.”

“Thank you. I know it’s irrational...” But I had a gut feeling we were facing something we couldn’t explain, and everything in me said to protect Zaria. I couldn’t put my finger on why.

“Nyx,” the Regent said, beckoning me forward.

“Yes, sir?” I approached his seat, clasping my hands behind my back.

“I know you can’t really afford to be away from your ryder and training right now, but I need an impact report and a threat assessment in the next hour for the King. He will want to reinstate the outpost, so we need to know what kind of enemy we are facing.”

“I understand. I’ll get to it right away.”

Fuck. Hours of work and answers for questions we didn’t even know how to ask now had to be ready to hand over to the King in one hour. How could I propose a solution with an unknown enemy? An impossible task, and I knew it wasn’t to screw me. The Regent trusted me, and I would have his input, but if we put another unit there, would it end in more lives lost? Could we even hold the ground? We could not protect that front if we lost the outpost. The kingdom’s security required a strictly maintained series of defenses and warning systems. Leaving it empty could lead to an enemy force getting a foothold in the Second Kingdom and unspeakable loss of life without us even knowing. And if the Vivi Mortui were behind the attacks… I couldn’t even bring myself to imagine.

I rubbed my forehead as I took my usual desk in the Regent’s library. Half an hour later, I hadn’t come up with any sort of real solution for how we could combat an enemy we couldn’t identify. If it was the Vivi Mortui, we had the entire history of the war to consult. Detailed battle plans which had been used to successfully to defeat them the first time. But I poured over old texts about the war, and they had never wiped out anything without leaving a trail.They killed indiscriminately, then consumed our dead to absorb our magic, but they weren’t quick in their ritual task.

We also didn’t know when the outpost went down. It could have been any time in those two days, but still, two days was not enough time for the Vivi Mortui to consume a hundred dead and leave no sign. And with a full flight of flyers present, there should have been a battle, so there would be signs of that at least, right?

If there were enough undead, I guessed anything would be possible.Could they have spent the few centuries amassing a force capable of such destruction?

I scratched out the last line I’d written and tossed the parchment aside.

I knew what I had to write, but I also knew what it would do. We’d have to move two more flights to the Second Kingdom, leaving the First and Sixth vulnerable to the Vestar. We didn’t have enough flyers to fight on two fronts, and we’d have to send as many dragons as possible to the Second Kingdom if it was the Viv Mortui, because the dead didn’t stay dead unless they were made ash. Dragon fire was one of the only ways to penetrate the magic and get enough heat to burn them.

Fifteen minutes later, I met the Regent in his office.

“Tell me you have something.”

“I do, but neither you nor the King is going to like it.”

“Brief me before we take it to the King.”