Page 171 of A Bond so Fierce and Fragile

Not for himself but for Ellow, for his people, for his friends who stood all around and above him.

A hand touched his, and while he didn’t look to the side, he somehow knew it was Iviry, could feel her fear mixed with determination and focus.

“For Ellow,” she said quietly, but with so many Fae around her, they all heard it, and despite fear keeping a strangled grip on his throat, something else thickened it as well when the two words began echoing all around him.

“For Ellow.”

Chapter 38

Frelina

Her pulse beat in rhythm with the drums that struck across the calm sea, and she didn’t know what to do with her hands when the ships came into view, one terrifying sail at a time.

Frelina had asked for a few daggers, not that she was exceptionally skilled with them, but she didn’t want to go entirely without weapons even if she wasn’t in the midst of the fighting. They all hung by her waist for now, the blades bumping against her thighs whenever she moved, which was a lot, since she couldn’t seem to stop shifting from foot to foot.

She caught the eyes of the white-haired half-Fae she’d heard was called Kalia before she turned them forward again, but she didn’t miss the apprehension simmering in the woman’s light eyes as she did so.

She, Kalia, and the other Faelings without offensive skills were huddled together by the cliff’s edge—the one farthest away from the stairs leading down to the bay with the ships.

To her side, she knew Raine stood beside Kerym, the two of them instructing the human archers, the Faelings, and Raine’s friends, who’d use their magic to fight from up here.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

Her heart hammered against her ribs as the drumming grew louder, and Frelina pressed both hands against her chest as the ships began sailing toward them. Sailing way too fast toward their own ships, which just seemed to become smaller and smaller below.

There were so many of them ahead. She’d counted that there were thirty-two ships of their own keeping steady on the sea in the cove, but crossing the sea were at least as many.

Ripped flags trailed from every mast—a mixture of Ellow’s and Vastala’s—some of them sparking from embers as the rebels on the ships set them aflame.

She had to seek out the hazel eyes she, for some reason, found soothing when her pulse continued to pound in her ears, and Frelina was grateful when Raine turned away from his sharp-eyed brother to face her fully.

He didn’t say or mouth anything, but he didn’t need to.

She could tell he wanted her to focus on what he and Merrick had asked of her: keep track of Lessia at all costs.

She hadn’t protested. Frelina wasn’t a fighter, not like the Fae and humans around her, who stood tall, their faces growing more and more focused as those ships neared. Not even like Lessia and Amalise, who didn’t want but had learned to survive—to kill—because they had to. She’d gotten lucky that one time she’d killed the soldiers who had found their home—they’d been careless, and she’d been close enough that driving a dagger into each of their backs hadn’t proved too difficult. So if she could keep her sister safe somehow by ensuring Rioner or anyone else couldn’t sneak up on her, she would.

Frelina nodded, and Raine broke their stare.

Taking a step forward, Frelina made sure Lessia was in full view. She wouldn’t be able to hear her from up here, but down below, her sister’s golden-brown hair reflected the sun, and Merrick’s distinctive silver hair was even easier to find amid the crowd of brown and black and blond scalps.

Staring from Lessia to the ships, Frelina shuddered.

If she thought their own ships looked small compared to those ahead, her sister seemed… tiny. Tiny and fragile.

“She’ll be all right.”

Frelina looked to the side when Amalise spoke, and she tried to give the blonde a smile when she settled beside her, her small hands waving toward her sister.

“She’s a fighter,” Amalise continued. “I think she’s always been. You should have seen her when she arrived in Ellow… she was hardly more than a whisper of a person, but she clawed herself back to life. Fought every day to stay alive and every night not to succumb to the darkness that seems to follow her around.”

Frelina nodded, the knot in her throat preventing her from replying.

Thankfully, a deeper voice broke in as Kerym approached them, the girl with the long copper hair trailing in his wake. “She really is.”