Page 15

Wishing she hadn’t been forced to relinquish her sword back in àird Lasair, Aemyra turned the corner to the stables. Adarian was already saddling his horse when she tested the weight of several swords from the weapons rack.

“I’m going with you,” she said firmly, voice echoing across the yard.

Her brother lifted his head from tightening the girth. “You heard what Father said, you’ve to—” Adarian’s eyes widened when he noticed what she was wearing. “He certainly spared no expense.”

Aemyra shrugged, selecting a one-handed sword. “Perks of being the queen, I guess.”

Her new leathers fit perfectly. Better yet, they were tailored with convenient pockets for her to sheathe weapons and essential items.

Just like the dagger on her hip, her leathers bore no unnecessary embellishment, but held a distinct power in their simplicity.

“Would you listen if your humble brother asked his queen to stay here?” Adarian asked with a sarcastic smile.

Aemyra approached her twin. “My people need to see that the queen is on their side. If a village has been attacked by a raiding party, then I will provide assistance. I’m a better healer than you anyway.”

Knowing when he was beaten, Adarian called over his shoulder into the stables, “Give my sister the tamest nag you have. She isn’t the best horsewoman.”

Five muttered greetings of “Your Majesty” met her ears from the shadowy barn. The smell of horse was heavy in the air and a young woman with sunshine hair handed Aemyra the reins of an old chestnut gelding.

“He’ll be gentle with you, my queen,” Dianne said, swinging herself expertly into the saddle of a bay mare who was already dancing on the spot, hooves clacking on the hard ground.

Aemyra eyed the horse warily as she hauled herself up. Adarian hadn’t been joking, she wasn’t a good horsewoman.

“It will be a hard ride,” Adarian warned, gathering the reins of his gray destrier. “I want to reach Ballan while there are still villagers left to save.”

Aemyra steeled herself. “Then what are we waiting for?”

Digging her heels into the gelding’s sides, Aemyra tried to rise and fall with the horse’s rhythm as they clattered across the bridge, succeeding only in bruising her tailbone. They opened up into a canter as they left the town behind.

Soon the rolling fields converged into lush forest, and they were forced to ride single file up tightly winding dirt paths.

“Ease up as we climb,” Adarian called out over his shoulder a while later.

Wincing as her aching muscles cramped, Aemyra nudged the horse toward her brother.

“What’s your plan when we arrive?” she asked, reins rubbing against newly formed blisters.

Adarian peered ahead as though he could see around the mountain toward what awaited them. Dianne’s curtain of sunshine hair cascaded down her back as she led the way, Laoise just behind her.

“Our party will split in half,” Adarian said, ducking to avoid a low-hanging branch. “We ride into the village to find survivors and treat the wounded, the rest will circle the perimeter in case any Uisge invaders or Covenanters stayed ashore.”

Aemyra’s horse tensed underneath her as he sensed her anxiety.

Adarian frowned. “Uisge raids happen all the time and Covenanters have been using the islands as outposts for years. Don’t you remember Pàdraig showing us some of the weapons he won from them?”

“Where are they, Adarian?” Aemyra asked, voice almost covered by the calling of starlings above them.

Her brother’s face fell, his well-concealed worry for their family rising to the surface. “I don’t know. But I keep faith that they are safe.” His stallion bobbed his head, chomping at the bit. “Evander would have made it known if he had them in custody.”

Aemyra silently agreed. Sending up a fleeting prayer to any Goddess listening, she clicked her tongue for her horse to follow Dianne through the forest.

An hour later, they stopped to fill their waterskins at a mountain spring. The crisp water soothed the dry tickle at the back of Aemyra’s throat and she splashed some on her face, the frigid bite refocusing her wandering thoughts.

As they approached Ballan, the smell of smoke unsettled the horses. Three riders peeled away to circle the town, and Aemyra followed the others down the main path.

The trees ended abruptly, giving way to scrubby grass and sandy shingle that slowed the horses. Even from this distance, Aemyra could tell there wasn’t much left to save.

“Great Mother have mercy…” Laoise muttered, making the sign of Brigid’s cross.

Aemyra focused on the creak of the saddle to steady her nerves. Waves lapped hungrily at the shore, the sea stretching unbroken all the way north toward Tìr Uisge.

“Dismount here,” Adarian said softly before the entrance to the small hamlet.

Eyes wide with shock, Aemyra followed her brother between the burned husks of cottages. Splinters of wood had once been thick fences, and half-sunken boats littered the beach like flotsam.

Their feet were soft on the ground, small puffs of ash drifting up around their ankles with every step through the gently smoking ruins.

“Uisge invaders don’t usually burn everything. They steal grain and precious metals, or attempt to make camp in the foothills if they seek refuge,” Dianne said quietly, blue eyes scanning what was left of the cottages.

Aemyra unsheathed her dagger, the stillness unsettling her. “Spread out, find any survivors.”

Her twin took the main road with Dianne at his side, and Aemyra didn’t miss the jealousy in Laoise’s eyes. If Adarian wasn’t careful, he would end up sparking a war of his own on the Sunset Isle.

Stopping to peer into a charred cottage, Aemyra immediately wished she hadn’t when she saw the bodies. The door had been barred from the outside, the thatched roof now collapsed on top of the trapped occupants.

Cailleach, spare their souls…

“Aemyra!”

The shout had her sprinting across the uneven ground toward her brother. Adarian and Dianne stood shoulder to shoulder in the middle of the road, the body of a large man supine before them. He held a dirk in one badly burned hand, his rising chest defying the damage done to his body.

Dianne lifted a pale finger and pointed to something clutched in the man’s hand. Crouching down, Aemyra eased the pennant away from the stiff and swollen fingers and unfurled it.

“Father was right,” she muttered, recognizing the emblazoned tower on the white fabric. The survivor was a Covenanter.

Scanning the destruction with fresh eyes, Aemyra noticed the villagers’ pitchforks littering the ground, the blackened cottages that had housed the vulnerable. Covenanters had come from Uisge to lay waste to her home and slaughtered any who stood in their way.

Had they given up on trying to break Queen Siv’s shields of ice and set their sights south instead?

“Why would they do this?” Dianne asked. “The priests who came before left willingly enough when we turned them away.”

The Covenanter gave a wheezing cough and Aemyra barely suppressed her grimace when some of his skin sloughed away. Dianne excused herself to be politely sick in a wheelbarrow.

Aemyra hardened her heart. This man had attacked her people. “This pain is nothing compared to what Hela will do with your soul.”

The man had no eyelids left and his eyes bulged as Laoise ripped a tattered Daercathian flag bearing Draevan’s crest from a crooked post.

“We are no strangers to the Chosen in Balnain. Their ships sail up the Forc to try and infiltrate the heart of Tìr Teine.” Her gold-tipped braids clinked musically as she fisted the ripped banner. “When we barricaded the bridges and choked the mouth of the river, the Covenanters came next.”

The three of them were silent as Laoise crouched in the dirt, her hand placed reverently over the golden dragon embroidered on the flag.

“The Balnain fleet was strong enough to send them south. These villagers were not so lucky.”

Aemyra crumpled the white pennant in her fist, rage washing over her.

Covenanters, Chosen…Aemyra didn’t care what they called themselves, only that they had snuffed out the lives of her people with malicious intent.

“How dare you,” she seethed, pressing her boot against the burned Covenanter’s thigh. His screams barely made it up his charred throat.

“S-stopped uuuh, u-us,” he wheezed hoarsely.

Frowning, Aemyra bent closer.

“B-black s-scales.”

With the final word, his chest sank and he breathed no more. Aemyra shared a concerned look with Adarian as she got slowly to her feet, thoughts whirring.

“What?” Dianne asked as Aemyra hopped over the broken fence and hurried to climb a small hillock, the others behind her. Cresting the rise, she staggered to a halt.

“Black scales,” Aemyra said, hardly daring to believe it.

“It cannot be,” Adarian said.

The white pennant in Aemyra’s hand felt heavy as she twisted it through her fingers. The cottages behind them were badly burned, but still standing. The bodies still recognizable as human.

What lay before them was nothing more than a wasteland of ash and smoke.

There had only been one dragon in living memory with black scales.

“The Terror died decades ago,” Laoise said confidently.

Regardless, hope hatched inside Aemyra.

“Pàdraig always said he was waiting for a queen that never came,” Adarian said softly.

Their adoptive father had told them stories of The Terror since their infancy. The obsidian dragon had never Bonded. Because of his fearsome reputation, no Dùileach had ever been stupid enough to try.

“He defended the village?” Dianne asked. “How do we know this wasn’t Aervor or Kolreath?”

Squatting close to the ground, Aemyra ran her fingers through the residual cinders and tried to get a feel for the magic that ran through The Terror’s veins.

There was something there, but it was more like her own intuition rather than tangible magic. Lifting her head, she scanned the charred trees until she saw several that were broken in half, their tops hanging drunkenly off the trunks. As if they had been clipped by an enormous wing.

Her eyes followed the broken branches until they fell on a small patch of the mountain that wasn’t covered in snow.

There.

She couldn’t see him, but the feeling in her gut was confirmation enough.

“It’s him,” she said firmly.

Pocketing the pennant, Aemyra made her decision.

If he was truly still alive, then The Terror had remained unseen for decades for a good reason. He was wild and unpredictable, but he had destroyed an entire battalion of Covenanters after they had killed her people.

“Build pyres for the bodies you can find and finish the burning,” Aemyra said, straightening.

Dianne and Laoise wore twin expressions of shock.

“You cannot be serious.”

“He is a myth!”

It was a mark of how dire their current predicament was that Adarian didn’t try to stop Aemyra when she waited for his blessing. Her twin checked that her sword was sheathed securely before stepping back as if to appraise her.

“Make sure you don’t die. I have absolutely no interest in becoming king.”