Page 5 of A Monarch's Fall

There was something special about her. Something unique. More than just her eyes. Her shifter heritage was obvious, but then the reveal that she was the great-granddaughter of Nikolas Auster - that was magic. It was like the fates had hit me across the head with the obvious. Our strings were entwined from the start: Auster and Viridis, heirs to our clans, allies for centuries. We were meant to be.

Percy was meant for me.

She was smaller than I remembered. More delicate. She looked fragile, her lips slightly parted, her unique eyes closed, and one of her legs was pinned beneath a large stone. I reached out, almost scared to touch her, as if she might disappear with the slowly fading smoke.

It had been too long. How many months now? Three, four? It felt like a lifetime.

“Percy, girl?” I said, shaking her shoulder.

No response.

Quickly, I wrapped my arm under her back, gripping at the base of her neck and lifted her chest to my ear. Her heart was beating strongly.

“That’s my girl,” I praised.

I felt dampness on my fingertips at the back of her neck, and I pushed my fingers through her tangled blonde hair and felt the stickiness of blood.

The injury wasn’t bleeding heavily, but she had taken a blow to the head at some point.

“Can we hurry the fuck along. Please. Fuck!” Micky snarled.

I turned to watch him scratching at his wrist. He was a nervous thing. Made me anxious, too, to be around someone as twitchy as Micky. His short hair stuck to his head with sweat. Sweat caused by his nerves, more than any physical exertion that was needed to get us here.

“What’s got you all liver?” Andreas laughed, spitting on the ground. “Man up. This is war.”

The two of them hated each other. Well, Andreas hated Micky.

Micky, the poor sod, was as northern as they come. Not his fault; he was Ardens’ blood. You couldn’t help where you come from. He looked northern too, he had that dark hair, a dishevelled feel to him, like he knew what hunger and frostbite felt like. But Micky was loyal, I could count on him to have my back, follow commands, even if he was shitting himself the whole time, and even if I’d rather not have him on a battlefield. Micky was the kind of guy who should have stayed behind a desk, answering a phone or something. But he knew Ardens. Had even worked on the estate the previous winter. I needed him on this mission as much as I needed Idonea.

Andreas was House Halvorsen. Maybe it was his House that made him so grating, so pompous. But after Oskar’s betrayal and the way he was executed, Halvorsen was on the right side of history, now. Arvid was essentially acting as the next in line, while Orion was kept busy with girls, horses, and whatever else it took to keep the idiot distracted.

“Give it a rest, Andreas,” Fredrick called, with his back to us, watching for any True North scum that might have followed usin. Fredrick was gruff in the kind of way that a man his age, with his scars, tended to be. He was quiet. Had seen probably too much. The type that was raised in violence and then made a career out of it. Probably because he didn’t have any other skills than being able to take and throw a punch, every war needed the likes of Fredrick.

“You don’t have to worry about it, Fred,” Micky said, “Ain’t no way anyone’s coming for us here.”

“Why’s that? Eh, Micky, you scared of some enchanted stone?” Andreas laughed, “Fucking northerner, superstitious nonsense—”

The ground began to churn beneath our feet, cutting off Andreas mid-insult.

“Hades, no,” Micky cried.

“Would you shut the fuck up. It’s just stone,” Andreas began, before a wall shot up through the earth, like some titan escaping Tartarus. Up and up, it went, taller than all the rest.

It cut Andreas off from us. Separating him.

“D, we’ve gotta get the girl and get gone,” Micky yelled, panic causing him to screech.

I agreed as the ground continued to rumble.

“Fredrick, our exit?” I called as I moved to Percy’s trapped leg, squatting to heave the stone from her. Before I scooped Percy as carefully as I could into my arms, resting her head against my shoulder.

She was lighter than I expected. She was always so full of sass, small but with the type of personality that made her seem bigger, braver, and stronger. But really, she was just a small thing. She needed protection. She might have been the start of all this, the symbol we needed to bring Borealis to its knees, but she wasn’t strong, wasn’t big.

Brave, yeah, she was fierce, it was part of the reason I loved her, but that only meant she needed more protection — protection from herself and her strong-headedness.

“Clear, still, not sure for how long,” he replied.

“ANDREAS!” I called, “CAN YOU HEAR ME?”