Page 56 of Realm of Crows (Wings of Ink #5)

“Where the hell have you been? The fairies dropped everyone else off a minute ago.” His black eyes scrutinize me like a suspicious commander does a soldier. “You can’t site-hop on your own. How did you end up here without a fairy attached to your body?”

I wish I wasn’t so nauseous. That would make focusing on my actual surroundings much easier .

Thousands of gray-clad soldiers move past us, spread in a wide formation, Ephegos’s favored units at the heart of it, right between tall towers that look a lot like trebuchets from down here.

“Fuck—” I murmur, earning a sideways glance from Ennis as he drags me into motion.

“You need to move, or someone will start wondering what’s wrong with you.”

Ennis is right, but at the back of my mind, battle cries still echo through my mind alongside the song of thunder—and it’s not coming from this battlefield. We haven’t even set foot into battle; we’re still marching.

Shaking my head to clear it, I fall into step beside Ennis, my Crow senses crawling ahead and behind to check for Frenius and Gorrey.

Their familiar presences hover nearby at the tail of our special group.

The longer I focus on my surroundings, the more the snowy mountains feel like a hallucination induced by fairy-style traveling.

“They must have site-hopped right out after dumping me on here.” I search for an explanation of how I ended up here without a fairy delivering me.

“I do remember them grabbing me and pulling me out of the yard into the darkness between places.” Truth.

I remember fingers locking around my arm.

I have no idea who actually site-hopped me. Things happened too fast.

Next to me, a fairy pops up with two Flames on each arm.

He winks at me before disappearing in a blink.

The four Flames clutch their stomachs, panting as they fight the initial reaction to site-hopping, and I feel a tad better about my own arrival.

If Ennis didn’t see the fairy delivering me, it’s probably because they disappeared as fast as this one to grab the remaining soldiers.

“Crows and Flames, make your way to the left flank of the formation,” Ephegos’s order rings through the troops, and the special unit from the fortress slinks to the left, weaving through human soldiers marching alongside us.

Some of them give us grim smiles or curt nods, their pace brutal for anyone without supernatural stamina.

I have no idea how long they’ve been marching like this, but if Ephegos is pushing their limits to merely get them to the battlefield, he might do the Askarean army and my court a favor.

I’m not ready to trust anything, though.

After everything I’ve experienced, half the humans progressing through the flatland between two thick lines of forest could be projections.

“Are the trebuchets real?” I ask no one in particular as I count twelve horse-drawn towers in the vicinity. Men with spears and shields surround each of the siege weapons, their attention on the front lines—on what awaits beyond.

“Aye. All of those are real,” a Flame answers, pointing at the nearest tower with her open palm as if taking aim to shoot a fireball. “Perhaps the most wicked of all of Ephegos’s surprises for the Askarean bastards.”

Shit—what else does he have that I don’t know about? What is Ephegos planning?

“Why do you hate Askarea so much?” My tone isn’t half as casual as I’d hoped, but for now, it will have to do. “I mean—I thought you hated us Crows more than the fairies. ”

Ennis throws me a warning glance. Not the time to figure out the details, he seems to be saying, but when will there be time once we clash with enemy lines and I’ll be appointed to capture Myron or Ayna, or kill Silas or Royad—or the unspeakable: Kaira.

“King Recienne could have given us more land to call our own,” the Flame explains.

“He claimed he was different from his father, not ready to oppress all fairies who didn’t partake in court life and send diplomats to do his dirty work.

Recienne used to speak of a new era—a better life for all fairies—but after the second Crow War, he walled off the palace even worse than his father.

With the Crow problem solved, he forgot about our existence. ”

“We never had a place in Askarean society, and Jeseida promised to give us that place alongside Princess Sariell’s half-brother,” another Flame continues, this one male and with almost as many scars crisscrossing his face as mine.

“But Jeseida was killed by Recienne’s people, and Ephegos has taken on her legacy, fulfilling her promise to us. ”

“He’s a hero,” the female proclaims with devout enthusiasm.

“He’s a fucking traitor.” I scoff under my breath, so low none of my fellow soldiers can hear it.

Few of them know how much I despise Ephegos and his agenda and where I’ve spent the past months—at least, that’s what Ennis told me.

The truth might have given others the idea of rebelling against him, so he rather said nothing than share how well I’ve survived working around our deal.

What few Crows know are the ones who already were planning to turn on Ephegos in whatever way they can.

Ennis shared my story with them to encourage them to stick with their decision.

Those are probably the ones I’ve faced at Myron’s side, and I’m not sure what Ephegos did to bind their loyalties even further.

Who knows what he made them promise or what threats he holds over them.

Now, there’s little anyone can do. We’re on a battlefield, and Ephegos appears a few paces ahead, where the right flank we’re making our way toward begins.

Victorious expression still on his face, he measures us one by one as he directs us into position between the rest of the soldiers—a magical task force to break the enemy lines.

An enemy, I realize, is almost upon us.

Deep horns thunder along the plains, echoing off the mountains in the west. Thick layers of snow cover their peaks, but however far my fae eyes can see, I spot no sign of a battle raging up there. Again, that dark rumble rolls at the back of my mind.

“Herinor, Ennis, you’re with me.” Ephegos’s barked order tears me right from my surveillance of the terrain.

I no longer need to turn north to make out the lines and lines of soldiers marching for us.

While the taller Tavrasian men reach just above my chin, even with their heavy boots and steel reinforced headpieces, the Askarean army is made of fairies as tall as me.

Most of the females aren’t any shorter than the tallest of our human men.

Physically they are superior, and they know it.

Let’s hope I was right, and they are superior in numbers, too, because once Ephegos orders the trebuchets into action, their physique won’t help them .

Grim expression on his face, Ennis follows Ephegos, sword in hand.

If I didn’t know he’s secretly working against Ephegos in whatever capacity the bargain allows, I’d believe he’s loyal to the traitor.

Swallowing all snide comments that could so easily betray me, I prowl through the ranks of soldiers, tightly on Ennis’s heels, ignoring all sideways glances from the humans.

It will be mere minutes before we clash with Askarea; I can tell by the way the air shifts with anticipation and bloodlust. Humans aren’t really that different from fairies or Crows when it comes to slaughter—if they believe there’s a good reason, they’re willing to cut through flesh, bone, and cartilage to defend what’s theirs or conquer what they believe should be.

I find strange comfort in the thought, a sense of absolution for my plan of sending all of this behind Eroth’s veil when the time comes.

“Halt!” The command comes from a few rows ahead where one of Ephegos’s commanders oversees this part of the army.

Like puppets on strings, the right flank stops, as do the middle and the left of the army.

“Erect the trebuchets!” the same commander shouts, and like birds, soldiers flock to the siege engines, blocking the wheels and assembling the parts that need to be attached to the top—the long arms and levers—and the stabilization bars on the bottom.

It’s only now that I realize these trebuchets are even more dangerous than the ones I’ve seen before.

Unlike others, these don’t need to be completely disassembled for transportation.

It takes the soldiers a good five minutes to do their work, a major part of it executed by what have to be fairies and Crows—no humans lift wooden beams the way these men are.

And then, I realize what truly makes those trebuchets so dangerous.

A few paces behind the massive machines, human soldiers are rolling fluid-filled spheres into position.

From the way all magically-gifted creatures shy away from them, I assume they are filled with the magic-nullifying serum.

If those are hurled over enemy lines, they can take out a group of fifty soldiers on impact while everyone in the vicinity would be sprayed with the drug.

And they seem to have an endless supply.

I want to shout a warning across the gap between armies so Myron and Astorian stand a chance at preparing, even when there is nothing they can truly do. Without an antidote, they’ll be helpless against this sort of weapon.

Tearing my gaze away, I assess the rest of the army: bows and arrows, spears, swords, oval shields. Nothing inspiring like the thin silver layer glimmering at the Askarean front lines.

Whoever is shielding them must put a lot of their strength into protecting the foot soldiers from the first impact. It won’t do much good if all those arrows and blades have been coated with the serum.

Terror and a bone-deep sadness chase each other through my chest at the thought of who stands among those soldiers, who will be hit by either an arrow or a sword or by one of those magic-nullifying missiles now mounted on the trebuchets .

“Over there.” Ephegos gestures at the outer edge of the plain the moment we make it to the front line of the army.

I’m surprised he’s exposing himself like this, then, he’s always been at the center of the action when he was still residing in the Seeing Forest. He didn’t shy away from confronting Myron in the end or from trying to kill Ayna. He isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty.

While Erina hasn’t shown his face on this battlefield, or I’d see the Tavrasian royal banner flying somewhere near a rider.

“What are we looking for?” Ennis plays the loyal soldier, eagerly following Ephegos at the side of the army. Perhaps twenty soldiers frame us on the outer edge while, to the left, thousands and thousands of men stand, waiting for the order to attack.

“Myron is somewhere out there. He was sighted in his Crow form.” My heart nearly stops at Ephegos’s words. “I want you to find him and bring him to me.”

Just as he says it, a flash of pitch-black soars across the sky, toward the Askarean army.

And from the center of the lines, an order carries across the dead winter land.

“ATTACK!”