Page 57 of Realm of Crows (Wings of Ink #5)
Forty-Two
Ayna
Tori’s command rings in my ears even when he’s shouting it from over a hundred feet away. The amplifying magic he uses to boost his voice makes sure every last soldier hears it—and the enemy, too.
Across the field, the trebuchets have grown into towers of danger while we rearrange into formations better suited to meet whatever Tavras will be throwing our way.
Now, we’re less than two hundred feet apart, two massive armies ready to destroy each other, but no matter how much this side of the battle has been hoping we may avoid fighting at all, now we don’t have a choice. So we attack.
Arrows fly across the gap, aiming for enemy lines, followed by missiles of magic, each of them unique the way fairy magic is. I think I spot Tori’s liquified rock somewhere in the mix, but it could be anything, and there is no guarantee it will ever hit its aim.
I don’t allow myself to think of Myron still out there or Herinor potentially behind enemy lines.
All I do is focus on Clio’s steady presence beside me and my own breathing while, in my mind, I reach out to Kaira, checking in on her one last time before Tavras attempts to squish us beneath their boots.
“Not today,” Kaira answers my thought. “I’m planning on destroying Ephegos or Erina first—whoever I get between my fingers.”
Her spirit is admirable, especially while still recovering from near burnout.
“I’m all right. I can stand on my own, and my magic works just fine.
As long as I don’t try to link us all over miles of distance again, it shall stay that way,” she answers my other question.
She’ll be as safe as anyone can be while fighting side by side with the Fairy King, but I still can’t shake the feeling that, despite his powers, danger will follow him wherever he goes on this battlefield.
When I turn to Clio to ask if I need to worry, a terrifying grin spreads across her face as she drags up an arsenal of little ice daggers.
“Do you think they’re long enough to fit through eye sockets?”
Of course that’s what she focuses on—because, if the Tavrasian soldiers are all protected by magic-nullifying armor, their faces are the only place we can safely aim for .
“As if you don’t know.” I give her a grin that matches hers, even when I don’t feel like it. If I’ve learned anything from the Fairy Princess, it is that attitude plays a role in the outcome of battles, and she’s laughed death in the face more than once and come out victorious, so I’ll do the same.
I hope you’re safe, Myron , I think at the sky, where gray clouds supply cover. Then, I reach deep into my power, where Vala’s water magic has been slumbering for too long, and scour the soil for fluids.
The water responds like it’s been waiting for me to call upon it, surging into my palms and forming strings thin enough to fit through a soldier’s mouth, yet long enough to fill their lungs and drown them.
With a nod, I signal Clio I’m ready.
We both let our magic fly, watching it soar across the field and land behind enemy lines.
Soldiers scream, but from this distance, there is no way to tell who and where we hit.
The fact that some Tavrasian soldiers are down is only a small relief, since the gaps they leave behind are filled in an instant from the rows behind.
“They aren’t attacking. Why aren’t they attacking.” Fear fills my veins as I watch the Tavrasian army take blow after blow with minimal losses. It’s like they were ordered to show they have so many soldiers they can spare a few—or they are projections.
Fucking gods, I wish there was a way to finish off Erina and his projections so we can rely on what we see across the field.
The horrendous groan of tortured wood roars through the air as the trebuchets’ arms are tied back and loaded. Any second now, they’ll send something flying at us, and I can only hope it’s not Herinor’s head.
“I heard that,” Kaira notes in my mind, and I want to scream that I didn’t mean it that way.
“Herinor won’t be of any use to Ephegos if he’s dead,” I at least try to reassure her, but there is little I can say or do to make her feel better when my own heart won’t slow until I know Myron is safe.
“If only there was a way to confirm he is,” Kaira says with more sarcasm than I can bear.
“Don’t use your mind link over that distance,” I warn, but I know her well enough not to expect her to listen. “Please.”
I’ve barely finished my words when a bird barrels from the air, landing right at my feet. I haven’t finished my gasp when he shifts into his fae form and sleek, black hair comes into view.
“Silas.” I throw my arms around him, unable to express in words how grateful I am he’s alive, while my eyes scan the sky for Royad and Myron.
“What happened?” Clio prompts, already pulling up more ice daggers. She juggles them in her palms for a moment as if uncertain they’ll have any effect on our opponents.
Silas squeezes me tightly before releasing me, and when he does, his hatchet rests in his palm.
“Your warning saved our lives, I think.” The grim smile he gives me makes me feel anything but hopeful.
“We were able to land in the trees and hide there long enough for the fairy to disappear again. Myron and Royad took a detour to make sure no one spots them on their way back to our side, but I took a short scouting tour across the Tavrasian army. ”
My heart drops into my boots, even hearing that Myron and Royad got out of harm’s way.
“What, by Eroth, were you thinking?” I swat his arm, dropping a few water strings in the process. “You could have been killed .”
Silas shakes his head as if that’s a risk he can’t take seriously—or he seriously doesn’t care. “At least, now we know that our plan worked.”
“He’s here?” Tori asks through the mind link Kaira keeps upright between the rest of us.
“He sure as fuck is,” Silas thinks at all of us. “Ephegos is at the right flank.”
My heart misses a beat.
This is what we’ve been hoping for.
“And Myron and Royad are all right?” I ask just to make sure there won’t be any surprises. “The fairy isn’t after them anymore?”
“The fairy went straight to alert Ephegos.” Silas pats my shoulder, taking up a defensive stance on my other side, exchanging a glance with Clio that means that, between the two of them, no one will get to me. I don’t correct him.
“Let’s hope our forces hold out long enough until reinforcements arrive.
” I hate to hear Tori like this—a general who knows defeat is lingering around the corner, waiting for us to dare get too close to our enemies, when in reality, he is leading the most powerful army in all of Eherea.
But there is no way back now that we’ve opened with our attack.
“The rebels will come,” I remind him, because no rebel I’ve met will ever back down from a fight their queen calls them to. Even Iliana’s troops are on their way, perhaps not as far north as I’d hoped, but coming to our aid. “We will not lose this battle.”
“Perhaps not today, but this is only the beginning.” Silas’s thought is nearly imperceptible, but it is there at the edge of my mind, a death knell for all my hopes.
To keep myself busy, I weave thicker strands of water, whips I can lash across enemy faces or coil around their boots—maybe they forgot to coat their feet in the serum. I don’t actually believe we’re that lucky, but it’s worth a try.
“Let’s not talk about what could be or what will be,” I say out loud, aiming my magic at the Tavrasian army. “Let’s do whatever is necessary to make sure there will be a tomorrow.”
Through the bond, I reach for Myron, sending all my love to wherever he is.
Ephegos showed up, and that’s all we could have been hoping for. If we manage to decimate the Tavrasian army enough to take out their trebuchets and figure out what is real and what is a projection, we might stand a chance to see that tomorrow, too.
With a scream, Clio sends more ice daggers flying. Silas sends a wave of silver stars after them. Together, we watch them fail to make an impact while my water snakes along the ground, readying to strike like a snake.
It is perhaps ten feet from its aim when the first two trebuchets swing up, launching massive spheres into the air.
“Shields!” Tori’s command thunders along the formation as if he was standing next to me, and around us, soldiers lift their metal-enforced shields above their heads to back up the invisible magical ones they have conjured .
Clio makes way for me to step under the protective roof, and Silas grabs me by the elbow, shoving me to safety before I can’t even lift my foot.
The first impact happens halfway down the legions with an earsplitting crack. A petrified silence follows for a few heartbeats before screams and whimpers emerge from closer by than the sphere should have hit.
I barely get a glimpse at what’s happening when the second sphere hits on the right flank.
“What’s going on?” I ask into the mind link, dreading the answer enough to start shaking.
Tori takes a few tension-filled moments to respond, but when he does, it is with images rather than with words, and I know why tens of thousands of fairy soldiers might not be enough to win this war.
A crater the size of fifty men gapes in the soil, its edge littered with torn-off limbs and broken shields.
But what’s even worse than proof of how many were smashed beneath the weight of the sphere is the wet circle around the crater.
Hundreds of fairies are on their hands and knees, retching and whimpering as they grasp the soaked soil with their fingers for support.
They were hit by the magic-nullifying drug. And so were countless others at the right flank—and at the middle of the army if the screams and cracks and cries are anything to go by.
“We need to destroy them before they neutralize all our powers.” Kaira’s voice is riddled with panic, but at least the mind link is still there. “And you need to get out of here. ”
I’m acutely aware she’s speaking to me even when she could mean anyone included in our mind link, but I have no intentions of going anywhere—except for the enemy lines. Because the trebuchets need to be taken down before they can do any more damage.
I’m about to say as much when, like from a haze, Myron’s objection sounds in my mind.
“We need to get close enough to the Tavrasian soldiers to have them risk hitting their own men when they fire. That’s the only way to stop them for now.
” He doesn’t stop to say he’s all right or where, by Eroth, he’s been, simply rolls on like he’s reciting battle tactics from a book.
“Sending in isolated troops is too much of a risk with the magic-nullifying serum at their disposal. They have two more trebuchets to fire and are already reloading the others. We have a minute, perhaps two of safe progress toward the enemy lines. What do you say, Tori?” His onyx feathers rush above our formation, followed by Royad’s slightly lighter colors.
I don’t get to tell him where I am and to come to me before he zooms past us right for Tori and disappears beneath the shields there.
Safe. He’s safe. At least for a fraction of time while Tavras is aiming their battle engines at the center of the front lines, right where Myron sought cover.
“Advance! Quick!” Tori bellows, and the army sets in motion, sweeping around us as they cover more ground within heartbeats than any human army ever could. Their shields remain over their heads like a roof without cracks or gaps.
“Go,” Silas hisses, dragging me along as we allow the soldiers to wash us along with them like leaves in a stream.
We must have covered a hundred feet by the time the next sphere crashes into the army that now feels far away, but we’re not close enough to force them to stop using what should be siege weapons yet are so effectively used against us in an open field.
My back is cramping from running in a half-crouch, but I’m not submitting to the need to pause and flex my limbs. This is about life and death—and about freedom.
“We’re nearly there,” Rogue’s voice rumbles through the mind link, and I think I sense Kaira flinching at whatever they see from her position in the formation.
Then steel is clanging on steel, and I know the first of our men have clashed with enemy lines. It’s only a matter of time until we face my people.
Thousands and thousands of Tavrasians fighting for a false king who promised them a brighter future. And their general who is betraying them even as they shed their blood for his cause.
“There has to be a way to stop this.” It’s more a thought to myself than to the mind link, but I sense Myron listening. Through the bond a cautioning stroke of emotion brushes up against me.
“If there had been a different way, you would have found it,” he says, and I know he believes it.
But there has to be. There always is. I just haven’t found it yet.
“You can save blaming yourself for when you’ve actually fucked up,” Clio hisses at me, responding to my thought outside the mind link while she draws her sword with one hand, the other one keeping an arsenal of ice daggers afloat midair .
Right—not blaming anyone but Ephegos and Erina is the right way to go. But I can’t help it. As the first Tavrasian soldiers make it past our front lines, their spears coated in fairy blood, I can’t help but think I’m about to kill my own people.
I haven’t had such reservations when we were attacked by the Flames on Erina’s behalf or by traitor Crows on Ephegos’s orders, but these are humans, and I don’t even want to imagine a Tavras who’s lost so many lives over a mad endeavor.
“Shut your mouth and keep fighting,” Silas hisses as he, too, becomes aware of my thoughts through the mind link like I’m a pot of hot water boiling over. “None of those bastards deserve your pity if they lift their weapons against their own queen.”
“He’s right,” Clio seconds his statement, flanking me while I adjust the grip on my daggers, watching the soldier charging right for us. “Time for magic is over, by the way.”
Her ice daggers disappear in a flash, her sword swinging to cut the soldier’s arm off before he reaches Silas or me.
The spear aiming for us drops, still in the now-ownerless hand, and I have a sense of just having escaped being stabbed by a magic-nullifying weapon.
Perhaps fifty feet from us, another trebuchet groans, its arm whipping through the air as it releases its ammunition.
I hold my breath, waiting for the deafening sound of an impact. But the only sound carrying on the blood-scented air is that of steel and bodies colliding in combat—and the soothing whisper of rain dripping onto the layer of shields now scattered and broken by a raging battle.