Page 14

Chapter

Seven

Emmerich

A fter a burst of activity once the warring soldiers around us lurched back into motion, finishing sword swings, completing their roars, and tipping off-balance when they realized they weren’t where they’d been standing seconds before, at least to their minds, everything dropped into confused silence.

It was more than simply the pausing spell breaking and sending the world into motion again. Whatever spell had pit Osric’s forces against each other had broken as well. It left Osric’s men dizzy and confused. The battle cries turned into moans of pain and muttered curses and questions.

“What happened?” one soldier shouted, summing up what everyone must have been thinking.

“You have to take charge,” Rumi whispered by my side, one hand pressed to his belly. “These men need a strong leader, especially with what you’re about to tell them. They need someone who will give them hope that we can still win the war.”

My omega was right. Another blast of magnified sound came from Freslik’s camp, saying, “You’ve lost! Lord Osric is prisoner of King Freslik now! All who supported the traitor will be dealt with harshly.”

The confusion among Osric’s men doubled. Panic started to spread as the soldiers looked this way and that, trying to find Osric in their midst.

“No! It can’t be true,” Nikkos said, stumbling out of the position he’d been frozen in for so long. “Osric can’t have surrendered. We need him!”

“It’s alright, Nikkos,” Hellis said, walking over to put her arm around the omega’s shoulders in comfort. “We’ll fight. We’ll get him back. The war isn’t over yet.”

Nikkos burst into tears, lowering his head and hiding his face in his hands. Something about the gesture made me deeply uncomfortable. I almost felt like the omega was laughing instead of crying.

I turned to Rumi, intending to ask him to stand by my side with what I was about to do, but my mate was watching Nikkos with a frown. The suspicion I felt came straight from him.

“Is something the matter?” I asked, reaching through our bond to see if I could feel my way around his emotions and learn more.

As Hellis led Nikkos of to the side and sat with him, Rumi let out a breath and turned to me, shaking his head. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

His answer wasn’t reassuring. I glanced at Nikkos and Hellis, then around at the lost and anxious soldiers, many of whom were wounded. Something had to be done.

I was a leader. I always had been since Mother appointed me to the governance of the magical world. Even my brothers stood to the side, looking to me for what to do next.

“Soldiers and friends,” I called out, addressing the field around me. “Yes, it is true. Lord Osric has been taken prisoner by King Freslik and his men.”

A ripple of gasps and murmurs of fear and worry shot through the army as soldiers gathered closer, looking desperately to me for guidance.

“It’s over!” one man called out. “Our cause is lost.”

I held up my hands and shook my head. “The cause is not lost. Osric surrendered himself as a deliberate move to advance our overall plan.”

“How can our leader surrendering himself into Freslik’s grasp advance our cause to defeat the bastard?” another of the soldiers asked.

His question was met with agreement and even more desperate looks from the soldiers.

“If you look, even now, Freslik’s army is retreating,” I said, gesturing to the opposite side of the field from where we were. “Today’s battle is over.”

Every head turned to watch Freslik’s army as it grouped together and limped away toward the king’s city and the castle beyond.

I myself noticed how many of Freslik’s loyal soldiers looked wounded or defeated, despite having won the moment.

They looked reduced enough that a part of me wanted to turn around and attack again, but instinct told me that despite how things looked, that would be a disaster.

I had to stick to Osric’s original plan.

“The war is far from over, though,” I called out, drawing the soldiers’ attention back to me. “Before he handed himself over to Freslik, Osric came up with a plan for our ultimate victory. ”

I felt sheepish stating the embryonic idea for a plan Osric had come up with earlier. Though I understood what Osric wanted us to do, he hadn’t had time to flesh out the entire plan before leaving. He must have trusted us implicitly to have his back.

“What plan?” Bronnen asked, striding closer to me.

He was one of Osric’s closest advisors and I could tell he wasn’t entirely convinced he should be following a man who had arrived only recently to help the cause, no matter how much Osric had made it clear he trusted me and my brothers. “What are we supposed to do?”

I stood a bit straighter and said, “It’s no secret by now that magic exists in this world. Neither is it any secret that dragons are real and that we walk among you.”

More than a few of the soldiers listening dropped their jaws in shock. Perhaps it was more of a secret than I’d anticipated.

“There are no such thing as dragons,” one of the soldiers nearby said. “Right?”

“I can assure you that dragons are real,” Rumi said, stepping slightly in front of me. “They have been among us, helping us, for far longer than we have known.”

“Dragons are monsters,” another of the soldiers said, though he didn’t seem certain.

Rumi shook his head. “My father is the monster. You have all seen the way he has treated me and my brothers, the way he has treated all of you, his own subjects, whom he should care for instead of send an army to fight, for these many years. But we have and have always had protectors and benefactors from the magical world who have watched for as long as they could and who have finally stepped in to make certain a good king rises up to lead us all.”

I couldn’t help but smile at my outstanding omega. If the cruel world had allowed omegas to be kings, he would have made a magnificent one.

“What do we do, then?” the doubtful soldier asked Rumi. “What plan did Lord Osric leave behind for us to rescue him?”

“The dragons are able to conjure magical doorways to wherever they need to go,” Rumi said.

“Once you have all rested and recovered, we will march through one of those doorways and straight into the castle itself. We could secure the castle before my father and his armies return from today’s battle.

They will walk into a trap, we will rescue Osric, and my father will find himself overthrown before dawn breaks on a new day. ”

Unsurprisingly, Rumi’s words revived the army, giving them energy and purpose again.

“Let us go now,” one of the soldiers said. “The sooner we secure the castle the better.”

“We’re in no shape to fight another battle before recovering from this one,” someone else told him. “And besides, just moments ago, you were more interested in fighting me than the real enemy.”

“That’s right,” someone else said. “I was attacked by some of our own.”

More shouts and cries of indignation followed, and within moments, the entire army was on edge again, friend glaring suspiciously at friend. Even without magic, I worried that the army would attack itself and the war would be lost without fighting another skirmish.

“Magic turned you against yourselves,” I called out.

“There is a dark sorcerer somewhere in our midst that enchanted our army during the battle, causing you to turn against each other. But we will not allow that to happen again. We are brothers! We are comrades in arms. No magical spell can change that.”

I felt a rush of relief from Rumi as my words had the desired effect. Confusion replaced the growing suspicion, and instead of drawing weapons and going at each other, Osric’s soldiers began to question and comfort each other when they realized the truth of how they’d been tricked.

“We still have to find the dark sorcerer,” Rumi said after the soldiers were all ordered to rest and regroup, as we headed to the center of the disheveled camp, where his brothers and mine had gathered. “I don’t for a second believe he’s run off just because Osric was captured.”

I knew my mate was right. Worse still, I could feel prickles down my back as the thought that everything we said and did was being watched and monitored by our worst enemy of all.

“Looks like the army is still with us, even if Osric isn’t,” Diamant said, standing close by his exhausted mate’s side. “What do we do now?”

“Exactly what Emmerich said we do,” Argus said with a shrug. “We wait until Osric’s men are rested, then we create doors into the castle and transport everyone there.”

“Isn’t that going against Mother’s rule of no magic?” Azurus asked.

“No magic to attack or manipulate things,” I said. “We’ve all been creating doors in this world what feels like every five minutes.”

Rufus snorted. “You know she isn’t happy about that.”

“She’ll be less happy if Osric loses the war and a dark sorcerer joins Freslik in running this world,” Gildur said with a frown.

I sighed, glancing at Rumi. “We’ve been left with very few choices if we want to win this war,” I said, feeling weary. I just wanted to get the entire thing over with so my mate and I could return to the magical world and begin what I was determined to make into a happy life with my family.

Blinking, I realized that my weary feeling wasn’t entirely my own.

Rumi sank to sit in one of the camp chairs near the blackened space where the campfire that had been lit earlier in the day had been stamped out.

He had both hands resting over his belly, which looked noticeably larger than it had at the start of the conflict.

Since everyone else had turned to their own concerns, whether to recover from the first battle or to discuss possible plans for a second one, I marched straight to Rumi and knelt in front of his chair.

“Are you well?” I asked, even though I could feel the answer to my own question.