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Daimon

Even in the daylight, darkness lay like a heavy blanket across the faces of the soldiers. The lack of any real progress was wearing on them day by day. Daimon was constantly in strategy sessions with other commanders, preparing for Moros’s next move and the rising power of the rebels.

Everything changed when the wyverns started to show. Ancient texts talked of the beasts and how they flew beneath Eurydice’s blessing, only arriving in a time of need. No one had seen the war coming. It was a shock when the beasts arrived, the rebellion building right under their noses.

The empire was able to easily defeat the rebels in the early days, when they were still a regular human army. They grappled for power through praise of the dark gods, looting villages and burning innocent homes to instill fear. That was before Moros realized his advantage over the fae: the ever-replenishing resource of human soldiers. He no longer cared for the death toll, but instead the damage they could cause. Then they found a way around fae magic, using malicious spells to curse their swords and weapons—at the expense of their own souls—maximizing their damage while depleting the Essence of nearby fae. This high-risk advantage severely tipped the scales in favor of the rebels.

It didn’t help that the dark gods seemed to be pushing the rebels closer to victory, using the war to fuel their power. What they would do with that power was harder to guess. Vidaris could be playing the long game for something that wouldn’t come to an end for centuries—long after they’d all ascended to Caelum and a new generation had been born.

All he knew for certain was now, each time one of the beta fleets brought a report of their patrols throughout the empire, their shoulders slumped a little more.

Aegis were stretched thin throughout the realm, and no matter how many of them there were, the mass of land was far too vast to fully patrol every single village. Even with the Undine, Woodland, and Nox joining to train among the Aegis, it wasn’t enough to cover every corner of the realm.

Most of the ground soldiers fighting with Daimon’s fleet were Aegis, their fire affinities invaluable. They were on the border with him and his Alpha Fleet, tasked with stopping Moros and his human army from advancing past the Zenovia Mountains.

He scrubbed a hand down his face, his skin rough and lined with stubble along his jaw. Daimon always spent his mornings the same way no matter where he was—with a steaming cup of rhodiola to calm any lingering nerves, meditating beneath the rising sun. When he was young, a talented little herbalist had brewed a cup for him. Said it’d help to center himself before the day.

He couldn’t bring himself to stop drinking it long after he’d left her.

The trees around him shook, swaying violently with a gust of sudden wind. Daimon jumped to his feet, his Essence surging to life in his veins as he felt his wyvern draw near.

He could feel her restlessness, could sense her unease .

She blasted out of the sky and landed in front of him. The gust of her wings sent the trees into a whirl of motion like a coming storm as the ground cracked and splintered, spreading out in a web beneath her taloned claws. Her golden eyes seared into him with a warning .

Wordlessly, he gripped the knotted rope on her side and jumped onto her back, settling himself into the leather saddle with ease. She pushed off the ground, barreling into the sky. He held on, determination coursing through him as the view below turned from pure forest green to dry, cracked lands, then clouds. After a half-hour flying north, he could finally hear the screams—could smell the flesh that burned.

A horn blared, followed by a softer blow several miles away. The horns would blow across the entire kingdom, alerting each village of the attack. There were different cadences for each warning; the first blare to alert which territory, the next to indicate which direction from the centermost point of the territory, and the last to tell how many miles away it was.

He paused, listening intently to the horns—a pattern only the warriors had been taught. And as the first horn blew again, he knew.

Drogheda was being attacked.

The outskirts of Drogheda dipped into the western waters of the Andronicus, where the rebels must have finally broken past, overwhelming the naval unit with their sheer size. They’d been trying to advance further past the border for years, hauling cannons, swords, and weapons of all kinds, pushing countless amounts of fae onto this side of Zenovia in their campaign north. But so far, Daimon, his fleet, and the ground soldiers stationed at the mountains had kept them at bay. Each force had its own stronghold firmly planted on either side of the long mountain range that split the continent.

Making it this far into the border was their boldest move yet. Usually, any one of the fleets should have seen the ships coming… Daimon cursed this morning’s foggy weather blighting any chances for that.

Zephyr roared, an alpha calling her unit to the skies, as Daimon directed their flurry of motion toward the coast. He would kill every damned one of the traitors he came across. His nostrils flared and his blood rushed in his ears.

Coming down from the clouds, water came into view. The Andronicus Sea thrashed with the onslaught of vengeance and fury, the wind tossing waves and the current violently sweeping ships side to side. The empire’s fleet was chasing the rebel ships to shore, the Undine aboard manipulating the currents to push them back. One of the rebel ships had already made a clean break from the skirmish, anchoring near a shoal. Soldiers were exiting on a wide plank, carting cannons through the shallow water onto the beach. The Valon soldiers jumped from their ships, fighting to take down the cannons being brought to shore.

The rebels held fast to their weaponry, circling it and raising their swords. Cries of the wounded pierced the air, mingling with shouts of rage. Where one rebel fell, two more took their place, blade in hand. In mere seconds, bodies lay scattered along the shore, some still and lifeless while others writhed in pain.

Daimon hovered with Zephyr above the water’s edge, calculating to determine what his first command would be. The calm he felt in this moment always accompanied him before a battle. His heart beat swiftly in anticipation, but his mind was quiet. Ready. Zephyr perched them atop a rocky cliff, large enough to spy on the chaos below but covered enough that they weren’t spotted. She shifted beneath him, growing restless as the screams intensified.

The rebels fought relentlessly, most of their troops at sea but close to anchoring more to breach land. Their clothing was simple, not even a cheap metal armor to cover them. But one thing they all had in common: they were furious , their faces twisted with rage.

Death came swiftly in these battles—enough to make any male second-guess running into the chaos—but that wasn’t why Daimon always paused before entering the fray. It was because his shadows seemed to hum in anticipation every time he was close to a rebel, a reminder of the same darkness inside him.

Zephyr stretched her wings out, sending a shot of restlessness into Daimon’s chest.

“The fleet is almost here,” Daimon soothed, then, quieter, said, “Come on, just hold on a little longer.” He could feel them, and from the way Zephyr kept glancing behind them, he knew she felt their nearness, too.

They were the Alpha Fleet, the head aerial legion he commanded. He was in charge of ten beta fleets, most of them closer to the palace, but this was his pride. The finest weapon of the Valon Empire. And the closest thing to family he’d ever had.

Early in the war, the fleet didn’t have a solid strategy. Whoever made it first to the battle would charge in to save as many as they could. Without hesitation, they rushed into the fray to keep the enemies at bay until the rest of the unit arrived. Fearless against any opponent. For a time.

Before Graddock.

The ground troops had been held back trying to save those aboard a sinking Valon fleet, leaving Graddock to face the long lines of archers alone. His wyvern was felled, struck alone by at least a hundred arrows. The rest of the fleet arrived just in time to watch their comrade plummet out of the sky, falling into the Andronicus below.

Graddock died with his wyvern in the graveyard beneath the waves.

It was the hardest lesson Daimon had to learn in the early days of the war. Now, they waited for the rest of the unit to arrive, no matter how their instincts screamed to jump into battle. The wind whirred in a loud, unnatural groan, and the clouds grew darker beneath the shadows of soaring Riders. He rolled his neck, cracking it from side to side. Zephyr stretched her wings out, preparing for action .

His flight had arrived.

Vero—Brielle’s wyvern—was the first beast to descend from the clouds, a solid wall of leathery muscle and the biggest of the flight. The rest of the unit quickly emerged from the misty white clouds, their wings swirling the air around them as they lowered out of the sky.

With a grim look of determination, Daimon patted Zephyr’s neck and said, “Wings up, Z.”

She shot into the sky, eager to join her fleet. Brielle guided Vero over to settle on Daimon’s right, her cropped hair covered by a wyvern-scale helmet that formed into a sharp point down the middle of her nose.

Keir, leader of the Aegis, joined just behind Daimon on his left on the wings of Codax. Keir was brash, ready to fight at every breath. He was Daimon’s third, ready to listen to his every word.

“Ranick and Elias, take the beach to help any of the wounded,” Daimon barked over the wind, and then turned to his left. “Keir and Willow, take air above the reef as the naval units roll in.”

“Yes, Commander!” the four shouted as they broke apart from formation, diving downward in pairs of two as they always did.

Always watch your partner’s back—those were the rules.

“Aster and Brielle, you’re with me.”

Aster nodded as he pulled up on the other side of Daimon, lowering his black gaze to the scene of destruction below.

“Heard,” affirmed Brielle.

The trio nose-dived off the cliff, soaring above the waves toward the beach. He glanced at Aster. The usually steady Undine was wide-eyed—frantic. The rebels making it past the border shook them all, but these were his people. Daimon felt for him, but he couldn’t afford any of his Riders going into battle unprepared .

“Focus!” he yelled. “We don’t save anyone if we’re distracted.”

Aster and Brielle closed in tighter, prepared to follow Daimon into any terror. Daimon cataloged everything he could see in the blur of motion happening beneath him, trying to look for an opening.

The rebels had docked several cannons on land while the rest were protected in small cutouts on the sides of their ships. Their weapons were not to be underestimated, but their position wasn’t great. With the Valon fleet to the west and the ground troops of Drogheda coming from the east, they were caged in, both by sea and sand.

Still, they needed to be taken out quickly if they wanted to win this. The Valon soldiers were far more skilled than the rebels, but they were no match against the might of their cannons, which wiped out the fae in large clusters, forcing the wounded to retreat and give up their position. If they could just remove the cannons from the battle, they could force the rebels to retreat.

He focused his attention on the cannon closest to him, currently being loaded. His pulse increased as he realized it was covered in dark runes. There was no way of knowing the power it was capable of if it was cursed. Daimon raced for it, praying Zephyr would be quick enough.

A loud crack split the air, and the side of one of their ships was quickly blown to bits. It groaned loudly as it collapsed against the shore. More screams followed; a few Undine manipulating the water at the stern were caught in the blast, their bodies torn apart from the impact. Wood splintered into a thousand pieces as those aboard scrambled to abandon it.

Zephyr swooped down, closing her talons over the barrel of the cannon and dragging it off the ground. Rebels attempting to protect it were forced back, diving and covering their heads as wood splintered off in all directions. Daimon steered his wyvern back over the sea, relieved to hear the heavy splash of the weapon sinking into the depths of the Andronicus.

A line of rebel archers stepped forward, sending a flurry of arrows into the skies. Zephyr flew higher, her wings beating rapidly against the air as the weapons soared beneath them. Many of the arrows found their targets if Daimon counted by screams alone, but it did little to slow the cannonfire. The second a rebel ship docked, they flocked to the cannons.

Aster and Brielle spread out beside him. “At least fifteen more cannons left!” Aster shouted.

“They’re all marked with dark runes, Daimon,” Brielle added.

He ground his teeth together. “It’s starting,” he growled.

Whatever curses the humans tied to their weapons were affecting everyone’s magic, likely drawing on any Essence it could find to fuel itself. These were the times Daimon worried most about the outcome of a battle—when their magic felt dampened, weaker. It wasn’t just the curses maximizing the weapons’ damage; it also severely weakened any fae’s magic in the vicinity. Between that and the rebels’ overwhelming numbers, it made the battles longer—more deadly.

“Use your Essence sparingly and keep close to our soldiers. Most of them will be relying on their blades until this is over.”

If Daimon didn’t hate the traitors so much, he could almost admire the idea. All they had to do was set the curse. Then, once they got around fae, it would latch onto their magic like a leech draining them dry—their own Essence became their enemy.

But they paid a hefty price. The humans among the rebel forces couldn’t withstand using Essence; they had to martyr themselves with each weapon they bound in darkness. Even with the fae on their side, it wouldn’t be enough for the constant stream of dark objects they used in combat. Moros tricked the humans into believing in his power, and many died in the glory of his mission. But not all who fought were his followers. With the fae magic depleted, the lands south had grown fallow. Joining the rebellion was for some the only way to get rations for themselves and their families.

Daimon could feel it now, like a chain was wrapped around his chest, squeezing him—choking him. He glanced over his shoulder at Brielle, noting the way the fire in her hand flickered against the wind.

They needed to find a way to end this. Quickly. Or they were going to lose.