Page 41 of Wings of Cruelty and Flame (Heir of Wyvara #1)

START READING THE GOBLIN’S brIDE

The barracks were full of shouting and the delightful scent of a hundred trainees sweating at once. I leaned on the stone balcony overlooking the training yard, the crooked rooftops of Seagrave like dried blood under the baking midday sun. Below, charcoal-black uniforms spread as far as I could see, filling the walled-in acres around the barracks with grunts of exertion and cries of victory.

“I should be down there training with them,” I fumed for the ninth time today. Or the nine-hundredth.

“Letta,” Adellina hissed, dark eyes widening in her tanned face as she turned to me. “Don’t let Celandine hear you say that.”

I rolled my eyes, less because her warning was valid than because I was sick to death of Celandrine. I was special , one of the lucky ones—the shining bloody stars of the Lucrecian army.

We trained in enclosed indoor chambers with the best tutors the kingdom had to offer in noble arts and courtly battle, kept safely away from the messy sprawl of the training yard. We weren’t prepared for battle, but to be propped on a warhorse and paraded among the women and men on the ground—the real army—to give them something worth fighting for.

I’d joined the army for revenge, but they’d made me a fucking figurehead.

I didn’t want to gallop among the sweaty, blood-stained ranks in clean armour, safely shielded from the gruesome reality of war. I wanted to be in the thick of it, to unleash myself upon every goblin bastard on the other side until I found him .

The goblin prince. My sister’s murderer.

Then I’d cast off every fencing and politics lesson and reveal the scrappy street rat, thief, and assassin I’d been before Celandrine made me one of her shining soldiers.

I’d given it a lot of thought; what I’d do when I saw the goblin prince. I’d vault off my glorious bloody horse—not literally bloody, gods forbid—and land in the muck in front of the goblin bastard. While he was caught off guard, I’d throw my fist into his solar plexus, drive my knee into his dick, and smash his head against my knee for good measure. When he was disoriented, I’d pluck out his eyes and teeth and make a damn necklace of them.

I might have forgotten to mention I was a tad unbalanced.

Growing up on the salt-stained, crime infested streets of Seagrave will do that to a girl. You grow up fast, or you don’t grow up at all.

"Letta," Adellina said, making me jump when she laid a hand on my shoulder. The blonde figurehead-in-training should have known better than to touch someone as unbalanced as me, but she suited this life in a way I never would. She didn't know the wildness that sank into your bones when you had to fight for scraps of food and a safe place to sleep for the night.

She wasn't like me and Natasya, homeless when our uncle died, penniless at twelve and sixteen. Adellina had grown up in a warm, homely place where she'd never had to feel the awful, weakening gnaw of hunger. I tried not to resent her for it, but it wasn't easy.

"I'm coming," I said absently, but I wasn't really on this balcony looking at the training soldiers.

No, I was on a run-down street at the edge of the city, running so fast I got cuts on my feet through my too-thin shoes, with breath scraping my throat with every gasp I took. Natasya had been gone for five weeks then, fighting the brutal war between humans and the goblin bastards who kept trying to steal our land.

I’d had no proof the rumours were about her, that the whispers of a brutalised, shredded body dumped on the edge of the city was my sister. I couldn't have known, but it didn't stop me running as fast as I could.

The sight of her body when I'd found her, surrounded by gossip-hounds and onlookers... There was no erasing that sort of image.

As gruesome as her body was, she could have been anyone. But the blood-covered necklace around her shredded throat was unmistakable: a simple chain with five teardrops in hammered gold. It was mum's, the only thing Uncle Tavish let us keep when he inherited us along with her belongings. Dick.

I might not have known who'd killed Natasya if I hadn't heard the gossiping woman beside me ramble to her friend about how she'd seen him stalk up to the city and dump the body on the border. Tall and horrific with ice-blue muscle, he had long black hair and teeth like a thousand needles. Everyone knew Kier Kollastus, one of three Goblin Princes. Every human knew to run the other way when they saw him.

I touched the necklace hanging around my throat, tracing the shape of the teardrops.

"I'll make him pay, Natasya," I whispered, barely loud enough for the wind to hear.

I had nothing left, the only family I loved gone, and no one close enough to consider a friend. But I had revenge, and it burned hot enough to keep me warm on freezing nights.

I might not have been down on the training grounds, but I'd find a way onto the battlefield, and I'd shred that bastard goblin like he'd shredded my sister.

"Whatever it takes," I promised, "the Goblin Prince is dead."