Aedion grinned at the aging captain. “You fought well, for a grandfather.” The man’s daughter had given birth to a son just this past winter.
Elgan growled. “I’d like to see you wield a sword so well when you’re my age, boy.”
Then he was gone, aiming for a campfire that held several other older commanders and captains. They noticed Aedion’s attention and lifted their mugs in salute.
Aedion only inclined his head, and continued on.
“Aedion.”
He’d know that voice if he were blind.
Lysandra stepped from behind a tent, her face clean despite her muddy clothes.
He halted, finally feeling the weight of the dirt and gore on himself. “What.”
She ignored his tone. “I could fly to Darrow tonight. Give him whatever message you want.”
“He wants us to move the army back to him, and then to Orynth,” Aedion said, making to continue to Kyllian’s tent. “Immediately.”
She stepped in his path. “I can go, tell him this army needs time to rest.”
“Is this some attempt to reenter my good graces?” He was too tired, too weary, to bother beating around the truth.
Her emerald eyes went as cold as the winter night around them. “I don’t give a damn about your good graces. I care about this army being worn down with unnecessary movements.”
“How do you even know what was said in the tent?” He knew the answer as soon as he’d voiced the question. She’d been in some small, unnoticed form. Precisely why so many kingdoms and courts had hunted down and killed any shifters. Unparalleled spies and assassins.
She crossed her arms. “If you don’t want me sitting in on your war councils, then say so.”
He took in her face, her stiff posture. Exhaustion lay heavy on her, her golden skin pale and eyes haunted. He didn’t know where she was staying in this camp. If she even had a tent.
Guilt gnawed on him for a heartbeat. “When, exactly, will our queen make her grand return?”
Her mouth tightened. “Tonight, if you think it wise.”
“To miss the battle and only appear to bask in the glory of victory? I doubt the troops would find that heartening.”
“Then tell me where, and when, and I’ll do it.”
“Just as you blindly obeyed our queen, you’ll now obey me?”
“I obey no man,” she snarled. “But I’m not fool enough to believe I know more about armies and soldiers than you do. My pride is not so easily bruised.”
Aedion took a step forward. “And mine is?”
“What I did, I did for her, and for this kingdom. Look at these men, your men—look at the allies we’ve gathered and tell me that if they knew the truth, they would be so eager to fight.”
“The Bane fought when we believed her dead. It would be no different.”
“It might be for our allies. For the people of Terrasen.” She didn’t back down for a moment. “Go ahead and punish me for the rest of your life. For a thousand years, if you wind up Settling.”
With Gavriel for his father, he might very well. He tried not to dwell on the possibility. He’d barely interacted with the Fae royals or their soldiers beyond what was necessary. And they mostly kept to themselves. Yet they did not sneer at him for his demi-Fae status; didn’t really seem to care what blood flowed in his veins so long as he kept them alive.
“We have enough enemies as it is,” Lysandra went on. “But if you truly wish to make me one of them as well, that’s fine. I don’t regret what I did, nor will I ever.”
“Fine,” was all he could think to say.
She shrewdly looked him over. As if weighing the man within. “It was real, Aedion,” she said. “All of it. I don’t care if you believe me or not. But it was real for me.”
He couldn’t bear to hear it. “I have a meeting,” he lied, and stepped around her. “Go slither off somewhere else.”
Hurt flashed in her eyes, quickly hidden. He was the worst sort of bastard for it.
But he continued into Kyllian’s tent. She didn’t come after him.
She was a stupid fool.
A stupid fool, to have said anything, and to now feel something in her chest crumpling.
She had enough dignity left not to beg. To not watch Aedion go into Kyllian’s tent and wonder if it was for a meeting, or because he was seeking to remind himself of life after so much killing today. To not give one inch of space to the burning in her eyes.
Lysandra made her way toward the comfortable tent Sol of Suria had given her near his. A kind, sharply clever man—who had no interest in women. The younger brother, Ravi, had eyed her, as all men did. But he’d kept a respectful distance, and had talked to her, not her chest, so she liked him, too. Didn’t mind having a tent in their midst.
An honor, actually. She’d gone from having to crawl into the beds of lords, doing whatever they asked of her with a smile, to fighting beside them. And she was now a lady herself. One whom both the Lords of Suria and the Lord of Allsbrook recognized, despite Darrow spitting on it.
It might have filled her with gladness had battle not worn her out so completely that the walk back to the tent seemed endless. Had the general-prince not filleted her spirit so thoroughly.
Every step was an effort, the mud sucking at her boots.
She turned down an alley of tents, the banners shifting from the white stag on emerald green of the Bane to the twin silver fish on vibrant turquoise of those belonging to the House of Suria. Only fifty more feet to her tent, then she could lie down. The soldiers knew who she was, what she was. None, if they glanced twice in her direction, called out to her in the way men had done in Rifthold.
Lysandra trudged into her tent, sighing in exhausted relief as she shouldered her way through the flaps, aiming for her cot.
Sleep, cold and empty, found her before she could remember to remove her boots.
CHAPTER 11
“You’re sure of this?” His heart pounding, Chaol braced a hand on the desk in the quarters he shared with Yrene and pointed to the map that Nesryn and Sartaq had spread before them.
“The soldiers we questioned had been given orders on where to rendezvous,” Sartaq said from the other side of the desk, still clad in his rukhin flying clothes. “They were far enough behind the others that they would have needed directions.”
Chaol rubbed a hand over his jaw. “And you got a count on the army?”
“Ten thousand strong,” Nesryn said, still leaning against the nearby wall. “But no sign of the Ironteeth legions. Only foot soldiers, and about a thousand cavalry.”
“As far as you could see from the air,” Princess Hasar countered, twirling the end of her long, dark braid. “Who is to say what might be lurking amid the ranks?”
How many Valg demons, the princess didn’t need to add. Of all the royal siblings, Hasar had taken Princess Duva’s infestation and their sister Tumelun’s murder at her hand the most personally. Had sailed here to avenge both her sisters, and to ensure it didn’t happen again. If this war had not been so desperate, Chaol might have paid good coin to see Hasar rip into Valg hides.
“The soldiers didn’t divulge that information,” Sartaq admitted. “Only their intended location.”
At his side, Yrene wrapped her fingers around Chaol’s and squeezed. He hadn’t realized how cold, how trembling, his hand had become until her warmth seeped into him.
Because the intended target of that enemy army now marching to the northwest …