Total pages in book: 210
Estimated words: 200096 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1000(@200wpm)___ 800(@250wpm)___ 667(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 200096 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1000(@200wpm)___ 800(@250wpm)___ 667(@300wpm)
A pain-filled screech echoes, snapping my attention to where Caindra spirals down, two bolts in her wing. She skids across the battlefield, crushing dozens of fighters, but more swarm in. Her injured wing stays close to her side as she breathes fire.
I can’t pick out Atticus’s armor anywhere.
Valk and Xiaric dive to her aid, but they’ll be of little use. She can’t get back in the air and she’s a sitting duck on the ground.
The fight isn’t just outside anymore. Shouts to retreat to the keep sound below, inside Lyndel. They opened the gates and the enemy are pouring into the city. I see their helmets. They’re rushing the stairs.
“Lean here.” Elisaf props me up against the wall to free his hands. He draws a second sword. “Shadows!” His voice booms, but it doesn’t veil his panic. He senses the impending end as surely as I do.
The dozen remaining casters on the rampart rush to our sides, forming a buffer.
“It’s not enough.”
This is it.
Our darkest, most desperate hour.
“Call the dragons! One of them can fly you to Ulysede,” Elisaf urges.
And leave everyone else here to die? I don’t think so.
A strange calm washes over me as I reach into my satchel, my fingers wrapping around Aminadav’s horn. The smooth bronze bone that promises Islor’s salvation.
I know what I must do. What no one else can do.
I steal one last lingering look at Zander, surrounded by blades and beasts, fighting for his people. “Elisaf?”
“Yes, Your Highness?” His eyes are on the rush of Saur’goths charging toward us.
“Tell Zander I will find him in my next life.” I smile. Who knows? Stranger things have happened.
Elisaf breaks from his focus just in time to watch me bring the horn to my lips and blow.
92
Atticus
When Tuella warned me of my coming death, I assumed it would be with my sword in my hand, not crashing into the ground, clutched in the claws of a dragon.
A massive leathery wing covers my broken body as I struggle for breath, and Bexley burns everything within the path of her fire. She’s trying to shield me as the enemy charges in. That’s kind of her, given I can’t even lift my arms, let alone a weapon.
Somewhere above, her mate and her son screech, speeding to her rescue. The thought makes me smile as I admire her shimmering scales. “Did I ever tell you how much your friendship meant to me?” I doubt she can hear me over the shouts, but I ramble on anyway, eager to get my thoughts off my chest before I no longer can. “I keep playing our last conversations over in my mind. It all makes sense now. Well … a lot still doesn’t make any fucking sense to me.” My attempt at a chuckle dies on a groan. “I wish I had listened to you.” Would it have changed anything? Who knows, but I wish I had recognized who my true allies were.
Suddenly, all goes quiet. The clash of blades, the enemies’ shouts, the dragons’ roars.
All of it is gone.
And the sound Bexley releases bleeds with despair.
93
Romeria
My jaw drops as countless clouds of dust erupt and cascade to the ground.
The Saur’goths are gone, vanished.
So are the Nulling beasts that carried their weapons.
But I am still here, standing on the rampart, watching the tide of battle shift.
“He lied,” I say out loud to no one in particular. Or misled me. Aminadav made me believe I was sacrificing myself for the good of all, for the sake of the realms. And I did make that choice.
Yet I am still here.
“Who lied?” Elisaf asks, his face filled with wonder, his swords lowered.
Caindra’s forlorn screech brims with agony, drawing my attention to her.
“No,” I gasp, searching the fields for their forms. But Valk and Xiaric are gone.
“Romeria.” Elisaf’s face pinches with consternation, his attention on the cages where Zander now stands, where my parents were. Nothing but piles of dust remain.
A heap of green silk is all that hints of Sofie.
They’re all gone.
It dawns on me then. “It killed everything that came from the Nulling.” Both good and bad.
Aminadav’s horn crumbles within my grasp, coating my hands in bronze dust.
“What did you think it would do when you blew it?” Elisaf asks, suspicion lacing his tone.
“I thought it would save the realms.” An accurate—and vague—response.
But Elisaf isn’t fooled. “‘Tell Zander I will find him in my next life’.” His chest heaves with a sigh as he puts the pieces together. “All it would cost is you, right?”
“I did what needed to be done.” What the Queen for All was meant to do. “But maybe don’t tell Zander about this?”
Elisaf shakes his head and throws his arm over my shoulder, pulling me against his side.
A few cheers erupt, and then more, until a deep wave rolls over the land. The sound of victory.