Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 156907 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 785(@200wpm)___ 628(@250wpm)___ 523(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 156907 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 785(@200wpm)___ 628(@250wpm)___ 523(@300wpm)
Tril hurried in.
Mars drew a breath into his nose, turned and strode out of the tent, nearly slamming into Kyril upon exiting it.
“Does the queen prepare to leave?” Kyril asked.
“Yes,” Mars answered. “And she rides with me.”
Prince Cassius
Night Heights Mountain Range
AIREN
Cassius sat astride Caelus, Elena to his right side, sitting her mount, Diana.
Caelus shifted restlessly under him.
Diana stood solid as stone.
He, and his princess, stared down into the trees.
“I am sorry so soon after—” he began.
“It is clever, attacking when they think we hunker down in mourning.”
He turned his head and studied her beautiful profile.
That was, he did this until she faced him.
It was then he studied her beautiful face.
He saw the sadness in her eyes.
And the determination.
And last, that something he treasured so very much.
“What was your card this morning?” he asked quietly.
She scrunched her nose, and by the gods, he started smiling at the sight.
“The mermaid,” she answered.
He stopped smiling as he was now perplexed.
“What does that mean?” he inquired.
“Storms, in life or from the sky. Magic afoot.” She paused then finished, “Revenge. In other words, nothing useful.”
“Revenge? Fern’s army?” he asked.
She shook her head but said, “Perhaps. Or perhaps its literal and somehow the Mer will alight from where they’ve hidden for centuries and swim to our aid.”
“In a mountain range?” he asked drily.
She shrugged.
He grinned at her.
She grinned back.
Mac rode up to his left side and asked, “Are you two going to flirt until dawn? Or are we going to ride down this mountain so I can gut something?”
Jazz rode up to Mac’s left side and concurred with, “Yes. What he said.”
Cassius turned his head when he sensed movement at Elena’s other side, and he saw her sister line up there, Hera beyond her, Rosehana beyond Hera.
Serena did not appear in a joking mood.
She was gazing down the mountain with sheer focus.
It would be good to finally fight alongside that formidable warrior, instead of against her.
He looked behind him to see Nero and Tone at his back.
Behind them, Airenzian and Nadirii, all mounted, all ready to seek their fates on the battlefield.
Nero jerked up his chin.
Cassius dipped his.
He then looked again to his princess.
She was watching him.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
She nodded, and as if to assert this, she hunkered over Diana’s neck, her eyes straight ahead, her heels lifting, ready to dig into her steed’s sides.
Serena, Hera and Rosehana assumed this position.
Cass looked left and saw Mac and Jasmine the same.
So he bent over Caelus, thrust his forearm into the bands at the back of his shield hanging at his side and lifted his heels.
But he turned his head one more time.
“Elena.”
She looked to him.
“I love you,” he said.
He caught only the shock and warmth suffusing her exquisite features before he dug his heels into his mount and shot forward.
And as the hundreds of Nadirii and Airenzian horses with their riders were tearing through the pines…
None of them felt the earth shuddering violently beneath them from something else altogether.
The prophecy was now complete.
Love was sealed.
It was the dawn of the end.
However that would be.
But the warriors could not miss it when the heavens opened.
And poured down rain.
117
The Surfacing
Tedrey
Ancient Ritual Ground
WODELL
Tedrey was tied to a tree, his face averted, his hands busy, his ears feeling like they were bleeding, his eyes behind closed lids feeling like they were scalding.
There was a huddle of women close beside him, gagged, but not blindfolded, tied together, fretting, moaning, but they’d learned in difficult ways not to struggle or try to escape.
The screams of the last one that had been tied to the ground, used in base and vile manners, cut and bled into the dirt, had long faded, along with her life.
But Tedrey could not look.
He had already seen too much.
Too many.
Their spent, lifeless bodies were piled behind the tree at his back, and thus he could not look that way either. He could not again look into those staring, vacant eyes that still held the stark remnants of fear and degradation and pain.
However, in the diligent frenzy of ritual and sacrifice that had now gone on, one after the other, for two days, Fenn had even gotten caught up in it and took his turn with the others, using and dispatching the women.
They were animals.
Monsters.
Tedrey had known cruelty in his life, but he could not…
He would not…
His mind simply would never be able to reconcile this.
And thus, he focused.
As they were so very involved in their endeavors, and thus paid him little mind, Tedrey focused on the ropes binding his hands, which he hoped to free and then he could see to the ones binding his ankles.
And then he would flee.
He would want to save the ones at his side, the ones taken by Fenn, Thom and their brethren. The ones agonizing beside him, dreading their turn.
But he could not.