Page 51 of A War of Three Kings

Anger flares hot and hard through me. I don’t notice the fork that becomes bent and mangled in my fist until Tomas’ eyes dip down to it. I will kill them all if I have to. This king. That warlord. Any and every foot soldier that comes between Keira and her safety.

Lord Tomas breaks the heavy silence. “You have my support and my soldiers. If Lord Desmond wages war in the North, it will be a bloodbath.”

I fold my arms across my chest. “We fae are a wildcard you can use to your advantage, Edmund. You’ve seen what two of us did to that river. Imagine my entire band working together. Think if we trained all your soldiers as well. Lord Desmond will be ignorant of their magical capabilities and cannot plan for them.”

Edmund gives me a curt nod. Our eyes slide to Keira. She laughs and swings around and around with Caitlin in the center of the dance floor. The sight cracks my heart.

I wonder how rare those smiles are about to become.

Chapter 12

Keira

The moment they tell me Lord Desmond has joined the invasion, it feels like the flame of hope within me is extinguished. This raises the stakes. There is so much more to lose now.

We ride out from Lord Tomas’ fortress the next morning, and not even the rays of the summer sun are enough to warm my chilled blood. The rolling hillside slips away with the miles, turning from farmland to sparse forest and back.

The day disappears with my mind lost in a haze of dark thoughts. I blink and we have already set up a camp for the night near the edge of Lord Tomas’ vast lands.

I stare into the bonfire until my eyes dry out, the mug of mulled wine in my hands all but forgotten. Those tongues of flame, burning and flickering and consuming everything, drag to mind what this war will do to my protectorate. To our people. These are the consequences of my actions, and they will be felt by all if we do not tread incredibly carefully.

Finan may be a monster of his own making, and he was always going to be a disaster for the kingdom of Strathia—but I was the one who turned his vicious attention to the North.

“We need to travel west! To secure Lord Bradford’s support first.” Caitlin’s voice travels to me across the fire. The warm, glowing light plays across her features and makes her scowl almost demonic. “He can cut us off from our supplies if he backs the king.”

“Lord Adalwolf has more soldiers,” our father cuts in.

They continue like this, arguing over the strategic locations in the North and which lords are more important, while the energy drains from my body and my mind moves in sluggish circles.

The last few weeks have been overwhelming, and I’ve had no time to process the traumas as they pile up. I cannot sleep at night, because I know I haven’t seen the worst of what is about to come.

My body sways to the side as I drift off, and I almost fall off the log I’m sitting on.

“Go to bed, Keira,” my father calls out. “There’s no point in staying out if you’re just going to doze off.”

Soldiers move all around us. Liam and Aiden dump more logs onto our fire, causing embers to spark up, while arguing about the best way to do it. Others roll out their sleeping bags in their low canvas tents and retire for the night. Laughter drifts to me from those who play cards or dice.

Our camp sprawls through this entire large clearing, rows upon rows of tents that reach almost to the woods on one side and a sharply hilly meadow on the other. A crumbling farmer’s cottage snags my attention. I wonder how many decades the building has been abandoned and what it must have been like to live in such a remote place.

A yawn cracks my jaw, and I finally give in to the fatigue and make my way to my sleeping quarters. I can’t help scanning the tents that run in columns away from our central fire until I findAldrin and Silvan. Their heads are bent together and they are talking urgently, a pair of fire orbs illuminating them.

There is space all around them where soldiers have pitched tents further away from theirs, disrupting the symmetry of the campsite. They look so incredibly alone.

It doesn’t help that the shelters they have created are so foreign to these people. The scaffolding is grown from branches that burst out of the ground and a canopy of wide, glossy leaves overlaps tightly to form the weatherproof barrier.It has such a wild cast to it, with angular limbs of wood sticking out in different directions and beds of thick moss spilling from within. It seems like something more a beast than a man should live in.

A lump forms in my throat and I stumble a step as guilt rolls through me. These fae are my friends. All of them. They took care of me when I was in their realm, and I can’t even save them from my own family, from the nasty words of my guards and the lords who answer to my house, despite how I have tried.

The battles I have fought for them behind closed doors are enough to suck the life out of me, and still, it gets us nowhere. There is always more I should be doing.

I teeter on the edge, watching them, watching Aldrin, wanting nothing more than to run to him.

I miss him. The closeness and trust we held. The warmth of his body pressed against mine when we would sleep under the fae stars on nothing but a shared bedroll. All the hard planes of his chest and shoulders that I could bury myself in. He would wrap his arms around me and kiss the skin at the nape of my neck when he thought I was deep asleep.

I miss the conversations we had for hours into the night, talking of nothing and everything, sharing our dreams for the future and planning them together.

When I move, it is not toward him, but to the pavilion tent I share with Caitlin and my father.I have to be clever and sneakyif I want enough time alone with Aldrin to have a proper talk without my father noticing and dragging me away.

I slip into my crude cot, pull the blankets over my head and wait. Despite my fatigue, sleep doesn’t come. I don’t let it.

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