Page 140 of Ashes of Honor

A flash of movement caught the corner of my eye. I pivoted, knife at the ready, but it was only a piece of cloth swaying in the breeze, caught on a bent street sign. The unease didn’t lift.

On the bright side, my memory was still intact. The wards hadn’t taken them from me, which meant at least one piece of this plan was holding together. For now.

“Come on,” I whispered, the words meant as much for myself as for the invisible enemy I knew was out there. “Let’s play.”

The ground vibrated faintly behind me, a presence I knew without turning. Alexiares.

He stepped through the wards, the tension in his frame snapping into sharp focus the moment he crossed the boundary. “Fuck this,” he muttered, his eyes scanning the eerie surroundings. Alexiares sensed it too.

His shadow stretched alongside mine as he moved closer. “I couldn’t see you,” his voice was rough, low—feral.

I turned slightly, catching that raw vulnerability glinting in his honey eyes. “Theycould, but not me. It still wasn’t enough until I set eyes on you myself.”

His words stole mine.Rip my fucking heart out why don’t you?The wards rippled behind us, and the cavalry unit poured through. Millie and Reina came first, their weapons ready, scanning the shadows with that synchronized precision they’d easily slipped into. Tomoe and Finley followed close behind, their movements quiet—equally deliberate. The two of them had been assigned into Isabella’s support ground unit for the cavalry. One by one, our first wave of troops fanned out into defensive positions. They sensed it too. The wrongness. The weight of a thousand unseen eyes pressing in on us.

I clenched my fists, forcing a steadiness into my voice as I moved to each of the unit leaders. “We stick to the plan. This isn’t the time to fall apart.”

They nodded, the same unspoken understanding passing through them. No one argued, no one hesitated.

We moved out, pushing to secure the perimeter. Troops filed through the wards in waves. The bulk of our soldiers were still trapped behind the border—we needed to make space.

The more ground we cleared, the easier it would be for Riley’s troops to get through tomorrow. I clung to that thought. Ground myself to it. Rileywouldmake it home. To Yasmin. To his child. He had the most to lose yet he risked so much in honor of a promise he’d made, that I no longer held him to. He could not fail me. He never would.

It took nearly an hour to secure the area. There were signs of life—footprints too fresh to ignore, scattered supplies abandoned mid-use, faint wisps of smoke still curling from extinguished fires.

People had been here. Moments from meeting us in the flesh.

But there was no one. Not a single fucking face nor a whisper of movement beyond our own.

Every step tightened the knot in my stomach. We weren’t alone.

We were being watched.

Amaia

Low flames danced across the red and black tent. I toyed with the lantern, using my toes to adjust the level of lighting provided as a way of distraction. Alexiares kept his back to me, but the irritated sigh from the constant bright to low light confirmed that he was in fact awake and choosing to ignore me. Again.

“This is oddly reminiscent of our first night camped together,” I said, breaking the silence. With my flames brewing beneath my skin, I was burning up despite the cold of the night. Stripping down to my final layers hadn’t helped in the slightest.

“This tent is bigger.”

“Seriously,” I snapped, pushing up to my elbows and glaring at the back of his head. His hair had grown out completely, gone was the buzzed hair, even the sides were not tickling the back of his neck. “We coulddietonight, and you’re not even going to look at me.”

That caught his attention and the death glare he directed at me stole my breath. “Satisfied?”

No. Not really. Actually, when the initial shock wore off, it pissed me off.Someone has to do the hard shit, I reminded myself. I loved him—so much in fact, that constantly putting myself at risk was gradually becoming harder of a task. Not for his sake, but for mine. Because his love made me selfish, and there were too many condemned souls counting on me to fall back on my selfish ways.

I gathered myself, focusing on finding peace amid the swirling conflict of ego and uncertainty. “I’m trying so hard to be a reasonable individual right now.”

“Reasonable individuals don’t volunteer to die every fucking day,” He spat, his anger bringing forth that slip of an accent. “I don’t understand your complete urgency to rush to your grave. You are aleader, those soldiers out there are supposed to die for you.”

There it was again. That crack in his voice that shattered my heart into a million pieces. I know my family thought I couldn’t care less about how they felt regarding my actions. That wasn’t true. I did care. In fact, seeing how much my actions hurt them was a heartbreak comparable to no other. But duty was duty. I had an oath to keep and a promise to Prescott to hold true to. They could never know all I had planned for the future because it would destroy them.

“If only it were that easy, my love,” I relented. “You want to talk about it? Then come on, let’s talk, I’m right here. Give me a chance to listen, just because I may not be able to?—”

His laugh was ofthe Bloodhound, not Alexiares. “Give you a chance. Amaia, you wouldn’t take my … my feelings into consideration months ago in Duluth and you won’t take them now.” He paused, carefully considering his choice of words. “I fell in love with you because of your fire—it would be unwise of me to ask you to dim your flame.”

Something fragile in my chest broke. That fire, the very thing that drove me, suddenly felt too hot. Too destructive. I reached for his arm, fingers brushing against the bare skin of his chest. “I never meant to burn you.”

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