Page 150 of Ashes of Honor

But the haze of panic and lust for blood wouldn’t let me trust it. My grip on the blade tightened as I lunged, slamming her back against a tree.

“Alexiares, stop! It’s me!” She gasped, her hands coming up in surrender. “Baby, it’s me.”

“You’re lying,” I hissed, my voice trembling. My mind raced, twisting her face into an enemy’s mask.

She didn’t flinch, didn’t fight back. “It’sme. Amaia. Here.” She grabbed my hand, guiding it to her face, though I could see but a shadow of it in the moonlight.

For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. My heart thundered in my ears as her words sank in. My grip loosened, and the knife slipped from my hand.

“Amaia?” I whispered. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I was begging for confirmation or forgiveness.

She exhaled. “I’m here. Shit, you’re okay. Are you hurt?”

“Areyouokay?” I asked, my voice cracking with a laugh.

She nodded quickly. Her hands gripped my arms. “I thought—I thought you were dead.” For a split second, the same fear existed in her that had been suffocating me.

“Finley,” My stomach twisted. Her name was poison in my throat.

Amaia’s weight shifted, snapping sticks beneath her boots. “She’s gone?”

I tried to hold myself together. Didn’t want to appear weak or as if I gave a shit. My legs betrayed me—they buckled. The ground came up too fast, and I hit it hard, the nausea rising before the rest of me could catch up. The bile burned in my throat, but I couldn’t swallow it down.

Amaia kneeled beside me. “Breathe.” Her hand circled the center of my back and I rested my head against her shoulder.

The contorted memories of a life with Finley sliced through me, jagged and unrelenting. Then, the image of her death. Finley’s blood, her screams, the snap of her body as the Pansies tore her apart—it was all still there, imprinted behind my eyes.

Amaia cleared her throat. “We can celebrate later, if that’s what you want to do. Or we can grieve. Together. Feel what you need to feel. I love you, I’m with you, but right now, we need to get back to the troops. We’ve regrouped two miles south. They’re clearing out anyone and anything left at camp right now and gathering the supplies that survived. A lot of people were bit … we don’t know who will make it through the night.”

I didn’t answer. I pushed myself up and started walking. Her words didn’t make sense yet. Finley’s face was still too vivid. Because in her final moments, she’d shown me something I hadn’t thought possible.

She’d chosen to save me.

I pulled myself together,shaking the worst of it off. Not enough to be fine, but enough to function.

I surveyed the camp, taking in the wreckage, the bodies. One hundred soldiers had been bit and half had already turned. It wasn’t looking great for the others. But it wasn’t the loss that hit hardest. It was her. Amaia stood at the edge of the clearing, bloodied but still standing tall. Unbroken. She met my gaze long enough for something in her eyes to soften, then turned back to the soldiers.

This—this was a loss, but not like Ronan’s. Not by a long shot.

The light from the early morning revealed the damage she’d caused. Every single Covert soldier who’d breached our perimeter was dead. Every last one. And that wasn’t all. She’d had a cavalry unit track down healers—Covert healers who’d traveled with the attacking force—and drag them back here, right into the mess they’d made.

Then she did what she did best. She gathered them, every one except the last, into the pit in the center of camp. Let her soldiers have their way with them when their magic returned. Watched. Made the last healer watch, too. Then sent them off with a message:

You play dirty, I’ll play in the mud.

Amaia

I’d been nudged every which way by Reina and Tomoe—and completely avoided by Millie. Which inevitably meant shit hit the fan. In some theoretical future, there was something theyreallydidn’t want me to do—and I was pretty sure what it was.

We were a day out from Richmond. The weather hadn’t let up, and neither had Ronan. He’d given us a run for our money—but not his best. No, he was saving those soldiers. Those troops would come when we were tired out, starving, and absent of all hope.

Ideas not too far off from our reality, except Ronan hadn’t accounted for one thing—he was fighting for possession of something he wanted. We were fighting to keep what weneeded, what weloved.

Feral beasts had formed through the past week. We’d been through hell. Most of our supplies had been destroyed, our healers killed, clothes soaked from the constantly falling snow—now stacked knee high. All odds were against us, and still, our soldiers had hope.

A great thing when their leader did not.

Right now, we had him where we wanted him. On high alert and under pressure to respond. At dawn, the beginning to the end would start, and only one army would walk away.

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