Page 87 of A Sword of Ice
There was resignation in his voice. Like he was already retracting from the orders he’d given and was prepared to take them all away from this place. Iona couldn’t let that happen. Not yet.
“It’s the iron,” she whispered back, hoping they couldn’t hear the pleading note slip from her tongue. “It’s weakening our senses.”
“All the more reason to leave,” Shula supplied.
Iona didn’t turn a glare on the other woman, even if she wanted to.
“We need to get closer.”
“Wait…”
Iona didn’t stay to force herself to listen to his reluctance.
She was already moving.
* * *
Julius’heart thumped with equal parts fear and excitement. It beat through his blood with all the familiarity of the savage hoof beats of the little people of the wood, dancing against the forest floor.
Battle was akin to a wild song, one orchestrated by the Wild Hunt, Unseelie that danced across the skies and reveled in war and death. A legend older than even Mana. Where Mana ruled and connected Seelie magic now, there existed things even more ancient and powerful than that.
At least, that’s what he’d been told. Legends, he thought, were funny little things. One could never be too sure what was true and what was a fabrication, weaved through with lies and overactive imaginations throughout the centuries.
Regardless, he felt that wildness inside. It expanded within him, rushed through his blood like the strumming of a lute in his veins, like the rumbling cries of the Hunt was his very heartbeat.
Fighting was innately engraved in his soul. It was an instinct, one he was too foolish to ignore. Not that he wanted to, not when his mate was breaking away from him and darting towards the iron camp.
A crescendo of sounds deafened him. Blood roared in his ears and his body came alive and urged him forward.
He took a single step before a hand trapped his bicep in a punishing grip. Prince Valerio’s voice pulled him from the skies of the Hunt and what he imagined they sounded like in his mind.
“Your mate is going to get us all killed,” he snapped. “I gave orders.”
He felt the shame heat his cheeks, but he shoved it aside. He knew Iona was being impulsive and overzealous, that she was breaking their carefully constructed rules and placing him in a precarious position, caught between her and the prince. His mate and his leader.
The soldier within him wanted to apologize for what she’d done while the newly mated part of him wanted to snarl and defend her. It was a fine line he had to navigate, and he was unsure how to do that.
For now, all he knew was that his mate needed him, and it would take a lot more than his prince’s ire to hold him back.
“We have to help her.” Julius jerked his arm away and burst out of the security of the shadows. Valerio called out to him, but the rhythm had picked back up in his mind, and he could hear nothing, see nothing,tastenothing but the silence.
Right before the thunderous crash of death.
* * *
Valerio’s swordunsheathed from his side. He brandished it in his hand, but his palm burned against the hilt of it like he was holding something forbidden. Not because he hadn’t held a sword before. He had fought, killed, and this would be no different.
It was just that everything had gone straight to shit within a matter of moments, and it was entirely his fault. The sharp sting of his own idiocy stabbed behind his eyelids. He never should have trusted the Elemental. It was like the both of them had been sent to test his patience, and while Iona was entirely more willing than Shula had been, she was also too headstrong. Her inability to listen was going to get them all killed.
Had he not just had the exact same conversation with Shula days before?
Was every Elemental he met to be a thorn in his side?
Valerio could feel Uric’s heavy gaze and the angry “I told you so” sharp on the tip of his tongue. Miraculously, he held it back because there was no time for that now. There would be later when they were alone.
If they even survived this.
Valerio gave the signal and their group was running, following after Iona and Julius, who had already climbed to the top of the wall and were engaged in a battle, surrounded at all sides. He made quick motions with his fingers that the others understood. After years of traveling together, they did not need words to communicate, only hand motions.
