Page 73 of A Heart of Crimson Flames
“Agreed.” She looked through the trees to where we knew the castle of Highwick stood far in the distance. “I wouldn’t miss this.” She flashed another tight smile, but this one was tinged with pain. “Nero’s reign would have been my prison and ultimately a living grave just as it almost had been yours. I want to be a part of his end.”
“Come,” I said, leading her back toward the camp. “Eat, rest. We leave this evening for our final approach.”
Briar stalled me with her hand and pulled me back into another fierce hug. “I missed you.”
Tears welled in my eyes as I hugged her familiar form to me, her presence a comfort like no other. “I missed you, too.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I don’t know what tomorrow brings, Briar, but I hope by the time the sun rises, Nero and his pack will no longer threaten to make anyone’s life a prison again. Thank you for fighting by my side.”
She released me and sighed. “People don’t understand, not even our mates. We battled our way into this world together, Calla,” she said, looking up at the glittering stars. “I know now that there is a magic to every bond but no more so than the ones we choose. I feel the heat of it, roiling inside of me. You tore your way across the continent for me. I couldn’t sit this out.” She slung her arm around my shoulder as I wrapped my arm around her waist, the two of us standing like we always did when the other needed comfort. “I will see you secure our family’s throne.Yourthrone. And perhaps I have just enough darkness in me now to bring vengeance upon those who’d threaten it, too.”
Sadie
WE CREPT TO THE EDGES OF THE FOREST AND LEFT GALEN DEN’ Mora hiding in a copse of trees just outside town. The capital city of Highwick was not at all as I’d remembered it. What had once been a teeming metropolis was now a wasteland of derelict buildings.
What had happened to my hometown? Where were all the humans? Had they all fled the city under Nero’s wrath? Or had they been culled by that same wrath?
The only humans I spied from our vantage point were peeking behind boarded-up windows and cowered behind broken crates in the alley, barely alive. They hid from us as if at any moment we might turn on them. Did they even know that it was humans who sat in the shadows, waiting to help them? How badly had they been tricked by Nero’s guards before to be so untrusting? But I already knew the answer, had seen it etched on harrowed faces and molded onto rotten corpses. The fact any humans remained in Highwick at all was a miracle.
We cut westward along the outer streets of the city, circling out toward the forest just beyond the castle. Calla and the Ice Wolves would be crossing Nesra’s Pass and down into the valley of the forest. We’d wait until nightfall, and when the swelling moon reached its apex in the sky, we’d attack. I kept looking tothe sky. Dusk had already settled on the land. It wouldn’t be long now. Soon we’d be storming the castle of my former King.
In a few hours, for better or worse, everything would change.
We set up a makeshift camp on the outskirts of the city so that Haestas could hide amongst the undergrowth of the forest. Sitting in a circle of cobbled-together logs, we didn’t dare light a fire as we ate our dinner. Ora had emptied the cabinets of Galen den’ Mora, making a veritable feast for us with all the leftover rations, but we couldn’t help the ominous undertones of such an offering.
This might be our very last meal. The oxen had been unhitched and turned out to graze through the forest. I noted the way Ora shed a tear as they rubbed a hand down each of their backs and kissed their snouts. It was clear they were saying goodbye.
My stomach was a mess of tight knots.
Navin passed me a bowl of stir-fry, but I just held up a hand and waved it away. His lips curved down as he passed the bowl to Timon and grabbed me by my hand, tugging me in the direction of the forest.
“Where are we going?”
He pulled me farther into the forest until I could barely see. “If you’re not going to eat, you need to shift one more time. You need to be at your full strength for tonight.”
“I shifted yesterday.” I let out a grumbling curse. “I am strong enough.”
“Sadie—”
“Navin,” I countered. “Your worrying for me is misplaced. Go fret over someone else.”
“No.”
“No,” I rumbled in a mocking version of his deep voice. “If all goes amiss, this could very well be our last night alive,” I said, watching as his shoulders tightened. “I don’t want to spend it chasing bunnies.”
“Shift,” Navin commanded, occupying his jittery hands by starting on the buttons of my tunic.
“If it’ll be one less thing for you to worry about, then fine.” I swatted his hands away. “I can do it myself.”
He swayed side to side, and I knew he was just as much a ball of nerves as I was. Probably more so. And I needed him to be okay just as he needed to know I would be. That was the smallest gift I could give him before we launched our attack.
I slinked out of my tunic, kicked off my boots, and then my trousers. I slid off my ring and passed it to him for safe keeping. Navin circled his finger around the delicate silver band. Normally, I wasn’t one for jewelry. Wolves who wore jewels tended to leave them broken in the dirt in all sorts of random places when they had the sudden need to shift. One of the benefits of tying my heart to a human, I supposed. He could always hold my ring for me.
I shifted, prowling around the forest in a circle, sniffing the air and stretching just to prove to him I was making the most of it. The tension didn’t ease from Navin’s expression like I’d expected, though. He started walking toward me and I watched him carefully. What did he think he was doing? But then I saw it—the hunger in his eyes—the need for me to show him I would be all right in every possible way.
I shifted back, standing bare before him as he continued stalking forward. He grabbed me without stopping, hoisting my legs up around his hips and pinning my back against the nearest tree. The bark bit into my skin, igniting my senses. We needed this release so keenly, a little relief to take the edge off the promise of imminent battle.
He held me aloft with his one good arm, his broken arm still trapped within a sling. With a lust-addled yet resigned grumble, he moved us, taking me down to the forest floor. My hair splayed out across the fallen leaves as he lowered himself, his body covering my own.
“If it is our last night alive,” he murmured against my mouth, “then I want to spend it buried inside of you.”
