Page 128 of Silver & Smoke
‘Traps? Like what?’ Vernich asked.
‘Simple yet effective obstacles,’ Kipp offered. ‘Ditches and tripwires on the obvious paths up to the throne room, which is where they established themselves last time. They won’t entirely stop the advancing forces, but they will slow them down and create confusion.’
‘What about pit traps?’ Thea offered. ‘Wren could treat the spikes with poison, so even if they manage to climb out, they’ll be weakened or dying soon enough?’
Wren nodded, ignoring the brutality of it all. ‘I can do that,’ she told her sister. ‘You and I can also cover our initial movements with storm magic. It may help wash away any traces of more basic alchemy that Silas intends to use. We only have enough of the counter-alchemy to give us an edge for a while, so we need to make it count.’
‘Do we have their positions?’ Torj asked from her side, his towering presence steadying her as the plans unfolded before them.
‘The enemy marches in one unified force from the south,’ Kipp answered with a grimace. ‘Their ranks are a combination of the People’s Vanguard fanatics, those who have been cursed with shadow magic and want violence for no rhyme or reason and some of Silas’s masked alchemist commanders.’
‘And Silas himself?’ Wren pressed. ‘Do we know where he is among the army?’
Kipp shook his head. ‘There have been no sightings of him yet. But there’s one last thing we need to decide on...’
Wren’s heart was in her throat. She and Kipp had already discussed this, and it had left her reeling. ‘The final fallback position,’ she murmured.
‘Yes.’ Kipp bowed his head in confirmation. ‘We need to establish a location within the ruins. Should the outer defences fall, we need a place where remaining fighters can retreat before...’
Torj’s warm fingers laced through hers and he squeezed her hand.
‘Before the final stand,’ Wren finished for her friend.
Wren stole a moment of solitude atop a lone parapet, a moment to come to terms with the blood that would soon never wash from her hands. And so she stood looking over the edge of the decrepit wall, watching the sun rise over the ruins of what was once her homeland. The war camp of midrealms forces was sprawled beneath her position – hundreds of fires dotting the landscape like fallen stars, each representing soldiers who might not see another dawn.
She looked down to the black metal in her hand – a People’s Vanguard mask.
Vernich had made good on his promise, finding her after her coronation and presenting her with a gore-splattered piece of obsidian. ‘Told you I’d rip one off another bastard’s face for you,’ he’d said before stalking towards Kipp, who was talking animatedly to Graves.
It was a lesser version of the one Silas himself wore, but with a full mask at her disposal, it had taken Wren all of three minutes to realize she had been right in the Warren. The piece had been designed to prolong the effects of magic and alchemy by holding the essence within the depressed lines in the metal. It explained how Silas and his select commanders and alchemists could maintain their immunity to poisons and withstand certain attacks, but itdidn’t explain the enemy’s ability to increase their strength so rapidly... She knew there was more to it, but she was out of time.
How could she have ever thought she wanted to specialize in warfare alchemy? She had forgotten the horror of it, the dread. In her thirst for vengeance after the shadow war, she’d forgotten that breaking things had never been her strength.
Healing had.
And then she felt him. The bond between them an unspoken language.
She heard the reverence in his mind, in his heart. She saw the love in his eyes as he reached for her and crushed his mouth to hers.
I love you. I love you. Gods, I love you. Those words poured into her body with every kiss, every touch, with every thrum of the soul bond.
She dropped the mask and let her hands tangle in his silver hair, meeting every desperate brush of his tongue with a savage kiss of her own. They were prisoners in their armour, clawing at metal plates for just a skim of bare skin, but his teeth marked the side of her throat and he licked over the hurt.
Fate waited for them on either side of the parapet, but her fate, her destiny was right there in front of her, under her skin and in her blood, in her soul.
The silvertide roses were gone. Her cure nearly completely used up by their own defences.
And yet she refused to believe what was so plainly written across her Warsword’s face.
Wren straightened, drawing her shoulders back. ‘This isn’t the end, Bear Slayer.’
‘I—’
‘You’re needed on the frontlines,’ she said, her voice steel. ‘And when this war is done, I will show you exactly how wrong you have been. I did not wait nearly thirteen years only to say goodbye to you now.’
‘Wren—’
She silenced him with a single look. ‘On your way, soldier.’
