Neither of them said a word.

CHAPTER 10

The world had become only freezing mud, and red and black blood, and the screams of the dying rising to the frigid sky.

Lysandra had learned these months that battle was no orderly, neat thing. It was chaos and pain and there were no grand, heroic duels. Only the slashing of her claws and the rip of her fangs; the clash of dented shields and bloodied swords. Armor that had once been distinguishable quickly turned gore-splattered, and were it not for the dark of her enemy’s colors, Lysandra wasn’t entirely certain how she would have discerned ally from foe.

Their lines held. At least they had that much.

Shield to shield and shoulder to shoulder in the snowy field that had since become a mud pit, they’d met the legion Erawan had marched through Eldrys.

Aedion had picked the field, the hour, the angle of this battle. The others had pushed for instant attack, but he’d let Morath march far enough inland—right to where he wanted them. Location was as important as numbers, was all he’d said.

Not to Lysandra, of course. He barely said a damn word to her these days.

Now certainly wasn’t the time to think of it. To care.

Their allies and soldiers believed Aelin Galathynius remained en route to them, allowing Lysandra to don the ghost leopard’s form. Ren Allsbrook had even commissioned plated armor for the leopard’s chest, sides, and flanks. So light as to not be a hindrance, but solid enough that the three blows she’d been too slow to stop—an arrow to the side, then two slashes from enemy swords—had been deflected.

Little wounds burned along her body. Blood matted the fur of her paws from the slaughtering she’d done amongst the front lines and being torn open on fallen swords and snapped arrows.

But she kept going, the Bane holding firm against what had been sent to meet them.

Only five thousand.

Only seemed like a ridiculous word, but it was what Aedion and the others had used.

Barely enough to be an army, considering Morath’s full might, but large enough to pose a threat.

To them, Lysandra thought as she lunged between two Bane warriors and launched herself upon the nearest Valg foot soldier.

The man had his sword upraised, poised to strike the Bane soldier before him. With the angle of his head as he brought the blade up, the Valg grunt didn’t spy his oncoming death until her jaws were around his exposed neck.

Hours into this battle, it was instinct to clamp down, flesh splitting like a piece of ripe fruit.

She was moving again before he hit the earth, spitting his throat onto the mud, leaving the advancing Bane to decapitate his corpse. How far away that courtesan’s life in Rifthold now seemed. Despite the death around her, she couldn’t say she missed it.

Down the line, Aedion bellowed orders to the left flank. They’d let rest some of the Bane upon hearing how few Erawan had sent, and had filled the ranks with a mixture of soldiers from the Lords of Terrasen’s own small forces and those from Prince Galan Ashryver and Queen Ansel of the Wastes, both of whom had additional warriors on the way.

No need to reveal they had a small battalion of Fae soldiers courtesy of Prince Endymion and Princess Sellene Whitethorn, or that the Silent Assassins of the Red Desert were amongst them, too. There would be a time when the surprise of their presence would be needed, Aedion had argued during the quick war council they’d conducted upon returning to the camp. Lysandra, winded from carrying him, Ren, and Murtaugh without rest from Allsbrook to the edges of Orynth, had barely listened to the debate. Aedion had won, anyway.

As he won everything, through sheer will and arrogance.

She didn’t dare look down the lines to see how he was faring, shoulder to shoulder in the mud with his men. Ren led the right flank, where Lysandra had been stationed. Galan and Ansel had taken the left, Ravi and Sol of Suria fighting amongst them.

She didn’t dare see whose swords were still swinging.

They would count their dead after the battle.

There weren’t many of the enemy left now. A thousand, if that. The soldiers at her back numbered far more.

So Lysandra kept killing, the blood of her enemy like spoiled wine on her tongue.

They won, though Aedion was well aware that victory against five thousand troops was likely fleeting, considering Morath’s full host had yet to come.

The rush of battle hadn’t yet worn off any of them—which was how Aedion wound up in his war tent an hour after the last of the Valg had fallen, standing around a map-covered table with Ren Allsbrook and Ravi and Sol of Suria.

Where Lysandra had gone, he didn’t know. She’d survived, which he supposed was enough.

They hadn’t washed away the gore or mud coating them so thoroughly that it had caked beneath their helmets, their armor. Their weapons lay in a discarded pile near the tent flaps. All would need to be cleaned. But later.

“Losses on your side?” Aedion asked Ravi and Sol. The two blond brothers both ruled over Suria, though Sol was technically its lord. They’d never fought in the wars before now, despite being around Aedion’s age, but they’d held their own well enough today. Their soldiers had, too.

The Lords of Suria had lost their father to Adarlan’s butchering blocks a decade ago, their mother surviving the wars and Adarlan’s occupation through her cunning and the fact that her prosperous port-city was too valuable to the empire’s trade route to decimate.

Sol, it seemed, took after their even-keeled, clever mother.

Ravi, coltish and brash, took after their late father.

Both, however, hated Adarlan with a deep-burning intensity belied by their pale blue eyes.

Sol, his narrow face flecked with mud, loosed a breath through his nose. An aristocrat’s nose, Aedion had thought when they were children. The lord had always been more of a scholar than a warrior, but it seemed he’d learned a thing or two in the grim years since. “Not many, thank the gods. Two hundred at most.”

The soft voice was deceptive—Aedion had learned that these weeks. Perhaps a weapon in its own right, to make people believe him gentle-hearted and weak. To mask the sharp mind and sharper instincts behind it.

“And your flank?” Aedion asked Ren.

Ren ran a hand through his dark hair, mud crumbling away. “One hundred fifty, if that.”

Aedion nodded. Far better than he’d anticipated. The lines had held, thanks to the Bane he’d interspersed amongst them. The Valg had tried to maintain order, yet once human blood began spilling, they had descended into battle lust and lost control, despite the screaming of their commanders.

All Valg grunts, no princes among them. He knew it wasn’t a blessing.

Knew the five thousand troops Erawan had sent, ambushing Galan Ashryver’s ships by Ilium before setting upon Eldrys, were just to wear them down. No ilken, no Ironteeth, no Wyrdhounds.

They had still been hard to kill. Had fought longer than most men.

Ravi eyed the map. “Do we pull back to Orynth now? Or head to the border?”

“Darrow ordered us to Orynth, if we survived,” Sol countered, frowning at his brother. At the light in Ravi’s eyes that so clearly voiced where he wished to go.

Darrow, who was too old to fight, had lingered in the secondary camp twenty miles behind theirs. To be the next line of defense, if five thousand troops somehow managed to destroy one of the most skilled fighting units Terrasen had ever seen. With word now undoubtedly arriving that the battle had gone in their favor, Darrow would likely head back to the capital.

Aedion glanced to Ren. “Do you think your grandfather can persuade Darrow and the other lords to press southward?”

War by committee. It was absurd. Every choice he made, every battlefield he picked, he had to argue for it. Convince them.

As if these troops weren’t for their queen, hadn’t come for Aelin when she’d called. As if the Bane served anyone else.

Ren blew out a breath toward the tent’s high ceiling. A large space, but unadorned. They hadn’t time or resources to furnish it into a proper war tent, setting up only a cot, a few braziers, and this table, along with a copper tub behind a curtain in the rear. As soon as this meeting was over, he’d find someone to fill it for him.

Had Aelin been here, she might have heated it within a heartbeat.

He shut out the tightness in his chest.