Something softens in my chest at the thought of my friends.
As I watch, people emerge like ants from those houses to stand and point up. I twist my hands against the straps holding my wrists to the railing. “Run!” I think to scream at them, but they seem too confused. I’ve snapped at the straps another five times trying to break free before a few people begin rushing to assemble in strategic patterns. A minute more and it’s clear they’re preparing to fight even as parents scurry about, scrambling for children playing among the boulders.
My stomach lunges.
“Oh hulls,” Rasha murmurs.
Exactly.
I peer up at Draewulf’s quarters again and allow the grieving and anger burning my insides to churn, pressing it up toward him, as if I could reach claws up there and tear him from his safety.
He won’t be safe for long.
The black hunger in me gives a tiny ripple with the abrupt sense that he’s watching me. Are you thinking the same thing, Draewulf? That only one of us can win? Vengeance. Justice. I’m not sure what it is boiling in my blood, but I narrow my gaze as if to challenge him. Come down and let’s find out.
He doesn’t. Just stays up in his room while I stay down here watching the land splay out in front of us. Waiting for it.
Rasha shivers and I glance over. Can she sense it too? The air of heightened anticipation. It’s feeding the resource lust of the Bron warriors and the bloodlust of Lady Isobel’s army that will annihilate this place.
Unless we destroy both Draewulf and Lady Isobel for good.
Rasha points a finger to indicate mounds of squiggled lines forming shapes farther ahead. Beautiful designs of raised earth. As we get closer I see one is made to look like a snake, another a bolcrane, and still another, one of the beautiful Elisedd sea-dragons. Alongside them lie even deeper divots that appear to be carved out of the earth in purposeful strokes.
“They’re mineral mines,” Rasha says.
Peeking up from a few of them are treetops. Underground forests? My fist stiffens. Colin’s people created these. If his home life had been different, if his father hadn’t been a drunk or his mother had survived longer, or perhaps if his gift had been discovered earlier, he would’ve been one of their miners. He would’ve stayed here rather than restart his life in Faelen.
He’d still be alive.
I tense my hand and hold it against the airship’s metal railing. And feel the slightest shiver in response as the metal seems inclined to bend toward me. Toward the vortex. What the—? I swallow and will this thing in me to grow stronger.
The people below are scrambling to gather their forces and wits. I see pile after pile of rock beginning to shift, shoving up into walls and caves—to cover homes and land. Only . . . I don’t see any weapons. The rock formations they’re creating all appear to be for defensive purposes.
Horror dawns at the base of my chest.
These people are unused to fighting. I doubt they’ve even been trained for warfare seeing as there was no need. For the past one hundred years, the war never touched their shores. But now, for as secure as their defenses would be against any foot soldiers, the bombs on these ships will break through them like pebbles on water.
My mouth turns sour. We’re going to annihilate them.
The ship begins rattling and jolting so hard I have to grab the rail again to hold my balance and keep my wrists from being sprained as we soar over a cliff.
Does Kel see the people too? Is he struggling with having to fly the ship here to destroy them? Or is he, like me, hoping to help them?
We’re suddenly coming in fast over a city where all the airships seem intent on converging. The capital of Tulla, I assume. Beautiful rich brown staircases and covered tunnels built into the side of the sheer rock wall. The stones have been swirled in such a way that it’s impossible to tell where the cliff ends and the city begins. As if the Terrenes carved each tunnel and portcullis from the mountain itself.
No wonder Colin spoke with such pride about his homeland and of the reclusive people who live here and raise their Terrenes to be heroes here.
A horn overhead blares through my eardrums and is followed by a commotion from the dining room. I whip my head around in time to see Bron soldiers and wraiths pouring out the door and filling the deck.
Rasha’s eyes widen as she looks at me. We’re being squished on all sides by the big guard and a horde of frozen half-dead wraiths with flesh-eaten faces and the claws of bolcranes.
CHAPTER 38
THE AIRSHIP SHAKES AND DROPS BEFORE PITCHING forward to an abrupt stop. Rasha slams into me.
Abruptly the horde of wraiths are crawling over us for the plank.