His father’s straw caught fire, and then members of the royal council were there beside him, pushing the pyres out into the lake until the current caught the rafts and sent them on their slow, stately journey toward the afterlife.
Master Eiler waded into the water. “The sun will be setting soon. It’s time for the coronation. Eldr must see that they still have a king.”
Kol nodded. It was the best he could manage. He was about to become king of a nation on her deathbed. Defending his people from the ogre invasion was now his problem and his alone. He faced the castle and clenched his fists. He would figure out how to lead his people. How to protect them. He would become the kind of ruler he could be proud of, or he would die trying.
Two hours after he’d been crowned king and had met with the royal council to discuss the ogre war, Kol was ready to leave for the war front to assess the situation himself. All that remained was to tell Brig good-bye.
She stood in the middle of his room, watching him with tear-filled eyes. Kol crossed the distance between them and pulled her into his arms. “It’s time.”
“Please, Kol. I’ve already lost everyone else. Don’t go.”
He swallowed the sharp edge of grief that ached in his throat and said, “Brig, I’m the king now. The war is my responsibility. How can I figure out how to beat the ogres if I’ve never seen what they’re capable of doing?”
Her voice rose. “You’ve seen what they’re capable of doing! We lost everyone because of them. It doesn’t matter if you go to the war front or if you stay here. No one can stop the ogres. Their skin is hard as a rock and immune to our fire, to our catapults—they’re three times our size, and no weapon we use against them does anything more than slow them down.” She glared at him. “You might die.”
He had no answer for that, so he simply held her and wished he could turn back time to a week ago before he’d pulled his epic prank on Master Eiler, before his parents had taken Rag on a tour of the war front, before everything became so complicated. So impossible.
“What are we going to do?” Brig’s voice was little more than a whisper.
Kol stepped back and lifted her chin so he could look into her eyes. “You are going to stay here and manage the castle for me with Master Eiler and the royal council. I’m going to assess the ogre situation and come up with a solution. And together, we’re going to show our people how to face pain and fear with honor and strength.”
“You sound like father,” Brig said, a shaky smile flitting across her face.
Kol had to swallow hard against the sudden tightness in his throat. “Who would’ve guessed I’d ever be capable of that?”
It took nearly a full day for Kol, Trugg, Jyn, and two members of the royal council to reach the war front by flying in their dragon forms. The craggy mountains and lush forests that surrounded Tryllenvreng, the capital of Eldr, slowly gave way to rivers that cut through the rocky hillside like ribbons. Eldrians fleeing the southern half of the kingdom for the safety of the refugee shelters in Tryllenvreng camped along the riverbank in clumps. Kol’s human heart ached for them as he flew past. He understood now what it meant to have those you loved ripped away from you.
The land began to bear battle scars as Kol and his friends closed in on the war front. The evidence of a recent fight could be seen in shattered boulders, in trees ripped up at the roots, and in an entire hillside caved in as if an enormous creature had ripped the land to pieces.
Tearing his gaze away from the wreckage, Kol signaled the others to follow him to the highest hilltop in the area. Night was falling, and soon they’d be able to fly over the armies and assess the situation undetected.
Kol alighted on the hilltop, shook out his wings, and folded them back as the others came to rest around him, their talons digging into the rocky soil. Below him, the Eldrian army was positioned with the strongest flyers in the center, archer and catapult support just behind them, and secondary flyers hidden from the approaching army on both the left and right flanks. The third wave of flyers were hidden behind the archer and catapult support to provide either another wave of attack or defensive cover for the forward soldiers in the event of a retreat.
Kol had a feeling all the army had been doing was retreating, giving up Eldr in bits and pieces.
As he studied the army’s position, there was a cry of warning, and then a pack of ogres swarmed over the rocky hills to the south. The ogres were immense thick-chested brutes—wide as four large oak trees side by side and double the height of the average Draconi—with no necks, round black eyes, and tough gray skin that matched the rocks they were scaling with incredible speed.