once more to reach for Ludivine. Surely she would not leave him to this. She would reappear at the last moment with some great piece of information or brilliant strategy, or with Rielle on her arm. Ludivine, triumphant. Rielle, bright-eyed and giddy with relief to be home at last.
An embarrassing thing to imagine, like a child spinning fantasies.
Audric set his jaw. Ludivine? Are you there?
But she didn’t answer. In a city of thousands, in a country of millions, he was utterly, irrevocably alone.
• • •
It was night when he faced his soldiers. Ten thousand troops, mounted and on foot. Armored and cloaked, swords at their hips and castings aglow with waiting power. Metal bands and daggers, tridents and spears, shields and hammers, all scattering the city with light.
Throughout Âme de la Terre, those who had not fled the city, too young or old or weak to take up arms, gathered on rooftops and crowded at windows for a chance to see him and Atheria as they passed through the city on their way to the Flats.
The ground shook with the marching footsteps of the enemy, a storm unlike any that had ever darkened the sky. Soon, the angelic armies would breach the mountains. Earthshakers had been working for weeks to bolster the mountains themselves as a defense, blocking passes with avalanches, cutting through solid rock to create canyons, sheer cliffs, mazes of rock. The winged angels would be able to fly over such obstacles, the stolen elemental children would perhaps manage to flatten them, but his earthshakers were stationed at the pass, ready to reinforce the barriers as needed. He hoped this war of stone would slow the angels’ progress. Even the broad, sloping pass between Mount Taléa and Mount Sorenne, a huge gap in the encircling mountains, had been fortified. Audric glanced at the pass as Atheria flew. Almost two years ago, Audric had nearly died there during the Boon Chase. It was strange to recall a time when Borsvall was the enemy rather than a desperate ally. Even stranger to remember the chaos of that day—the earth flying apart around him, swift tongues of fire streaking across the Flats toward the city.
Rielle, wild with fear and glorious in her rage, tearing apart the world to save him.
He drew a breath and urged Atheria out onto the Flats, where his armies waited in orderly ranks. Archers, foot soldiers with pikes and spears, elementals holding fire and wind in the palms of their hands. They had erected a towering stone wall around the city proper, twenty feet thick and two hundred feet high. Archers and elementals were stationed atop them, arrows at the ready and fists crackling with power. Once the army had marched onto the Flats, earthshakers had demolished the city bridges spanning the lake that bordered most of the city. Now, the water gleamed unadorned, a deep and broad expanse curving around from one side of Mount Cibelline’s foothills to the other. If the angels managed to both traverse the lake and breach the wall, they would meet the second army—another thousand soldiers and elementals, ready to defend the streets of their city.
Audric’s traitorous mind fixed on the thought that it was not a matter of whether the angels would breach the wall. It was a matter of when. There was no hope of defeating the army marching on them. Not all of the angels had wings, but his surviving scouts had told him about the beasts among the angelic ranks—perverse creations, mutilated and malformed, just as Kamayin’s spy had reported. Elemental children rode atop these creatures, gray-eyed and deadly, their castings bound to the beasts’ forged armor. Monsters unholy, one of the scouts had called them before he burst into hysterical tears on his knees before Audric’s desk. Beasts in flaming armor. Children who stamped apart the earth without flinching.
Audric guided Atheria to the top of a tall stone platform Grand Magister Florimond had constructed at the lake’s outer shore. He dismounted Atheria and looked out upon the Flats. Twenty thousand soldiers turned to watch him—his own troops, and those from Mazabat. He touched the forged amplifier at his belt, a gift from Miren. His father had used it the day of the Boon Chase. To celebrate another year of peace in our kingdom.
He raised Illumenor until the soldiers quieted. Citizens within the walls would be listening, too, watching the Flats with fear in their hearts. Many of them knew this fight was hopeless. Far fewer understood