Page 171 of Of Bargains & Betrayal

Dotted with tents, the blur of moving bodies, and siege machines, I’d seen nothing like it in my life.

Even when we had our largest military forums, when days would be spent out in the Odessan wilderness, our formations never looked like that. And we’d been considered a formidable force then. The high fae left us alone. Our neighbors north of the Chasm never tried to cross.

But, clearly, my brother hadn’t been satisfied by that which had let our kingdom prosper comfortably.

What a fucking surprise.

“Just straight ahead.” Matteo pressed the faintest touch to my back, and it snapped me right out of my transfixion. “But mind. The. Feet.”

He bit out those last words and glared at several archers who had their legs sprawled out into the walkway. Some pulled them in right away, uttering embarrassed apologies, but a few of them were definitely dozing and jolted awake when he kicked their ankles as we passed.

“Hope you slept well last night, mistress,” Matteo sighed. “It can be boring work, this. Until it isn’t, of course. It’ll get really fucking exciting at some point, maybe in ten minutes, maybe in four hours. Could be two days. Who knows?”

My sleep definitely left something to be desired, between the aches of my beaten and rapidly healed body, Eilir’s frantic interruptions, and the sense of dread that ironically had nothing to do with what I’d actually woken up to.

“I’ll be alright.” We clung to a merlon as a soldier hustled by with a barrel-sized quiver of arrows. “It’s been quiet here, though?”

“Unfortunately, yes. No advances since their initial move on the stone this morning, but that means something is coming.” He kicked the legs of another sleeping archer and swore under his breath as he shot eye daggers at another lounging pair. “Here we go. Sasha?”

This archer was not relaxing.

With lengthy ebony hair tightly braided back, she was crouched on her haunches and meticulously polishing her bow with a small square of cloth. She didn’t know or care that we were there, and I didn’t blame her. The longbow in her hands had some of the most beautiful, meticulous carvings I’d ever seen.

“Sasha.”

Her eyebrow kicked up. “Hm?”

“Woman, I swear to the gods…” He sighed and cast me a sidelong pale green glance that carried so much exasperation. “Your partner is here.”

Sasha still hadn’t lifted her attention. “I told you already, I don’t need a partner. I’m fine manning this—oh.”

Her eyes finally flickered up, rich shades of russet and golden brown, and she stared with painfully obvious scrutiny. I offered her a tentative smile, and Sasha nodded slowly. Matteo seemed to take that as enough, and he gave my shoulder a quick squeeze before departing.

“Alright then.” She shifted over, patting the ground beside her. “Make yourself comfortable—er, what’s your name?”

“Enora.” I settled onto the stone walkway, back against the merlon, and considered a little too late if I should have said that.

Sasha’s eyebrows kicked up. “Oh, I see.” She let out a low whistle. “So those are your people out there, hey?”

What a simple yet unfathomably loaded question. She knew who I was—the name of the dark fae king’s betrothed was bound to travel at some point—even though that still caught me a little off guard. But my people?

The war camp sprawled beyond the ridgeline was that in a way—by ancestral blood and my thirty-one years of life, at least. I was having a hard time considering them mine in any tangible way now, not with my brother at their helm, leeching into the kingdom like black ichor.

“They…are, I guess. Or were, maybe.” I drew my lips into a line, sighing out of my nose. “It’s complicated.”

Sasha laughed. “You don’t say? I mean, I’ve got my own complicated family drama, sure, but not quite⁠—”

“INCOMING! TO THE EIGHTH!”

The voice boomed across the wall, and I tucked my head between my knees, throwing my hands up to protect my neck. Magic so strong, I could taste its metallic edge crackling through the air as dark fae shouted out a distance away from us.

“It’s not us; we’re squad eleven. Look alive.”

Sasha grabbed my arm, and I lifted my head just in time to see a flaming projectile come crashing onto the wall a few hundred paces south of us. The archers there had scattered in time, but a section of the crenels they used for shelter crumbled from the impact.

I braved a glance through the opening beside me and struggled to process that there was no war machine in immediate range.

A massive trebuchet was steaming at the edge of the Odessan camp, but that was it. Thousands of feet away from us.