Leaving anyone living behind meant that they might give our location away. Had any of Galeran’s army survived that final blast? I doubted we could be that lucky.
Isobel hadn’t brought us straight to the hideout realm. We galloped over a meadow with grasses almost as tall as we before she ruthlessly yanked more power from the coven to build another gate out of nothing at all, and took us through.
Into an unfamiliar forest. Another gate to a beach. And finally, to a forest whose smell I recognized.
It be a bleeding and battered group that cantered along the road toward the town. Isobel lay hunched over her mount, clinging to his mane. Many Trantils be badly injured, as be the mercs on their backs. We passed the town gates as fast as they could be pushed, and Galeran took us straight through the town itself.
When we passed the farm road, my spirits elevated. Finn be taking me elsewhere. Finally, a change. Something that might alter things. As we moved through the town, those mercenaries we’d left behind fell in with us. Some on foot, some pulling themselves up on the Trantils still capable of carrying double. A long trailing tail of ragtag thugs followed us to our destination.
At the end of the road be a nearly vertical cliff of rock rising from the canyon floor. And built into it, be Galeran’s castle.
The towers had been carved straight out of the cliffs, and it be medieval enough in appearance that I almost expected it to have a moat. It didn’t, but we did gallop between Bellati guards and enter a doorway at the very base of the enormous structure.
The door led us straight into a large courtyard, and we kept going down another tunnel to a smaller one ringed by stables. This place appeared much older than my previous accommodations. The stalls be constructed of stone with ancient wrought iron bars on the upper half.
We pulled up in the courtyard, and people ran forward to take the Trantils’ reins. They looked to be the local race rather than Galeran’s mercenaries, and they immediately began assessing the beasts’ wounds.
Finn pulled me up as well, but sat for a moment as though undecided as to what to do with me. Which be when Isobel slid off her Bellati, walked up to me, and blasted red light into the crystals of my headstall.
My knees buckled. I never felt myself hit the floor.
45
Anna
Matt and I stood in the meadow and watched the army limp home.
I held Sebastian’s horn against my skin and imagined it warming. But when I slid it through my hands, the sharp edges of the spiral were too dull to cut me, and when I looked down upon them, they sparkled with dust.
Just like Sebastian, his horn was dying.
Cara made her way to where Matt and I stood.
“Sebastian is still with them,” I told Cara, and she nodded. Her eyes slid from me, to the horn in my hands, and back again. But she said nothing.
She, too, had done all she could.
Closer to the academy, kept away by watchful guards, stood a milling throng of students. They were getting an eyeful of what it might mean to serve the council. I wondered, absently, how many would look upon it, and then walk away?
The meadow was filled with our dead, and with the injured and the dying from both sides. Most of Galeran’s army remaining on the other side of the gate had been wiped out by that final blast from Isobel. Those few that remained alive were that, but only barely.
Bodies lay in neat rows amid the wildflowers. A stunned group stood around the Watchers. Cara looked exhausted. Her shoulder had been healed, but it still showed the scars where one of Isobel’s blasts had hit her. One of those now dead had been standing right next to her.
“Did Talakai not find him?” she asked.
“Sebastian had me call him off.” I swallowed. “Galeran had already gone through. Sebastian said it was the only way to catch him.”
Matt moved even closer to me. So close his body pressed against mine. Perhaps the contact was as important for him as it was for me.
“Have you heard anything more?” the Watcher asked.
I shook my head. My heart hurt. I was being swirled up into a vortex beyond my control, and it threatened to unravel me. Had I made the right call? Sebastian might be here with us, now, if I hadn’t had Matt tell Talakai to leave him.
Dragons flew by overhead, a few with bodies dangling from their claws. The liveliest of those that had survived Isobel’s death blast were being gathered in the back field for transport to the Dragon Empire jail. But none, so far, were even conscious.
Guess the academy dungeon isn’t big enough,Matt said.
My eyes followed the Dragons.Where is Talakai?
