“He’s turned them all,” I breathed, watching as the monsters moved in perfect unison and stopped in neat rows by Warrick’s sides.
Locke cursed.
“No wonder they didn’t join us,” Kade growled.
Anger lit up Darian’s eyes as he stared at the sirens. “I warned Cordelia to get them out.” Abruptly, he jerked his head toward me and the others. “Unlike me, the sirens usually struggle to entrance more than one individual at a time, but if they sing with one voice controlled by Warrick, I can’t be sure of their abilities. We need to find a way to take them down from a distance.”
I furrowed my brow. “Take them down?” I’d been holding onto the hope that the monsters from the other houses in Katakin would all eventually side with us once they saw what Warrick was capable of.
“Yes,” Darian replied bluntly, regret evident on his face. “There’s no hope of them changing sides now.”
Asher adjusted his grip on his axes. “Fuck.”
I was still staring at the sirens of the House of Saceris when outliers began streaming over the hill, snapping, snarling, and howling as they ran. The smallest outliers came first, thousands of them sprinting through the ranks of the Katakin monsters and forming up to become the front lines of the army. The larger monsters were spread out, lumbering slowly, and taking up their positions. King Adrien was last as he strode forward with a cruel smile on his stony face and took up a position close to Warrick. His red eyes stared gleefully at the armies before him, and I sucked in a sharp breath.
“The fucking fae didn’t take him down,” Kade growled as he stared at the king.
I turned my attention to the back of the fae army, where the silver horses were pawing the ground in agitation.
“You think he’s regrettin’ his decision?” Asher asked, gesturing with his head toward the fae king.
Darian let out a long breath through his nose. “Even if he is, there’s no turning back now.”
A part of me wished King Chalir would see sense and open portals, letting his soldiers flee, but his army stood firm.
Three armies faced each other in the night, all of us knowing that no matter the outcome, our worlds would never be the same again.
Lyr and her mates went to the front lines of the rebel forces. Like me, leather armor was strapped across her body, and her waist was heavy with weapons. She held an iron shield with one hand and lifted her sword with the other. “Monsters of Katakin!” she shouted as she walked along the front line. “Too long have we been ruled by the Taratun council and the curse. Too long have we accepted the rules of our world without question. But not tonight! We will not bend to Warrick’s rule, nor will we surrender to the fae. We either fight or we die.” There was a pause as every monster in the rebel army watched the tiger shifter. “Well, I for one choose to fucking LIVE!” she yelled, and at that, the monsters around us howled and roared, lifting their weapons into the air.
Lyr’s fearsome face contorted with anger as she went on, “We deserve to control our own fates, and when the fae are bleeding at our feet, when the outliers are no more, we will make the fae remove the curse that’s plagued us for too long!” The screams became louder, but I stayed silent. I didn’t know if the curse would be broken if they forced a fae to sacrifice themselves, but I didn’t want to contemplate it. For now, we hadn’t told anyone of what we’d discovered about the curse.First, survive, Raine. Survive and protect your mates.
An uproar came from the fae, and the army parted in the middle to allow a fae rider through. A silver horse galloped across the plain, the rider moving past the front lines of the fae and continuing onward. Lyr and her mates started forward as if to meet with the soldier and discuss whatever terms he wanted to offer, but before the rider made it any further, an outlier swooped from seemingly nowhere. The creature’s black leathery wings outstretched as the beast descended from the night, reaching out with gangly legs, and picking the horse up with its talons.
I gasped. “What the hell is that?”
The outlier was much smaller than my dragon, but still large enough to easily lift both the horse and rider into the air. My heart lurched as the horse whinnied in alarm. I tensed, and Locke slid his hand down my back. I couldn’t shift and save them in time, and I’d simply be giving away our advantage of surprise. This was only the beginning of the horrors we would witness.
High in the sky, the outlier screeched before releasing its captives. A handful of winged fae lifted into the air as if to save them, but both the rider and horse plummeted, impacting with the ground before the winged fae could reach them. The outlier soared through the sky, screeching again as it disappeared back into the night.
The world stilled, the silence deafening, and then King Adrien’s bellowing laughter sounded across the plain, loud, and abrasive. Like the sound was a signal, foot soldiers at the back of the fae army trumpeted their horns, and the first ranks of soldiers surged forward. The sea of silver split in half, with soldiers heading for the rebel forces and others moving toward Warrick and his outliers.
Lyr lifted her sword into the air, letting out a battle cry as she pointed her blade at the attacking fae. She started to run, and the rebels moved with her, picking up speed as they went. Some of the shifters opted to begin the battle in their human forms, but others surrendered to their beasts, wolves, bears, stags, and countless other creatures sprinting through the rebel ranks and leaping into the air as they clashed with the first lines of the fae, their claws outstretched and antlers as sharp as spears. The tang of blood filled the air as the clang of metal rang out.
Vasken ran with Lyr and her mates in his chimera form, his large feline body moving with terrifying grace. He leaped and clamped his jaws onto a fae, tearing the soldier’s head off, helmet and all.
I clenched my jaw so tightly my teeth ached as the world turned to a scene of blood and death, and cries of pain that would haunt me forever. Like the goddess herself was weeping crimson tears, a hue of red washed over the battlefield, and I peered up.
“A blood moon,” Kade growled. “It’s a bad omen.”
“Well, we all knew this wasn’t going to end well,” Darian commented, his sharp blue eyes watching the battle unfold.
Kade let out a breath, his gaze fixed on where the wolves of the House of Worzel were fighting, most of them now in their wolf forms. “We underestimated the forces of both Warrick and the fae.”
“Knowing accurate numbers wouldn’t have changed anything,” Locke replied.
“We should be out there,” I said, my heart pounding as adrenaline coursed through me.
Locke’s face remained hard. “Not yet.”
