Dacha’s voice, grumpy and sleep-befuddled, came from the doorway to the other room. “You are being loud. You woke me up.”
Fieran sprang to his feet so quickly his chair toppled over. He whirled just in time to see the way his dacha winced at the sharp crack of the chair hitting the wooden floor.
“Dacha! You’re awake. Here, take my seat.” Hurrying to right the chair, Fieran gestured at it. “You should eat. Not the meat. It’s questionable. But the beans are okay. At least, I think they’re beans. It’s hard to tell. The rolls are a bit stale, but they’re fine if you don’t mind extra chewing.”
“Sason.” Dacha rubbed at his temple as he sank onto the offered seat. “Just…stop talking.”
“Right. Sorry.” Fieran clamped his mouth shut. He wasn’t sure what to do.
In the other chair, Pip had frozen, her eyes wide. Dacha’s grumpiness probably wasn’t helping anything.
Merrik slid off the bench. “We will leave you to eat and rest, Uncle Farrendel.”
Fieran grabbed Pip’s hand and tugged her from the chair. Together, the three of them beat a hasty retreat, abandoning their dirty dishes for someone else to take care of.
As they stepped outside, Uncle Iyrinder glanced from them to Dacha through the open doorway. He waved to Fieran. “I will look after him for the rest of the night. Get some sleep.”
“Linshi.” Fieran took the excuse to continue their retreat.
None of them spoke until they were in the clear section of land between the headquarters section and the hangar.
Then Pip covered her face with her hands. “Is your dacha actually mad at us?”
“No.” Fieran shook his head, letting out his pent-up breath with a whoosh. “At least, he won’t be once he has slept some more.”
“Ugh. That was still embarrassing.” Pip shook her head, still covering her face.
“That was hardly the first time Fieran has woken his dacha by being too loud.” Merrik nudged Pip, the gesture sending her side-stepping closer to Fieran.
Fieran shook his head before a weary chuckle rose in his chest as he wrapped an arm around Pip’s shoulders. “Not by a long shot. He is used to me being too loud.”
Too loud. Too human. Too much.
But, no, that wasn’t quite the truth. He was also too elven. Too energetic. With too much magical power.
He was Laesornysh. More, he was simply himself. Both human and elven. Short hair and pointed ears. Loud human laugh and powerful elven magic. He would sell himself short if he tried too hard to be fully one or fully the other. He was only whole when he was both.
Merrik shook his head before he set off up the rise toward their tents. “We should follow my dacha’s order and yourdacha’s example and rest. We will likely have another long day tomorrow.”
That they would. Even now, the artillery guns boomed despite the gathering darkness, a night made all the darker because it lacked the Wall’s comforting blue glow on the horizon for the first night since this war began.
He couldn’t go back to a time when he didn’t know what it was to take a life. When Merrik had two legs. When his cousin Myles was alive and their kingdom wasn’t in a fight for its existence.
There was only going forward, growing and changing and hopefully becoming a better person by the end of it.
Chapter
Thirty-One
Fieran guided his aeroplane in a sweep over the series of trenchworks forming the new Mongavarian-Escarlish front lines, Merrik shadowing his movements. Puffs of smoke from the artillery guns marked the continued barrage, but the main fighting had died down as both sides sought to regroup and dig in.
The Alliance still held a toehold within Mongavaria and, unlike previous raids across the border, this time they intended to keep it. The first phase of attrition had ended. Now the long slog to battle Mongavaria into the ground had begun.
As Fieran flew farther south, the winking of sunlight on a huge, flat expanse of water spread out below. Winderdon Lake was tucked on the Mongavarian side of the Whitehurst Mountains. It had been the headwaters of the Chibo River, but now a massive landslide—most of the top of one of the mountains—blocked that end of the lake.
Instead, the lake flooded the plains to the east, inundating what had once been fertile farm fields and homesteads. Fieran could only hope the Mongavarians had moved their people out of the way before they’d purposely flooded their homes and fields.
All that effort, and Mongavaria hadn’t even secured their objective. While there were a few passes through the Whitehurst Mountains and fighting was currently fierce there from what Fieran had heard, the flatland where Fort Defense stood was the best—and perhaps only—place to bring a large mechanized army into Escarland.
