Aidan didn’t dream. He didn’t dream, and he didn’t burn the farmhouse down, and when Kianna woke him, his entire body snapped to attention.
It was time to kill.
There was a definite spring in his step as they gathered their things and made their way back on the road. Sure enough, he sensed the army ahead of them, their magic faint and growing fainter. They’d begun moving, as well.
“How far are we?” he asked.
“Few more hours,” Kianna said. “We’ll be there by dusk.”
He glanced to the clouded sky. It was impossible to tell if the sun was even up. Didn’t matter, though.
He practically jogged down the road, through ruined fields and glens, a heavy morning mist curled around him and Fire smoking in his bones.
Today was the day he killed Calum.
Today was the day he proved you didn’t underestimate Aidan Belmont.
Today was the day he proved once and for all that this country was his.
A few hours in, and the faint sense of magic that led him forward changed. Flared. And as nightfall rolled in, the horizon before them burst red and hot with flame.
Aidan and Kianna exchanged a glance. The battle had begun.
“You should be proud,” Kianna said as they jogged toward the blaze.
“Why?” he asked. He always was.
“They’re following your orders. Immediate attack.”
He smiled. If they followed his plan exactly, this might go easier than even he had thought.
Edinburgh roared with hellfire.
Aidan’s breath caught in his throat the moment it came into view. It was nothing like the city he had toured with his mother years ago. Nothing quaint or archaic about it, even without the burn in the air. Years ago, only months after the Resurrection, Calum and his necromancers had claimed the city as their own. They didn’t just take it over, though. They recreated it.
The old and new towns surrounding the castle had been demolished. Hundreds of years of history, lost to the rumble of Earth mages and the ferocity of Fire. In their place, a wall of slick stone had been raised five stories tall, blocking out whatever now rested within. Aidan had seen the destruction firsthand, had watched as rows upon rows of tenement buildings were burned to ash and buried beneath stone, as the waters of the Firth of Forth boiled and spilled over, drowning humans and houses, erasing swathes of land in moments. The Queen’s Palace? Toppled. The great hill called Arthur’s Seat that had guarded the city from the very beginning? Leveled.
All that truly remained of the once-glorious capital was the castle, sitting high atop a magically raised hill. Stretching out for miles all around the wall, the soil was smooth and black and tarnished, glinting obsidian.
And now, in the heat of the attack, that obsidian glimmered gold. Something about the carnage pulled at Aidan’s chest, made whispers slither through his heart. Seeing the castle tugged at him. It was a shadow on his soul, a black hole dragging him down.
Somehow, deep down in the embers of Fire, the castle whispered of home.
It’s from there that you should rule, the whispers promised, feminine and forbidden. This is your destiny. This is your kingdom. From here, you will burn the world.
He tried to force them down, tried to focus on the battle in front of him. But every time he looked at the castle, he felt that hook in his chest, that tug forward. This was where he was meant to be. Fire knew it. He was beginning to know it, as well.
They crouched at the top of a hill; Aidan had no idea if the hill had been there before the Resurrection, or if it was the work of some pissed-off Earth mage. All that remained of the town around him was rubble, the ground itself frozen in burnt waves.
He watched the attack with an odd mix of awe and pride and anger. On the one hand, the black-garbed figures rushing on this side of the wall were his comrades. He’d laughed and trained and killed with all of them, knew most by name. They ran forward with weapons raised, their Spheres blazing like beacons in the night as fire billowed ahead of them, as the ground shook and the wall trembled, as the rains above twisted into icy shards and tornados churned from the skies, lightning illuminating it all in broken strobes. They were doing exactly what he’d trained them to do.
And yet he was supposed to be down there. Not up here, impotent, standing beside Kianna and a cairn of burnt stone, watching the destruction unfold.
Even if the attack had been without warning, Calum’s forces were far from unprepared. Shields of Air billowed up and over the castle, blocking it and the city from the worst of the attacks, while the necromancers within flooded the fields without in fire. Aidan could barely see his comrades through the waves of flame, could barely tell where one Hunter’s magic ended and a necromancer’s began. From here, it all looked the same.
Except for the creatures spilling out through the cracks in the walls.
Calum unleashed his Howls.
Aidan couldn’t see them well from here, but he knew without doubt that the black mass swarming from the castle was made up almost entirely of kravens. The bent, misshapen bastard children of Earth were the backbone of the Dark Lady’s army. They craved only flesh, were mindless and crazed in that hunger and, as they broke into his comrades, he knew they would be getting more of a feast than they’d had in months.
There was no way to hear the screams of the monsters or the men. Blood and magic bathed the field. He watched them clash. Watched figures fall or burst into flame. Human or Howl, he could barely tell.
Ants. From here, they were just ants. Burning, racing, mindless ants.
A small, distant part of him wanted to feel guilty. For sitting up here, watching other people die, just so he could swoop in and kill Calum later. Instantly, Fire burned up within him, incinerating the thought, the weakness—guilt was an emotion only the pathetic harbored. He wouldn’t doubt. With Fire in his veins, he knew he was right. He knew that no matter who died beforehand, the true victory would be his. Killing Calum was all that mattered in the end, no matter the cost in cannon fodder. Fire saw that clearly, and through its burn, so did he.
It wasn’t until Kianna physically opened his palm, revealing half moons of bloodied flesh, that he realized he’d been clenching his fists.
“How long?” she asked.
“What?”
“How long until we go in there?”
He chewed on his lip and considered the plan he had laid out months before. The army on this side of the castle was a distraction. The true fight was happening further east, on the shoreline, where a dozen or so Earth mages were en route or already stationed to bring down the wall. Once the wall crumbled, the Water mages—led by Trevor—would flood the town with the waters of the Forth, drowning everyone and everything still within the city walls.
That was the one perk of how dire things had become—there was no one left within the castle to save. Well, there probably were a few hundred humans being kept as food for the Howls, but that was a small price to pay for winning the war.
In his mind, at least.
Aidan almost doubted Trevor would pull the trigger.
“Follow me,” Aidan said. He began to jog, staying low and out of sight even though no one would be looking up here. Everyone’s focus would be on the battle. “When the wall comes down and the waters subside, we can sneak in. I know a back entrance.”
“I bet you say that to all the boys,” Kianna said.
“Not the time.”
“And I bet that’s what they say in response.”