Page 4 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

“Memphis!” the Princess called, her golden eyes searching the thicket of forest for the animal.

With one last belly rub, I whispered to the morph, “Protect her. Protect her with all you have. Protect her for me. Never leave her side. Oath.”

The morph’s beady stare rose to mine and I heard her small voice echo in my head, Oath.

Chapter one

Pandemonium

Malik

The warning of death hovered in the air as body after body rushed out of the barracks, all donned in thick black armour and heavy weapons. Some of them had never seen a fight outside the training grounds and some had already seen too much—so much that their shadows were shivering from old memories alone without even a thought of the battle ahead.

My brother stood at the gates along with Triad while they recalled orders and battalion numbers as if we stood a chance of fending Isjordians off with numbers. Our army was all over the kingdom, spread along the three cities still struggling to keep their own troubles away. Every single soldier left was already here and the numbers were frightening. We had not prepared for war. What had happened to Olympia was repeating all over again. The only difference is that if Silas wanted to attack under the blanket of night, he’d lose.

Kilian had not said a word. Not to anyone. He nodded from time to time as if to assure people he had not lost it still. And I wished I could be fooled as the rest of them were. I wish I didn't know the pain of his heartbreak that I had absorbed. Or the glaze of his eyes when his attention slipped from the surrounding onto the distance ahead, as if he was waiting and searching for her to return to him—for her to march ahead and tell him that she was not—

That she was not dead.

“Commander,” Neo, one of my soldiers asked, the rest of my squadron following behind. “What are our orders?”

My men lined up one after the other, the look of stone and rime on their faces. They’d been prepared all their lives for a moment like this, for the moment their powers were used to kill. One touch. That what would it take an Empath to kill, to inflict so much pain one’s heart would stop.

“We move toward the gates and shut them, Umbra and the rest will deal with those advancing toward Amaris. Make the trip short, do not exhaust your strength. Use all you know. Neo, you and Emaya take soldiers to the west and east gate, I will close the central one. Estell you will stay behind,” I said to the youngest among us.

They all nodded, but her. “Why? I passed all the training. Please take me.”

I didn’t need her death in my dirty conscience. “You will protect the castle.”

She frowned. “But—”

“It’s an order, Estell. If I see you out there, collect your things and be sure to never cross me again.”

Her head lowered and she nodded, sulkily backing away.

Kilian caught my attention—my brother was looking straight at me as if he knew what was already simmering inside of my head. The despicable bastard who had to know me to the root of my hair.

When he made toward me, I backed away and turned toward the barracks. Last thing I needed was to have my brain dissected, to be asked to speak my feelings and work through them. I hated how he’d taken the role of my father better than my father ever could. And sometimes anger was better salvaged then worked through—especially in a time of war.

Mist and blood covered my body. Crammed tight between Isjordian forces that had permeated almost past river Nyx and through alaar, we hung by a small thread of hope that battalions from the southern cities would near us before ice placated our sacred lands and that my Empaths would make it in time to the gates before all of Silas’s soldiers passed through. Highwall had been breached early on, almost too early on. As if soldiers had been there long before Snow’s death.

Snow’s…death.

A hand went to my chest, feeling remnants of my brother’s heartbreak. An Obscur’s heartbreak—magnified with much more than anyone other than him could bear. For a heart to carry that much emotion, it had to be excruciating. It was for me.

Body after body fell before my feet as I attempted my way through Isjordian troops to reach the Highwall and shut the gates that poured with Isjordian soldiers like they were mushrooms. Fading wasn’t an option between the alaar and Highwall—any external interference was impossible so I had to make it there by foot.

“Now or never, Malik,” Larg called from behind me. “They are reaching Nyx. Too many for Kilian to hold on his own.”

My brother waited across the river for anyone who could reach Amaris, considering the ever-flowing lines of Isjordians, some might have already made it to him.

As if on cue to my thoughts, the skies began cracking with small tears of black. They spread and widened, engulfing the blue of noon to turn to a dark night. Immediately, shadows grew stronger, darker and vibrant with power while Isjordians waved their weapons blindly at us amidst the surrounding dark. Their panicked calls signalled that they had not prepared for this, for my brother’s power.

I felt magic rise in my bones, the amplifying strength dark gave me, so I fell to my knees and did what I did best. Raise the dead.

I dug my hands through the warm soil, a touch of magic zapped through my fingers and I pulled on it. Like a puppeteer, I threaded feel onto strings and tied the dead to it. Eldritch Commander. Unfortunately, I’d won that title fair and square.

Bony limbs tore the earth, leaving their graves. One by one, hundreds and thousands of skeletal figures poked out to the surface. My army of the dead. The army I’d fought my father arm and teeth to never raise, and I’d lost. For each soul that rose, a bit of mine got buried. To tamper with the unliving meant tampering with Celesteel. I was a man playing god.