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Chapter 1
Carleah
Bowman is alive.
Living. Breathing. Walking. Laughing. It seems so surreal still that my brother sits across from me now, a hunk of bread in his hand as he tells Lacrae the story of his and Alex’s last hunting trip. A stag got the drop on them and nearly took my eldest brother out. Would have if it weren’t for Fort stepping in at the right moment.
Fort.
My gaze drifts to the closed tent where the man I love sleeps. Luckily, the healer who saved my brother is still with him, and she managed to purge Fort’s body of the poison. But the damage to his system was far greater than we knew, and she’d been forced to put him into a deep sleep so his body could heal itself.
It could take days for him to wake, she’d said.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath, shoving that from my mind. It can’t be days before he’s back on his feet. We don’t have that much time.
According to Bowman, the Tenebris have been raiding all of Navalis. Torching villages and ransacking the homes of those who lived outside of the city. If we don’t get to Soreno and gain our army, there will be no home left to save.
“Carleah?”
I meet my brother’s gaze. “Yes?”
“Are you all right? You look as though you’re in an entirely different realm over there.”
Forcing a smile, I stir the hot stew I’ve yet to take a bite of. “I’m sorry, Brother, I was considering our next steps.”
If he were my father or our eldest brother, Bowman undoubtedly would have told me not to think of such things. But instead of that, he simply nods. “What do you propose we do?”
I set the stew aside. “I think we need to divide our attention. You go to Soreno and convince Patrick to aid us while I take Fort north to the dwarven kingdom.”
“But Fort is on the mend. We don’t need another healer.”
“No, but they have an army, Bowman. And I have this gut feeling that we’re going to need every able body in the realm in order to defeat what’s coming.”
He considers my words, his blue gaze darkening as he processes them. “I don’t want to split up again. We lost so much time. The pain of believing I’d lost everyone—”
“Is something I know quite well, Brother.” I smile at him. “But we will have all the time in the world once this war is over and you’re seated on the throne.”
“I don’t want anything coming between us again, Carleah.”
“Nothing ever will,” I assure him.
“Not that this sibling bonding moment isn’t wonderful, but what of me?” Lacrae’s tone is annoyed at best. “You didn’t mention me in your plan.”
“I think you need to return to the elves and do whatever it takes to convince them to send their army now.”
“My sister will not go for that. Not when our forest is still at risk.”
“You better make her go for it, Lacrae,” I tell him. “Because we’re going to need the elves and dwarves to join us in order to make a show of an army large enough to force the Tenebris to retreat.”
“My sister told you to unite the entire realm,” Lacrae reminds me. “And you’re forgetting some.”
I sigh because I know who he’s referring to. His sister made a point to mention the Siren King before I ever left their haven. “The sirens have a reputation for slaughtering outsiders. We shouldn’t go to them unless we have to.” While I may not have believed the stories of their hostility toward strangers to be true before, I’d also believed the sirens themselves to be merely legend.
I had once believed the elves and dwarves to be legends as well. Now, I cannot help but take every legend as fact until proven otherwise.
“You are their queen,” Lacrae reminds me.
“So you say. They may not agree.”
