Ninety Kaden

Screams echoed from the blood-soaked battlefield below. The coin flipped between my fingers as the last of the Di’llouns fought for their small village. The armored shells along their backs offered no defense after Nismera supplied her soldiers with weapons that carried a touch of her godly light. It was just a tiny amount, not enough to burn the user to ash, but strong enough that any who came up against them would match the dirt they fought on. I watched from atop a rock jutting out from a small cliff.

“What is that?” a deep voice next to me asked.

My fist closed over the coin, and I turned toward Bash. He stood eye level with me, the quills on top of his head quivering as he eyed my hand.

“Nothing.”

He quirked a brow, holding the collar of his armor. “Seems like something. You fondle that damn thing every day.”

“What a shame,” I said, watching another small beam of light rip apart a few rebels. “Nismera lost one of her favorite generals in a waste of a place like Di’lloune.”

Bash’s barking laugh could be heard even over the sounds of battle. He shrugged. “Just a question.”

“Drop it,” I said with a sneer.

He held his hands up, the small quills along their backs flaring too. “Okay, okay.”

Sighing, I turned back, watching the dust lift above the battlefield, the memory refusing to be denied.

“You kept it?” Her voice caught me off guard, and I looked up. How well she had adapted that she could sneak up on even me now.

I fisted the coin and slid the dark stone plate under a stack of scrolls before pushing to my feet. Dianna stood there with a smile on that devastatingly perfect face, holding a bag in her hand.

“You’re back a day early,” I said.

Her face scrunched. “No, I’m not. You told me a week, and it’s been a week. Unless you want me to go back?”

I hadn’t realized I’d moved until I was in front of her, blocking the door. Her smile grew.

I hated that, hated how I reacted to her. She was not supposed to be here, smiling and looking at me like that, touching me as she did. She did not belong to me, and as Nismera had said only moments earlier, she was supposed to be dead. My blood should have made her a beast like the others, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t upset that she had survived intact. She had awakened, and I had become utterly attached in the months she had been here. It was becoming a problem. Was I so starved for the smallest affection that even a smile made me want to crumble?

She was not mine.

The words echoed in my head, but I’d keep her, regardless. I just needed to figure out how to eradicate the false king before he found her.

“Do you want to do something?” she asked, shaking me from my thoughts.

“What?”

“Just us.” Her hand landed on the dark fabric of my tunic. “No Tobias or Alastair around to make snide comments they think I don’t hear.”

“Why?”

She laughed, the sound brushing over my skin like a caress. “You’ve never had a friend, have you?”

“What would we do?”

Her shoulders lifted. “I’ve never been out of Eoria my whole life. Now we’re on this island for however long. Show me around. Maybe I’ll find you a new, less bloody coin.”

Dianna’s hand brushed mine, and I tightened my fist around it. “No, I like this one.”

Her hands stayed on mine, and she looked at me as if I were something worth looking at, but she did not know me, not truly. She did not know the evil deeds I had done in the name of vengeance because our father had wished Isaiah and me dead. Yet a touch or smile from her and that hollow aching pit inside me hurt a bit less.

“Okay,” I said, eager to see what pleasure she would show me next.

The sound of a portal closing behind me shook me from my thoughts. Bash looked behind me, but I didn’t need to see his expression to know who had arrived. I knew the feel of my brother as well as I knew my reflection.

“We’re ready,” he said.

I glanced toward Isaiah as he shook the blood from his armored hands. “It’s done?” I asked.

Annoyance sparked in his gaze. We both had things that set us off. Mine, of course, was abandonment. Isaiah hated to be tricked or lied to. He had handled the situation in his usual fashion. His methods were what had earned him his reputation, and he did nothing to dispel the fear it instilled.

Isaiah leaned close to the edge of the cliff and looked down at the battle raging below. “Do you think you can handle the rest of them?” he asked Bash.

Bash’s grin turned feral, and his helmet flowed over his head in a slither of metal. He gave us a single nod that was just a bit too low, looking like a shallow bow, before jumping into the fray. The harrowing screams erupted tenfold, and more dirt shot skyward. Bash flattened a path through the Di’llouns every way he turned. It was another reminder of why he was one of Nismera’s favorites.

“Are you ready?” Isaiah asked again.

I nodded and took one last look at the coin in my hand, running my thumb over the worn sides and the line across the center. I placed it in my pocket before turning with my brother. He ripped another portal open, and I followed, leaving the crashing city of Di’lloune in smoke and embers.