Greta and the Lost Army (Mylena Chronicles Book 3)

by Chloe Jacobs

  Siona was focused on her task and couldn’t continue to dampen the magick of all the faeries. Dryden stayed with her while Greta moved to protect the prince and princess. Their work was equally as important. Greta couldn’t afford for the dome to fall before they’d released everyone from the hive.

  Her faeries collided with Agramon’s faeries, and the battle began in earnest. Greta was lashed with ice and with fire. She was levitated into the air and tossed back against the gates of the castle. She fought faeries with the strength of ogres who tried pounding her into next week, and faeries that darted all around her with the buzz and speed of a dragonfly.

  It was all she could do to stand her ground and try not to hurt any of them until Siona had finished. Slowly each faerie stopped dead in his or her tracks. They stared at Siona. Then they closed their eyes and fell to their knees. The blood would seep from their noses and eyes like it had with Dryden, but when they rose again, they either walked away…or they stood with her.

  She glanced at Siona. Her friend was too pale, and bright red lines spiderwebbed up her collar out from beneath her shirt. Greta gasped and raced back to her side. “Siona, stop. It’s enough.”

  The goblin hunter shook her head, eyes still tightly shut. When Greta took her arm, she jerked out of reach.

  “Siona, don’t kill yourself. I need you. We can stop now and retreat with the ones we’ve got. We’ll try again—”

  Her eyes snapped open, two orbs blazing with pink light, her pupils all but swallowed up in it. “There is no trying again. The demon comes.”

  Greta stumbled back. Siona’s voice was flat, as if coming out of the shadows of a deep tunnel, but it sounded like his voice…Agramon’s.

  “Siona? Siona, please. You’re freaking me out.”

  Dryden stepped up in front of both of them in time to deflect a fireball that would have taken off Greta’s head. Siona only ducked her chin and turned away, returning to her task.

  Greta stepped in again, determined to pull Siona out of the magick, but Dryden stopped her. “Too late to change your mind, danem,” he gritted out. Even he was starting to show signs of strain and fatigue. “If she stops before it’s all done, the faeries remaining in the hive will wipe out all the ones we’ve just risked so much to liberate.”

  She bit her tongue to keep from telling him to screw off, because he was right, and she’d known that even before they’d started.

  There was a new urgency in her movements as she focused on protecting Siona from further distraction or harm, hopefully helping her get the job done sooner.

  There were casualties. She wished there weren’t, but some of the faeries fought against Siona’s efforts to free them. Siona let them go without breaking their connection to the hive, but instead of walking away, they attacked. Relentless. Desperate. As if they knew that they couldn’t survive without the support of the hive, but didn’t want to be at the demon’s mercy, either, and so they forced her to give them a third option. Death.

  After what seemed like hours, Greta was able to take her first breath. Her lungs burned, her arms ached, and she could barely hold the sword in her hand.

  She blinked and swept her gaze across the city.

  They’d done it. Roughly two hundred faeries remained with them. Everyone was looking at her with varying degrees of uncertainty and curiosity. She tried to gauge how many she could bring to Isaac as soldiers. There were a few of the castle guards, but otherwise the group was composed mostly of untrained citizens. Too few of the warriors had been in the Glass Kingdom.

  Byron and Leila leaned into one another for support, foreheads still creased with effort. They would maintain the dome until she gave the signal. She did that now, touching their shoulders and feeling the immediate slump as they let it all go. She was surprised and impressed. They had stepped up despite their history with her and done everything they were asked to do. All of them had.

  She didn’t delude herself into believing that they had done it for her, but the fact that they’d all worked together for Mylena was good enough.

  “Greta.”

  She spun around at Dryden’s call and gasped. He knelt on the ground with Siona cradled against him. She shivered in his arms, blood smeared across her cheeks, trailing in rivulets out of her nose and ears, and even her eyes.

  She raced over and dropped down beside the goblin hunter. Siona’s eyelids fluttered. At least the moonbeam eyes thing was gone.

  Greta smoothed the hair gently from her forehead and forced a smile. “Hey, you did it,” she said, a heavy ball in her throat making it hard to swallow. She looked so frail in Dryden’s arms, so weak. Too weak. “You did such a great job. I want you to rest now, and you’ll feel better in a little while.”

  Damn it, she should have listened to her gut and stopped Siona before she’d gotten to the point of almost killing herself.

  Dryden’s mouth compressed into a thin line. He gave a barely perceptible shake of his head.

  Greta squeezed Siona’s hand and glared at him, refusing to accept what he was silently warning her about. “Keep her with you and let her rest,” she murmured tightly. “She just needs some rest.”

  He sighed and nodded.

  Reluctantly, Greta left Siona’s care to Dryden. She got up and turned to face all the new people she’d just assumed responsibility for with a hard swallow.

  What to say to them? Yes, the future of Mylena was in their hands. Yes, it was going to be a battle to the death, and in the end, they might still lose. They knew all of that.

  She didn’t have to tell them.

  She could easily imagine what it had been like sharing the hive with Agramon. He’d been in her mind once before, too, up close and personal. She’d tasted his evil and been tricked into wanting more. Even now, she wasn’t sure that she was completely free of him, would ever be free of him.

  She wouldn’t tell them any of that, either.

  “Let’s go,” she called, swallowing hard. “We have a long journey and a hard battle ahead of us to reclaim this world.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  After rejoining Ethan and the other goblins they’d left behind earlier, Greta pushed the now massive and cumbersome group as far as she could, trying to get as far away from the Glass Kingdom as possible before nightfall.

  Her nerves were shattered, the prospect of being responsible for so many, so suddenly, was a weight on her chest. But damn it, if all those people could put their faith in a human, then she could suck it up and make sure their faith wasn’t misplaced.

  It was impossible to know what to expect when attempting to lead so many different personalities, but surprisingly, there were no arguments. She would have blamed shell shock and fear, but it wasn’t as if they were actually quiet.

  In fact, this journey was much different from the last time she’d traveled with a group of faerie kind. Then, none of them had said more than three words, because they’d been communicating with each other in their minds via the hive. But now that everyone was disconnected, they were all talking. It was almost too much to handle. She couldn’t hear the sounds of the forest for the chatter. Muted as each nervous conversation tried to be, the sheer number of people made for a cacophony that would travel ahead of them.

  It was full dark before she called a stop for the night. They put together a rudimentary camp near Solem’s Bridge, and Dryden personally chose the sentries and posted them around the perimeter. Again, she found herself having to feel grateful to him.

  “I’m sorry for the way I treated you before,” she murmured.

  “Before…when?”

  “You know, when I thought you were a cold, heartless monster who cared for nothing but his own people and would have happily watched me die without lifting a finger.”

  He raised a brow. “None of that’s changed. My priority has been and always will be what is best for the faerie race. If that’s you, then I will continue to stand by your side. But when our goals cease to be in alignment, then I will reeval
uate my allegiance once more.”

  Her mouth fell open. “You admit it?”

  He crossed his arms. “I neither admit nor deny. I simply state what is true for everyone…even you.”

  She bristled. “All right, I take it back. I’m not sorry.”

  “For what it’s worth, you’ve earned my respect. I’ll always be truthful with you.”

  She grimaced. “I guess that’s fair.”

  Despite knowing it was the fastest and most direct route to their ultimate destination, she’d been reluctant to try and cross the chasm downriver of Eyna’s Falls again, especially since the actual bridge had collapsed the last time she’d come this way, and the bjer could still be on the other side. But Dryden promised there were faeries with them whose magick could facilitate a safe crossing. After their frank discussion about truth, she decided to trust him. Not that she had a choice. She needed to get her group to Isaac as soon as possible, and the bridge was the fastest route.

  Worry for Siona made it hard to fall asleep that night, but in an effort to prove she was embracing trust, she asked Dryden to stand guard over them both. Then she curled up beside Siona and entwined their hands as she closed her eyes.

  She opened her eyes back in the Glass Kingdom, surrounded by dead bodies. Some of them were faerie and this time some of them were goblin, and…some of them were even human. Isaac stood at her side, surveying the damage with an unflinching eye. “Your dreams reveal too much. Your guilt bleeds from you,” he murmured softly. “You have to let it go, or you won’t survive.”

  She crossed her arms, shivering. “I knew the odds would be stacked against us when we decided to come back to Mylena, but I thought we’d have a chance. Was I wrong? By going to the Glass Kingdom have I just condemned another race of people to our suicide mission?”

  “If you believe we are doomed, then we will be doomed.”

  She groaned. “I know, I know. I’m just…”

  He wrapped her in his arms. She breathed in his woodsy scent, knowing she smelled it only because she remembered it so well.

  “You made a smart, strategic decision to go to the Glass Kingdom. Not only did you add to our numbers, but you reduced Agramon’s,” he said.

  At what cost? This whole responsibility thing was just as hard as she always knew it would be, which was exactly why she’d avoided it for so long.

  “Siona might be dying,” she whispered in a broken voice. “And I’m the one who’s accountable. I’m the one who told her to free those faeries, and she kept going and going until they were all released from Agramon’s clutches.”

  He didn’t touch her, but his love and support was a wave of warmth that swept her up. She fought against it because she didn’t want to feel better, not while her friend lay unconscious and near death.

  “She likely would have thought of the idea anyway.”

  “But she didn’t. It was me.”

  “Would she have refused such a responsibility if you hadn’t been the one to ask it of her?” he said. “Do you think she would have preferred to save herself and see her faerie kin consumed by the demon’s evil?”

  “No, of course not,” she protested. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m sleeping peacefully without a scratch on me”—that wasn’t completely true. She had plenty of new scratches, gouges, and burns, but they weren’t worth complaining about—“while Siona’s sleep is ragged, her breathing thin. She hasn’t regained consciousness since we left the Glass Kingdom. What if she doesn’t last the night?”

  “She’s strong,” he reassured her.

  “I know,” she said with a sigh, aware that there was nothing she could do now. “What about you? Has Agramon made any advances?” Would the demon attack before she could get there with reinforcements?

  “It has been too quiet,” he admitted with a shake of his head. “I sent four scouts out to gather information. One went to the edge of the forest where Leander has camped with his gnomes. He came back already.” By the tightening of his features, it was obvious that she wasn’t the only one who’d been dealing with a tug of war between conscience and responsibility.

  She squeezed his hand. “What did he have to say?”

  “Only that he caught no sign of the demon with the gnome army, and that Leander’s forces seem to be waiting for…something.” Isaac grimaced.

  She hated to contemplate what they could be waiting for. “What about the other scouts?”

  “They were each headed in an opposite direction, and none have yet to return.” He grimaced and she knew he was thinking that they might not return at all.

  “What do you think it means?”

  “It could mean nothing,” he said. But they both knew it could mean something.

  Agramon could be anywhere. After what she’d done to the hive today, he could be on his way to intercept her for revenge. “Stay alert,” Isaac warned her, obviously thinking the same.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked, wary.

  “Our army has continued to expand. We gain more followers every morning after bringing back the Lost, and now the dwarves and the four castes of sprite have joined us as well.”

  The us’s and we’s fell from his lips like water, which made her more nervous now than it would have a few days ago. Us. It was too hard. She was doing her best, but the stress was crushing, and the more responsibility she took on, the more she doubted her suitability as Isaac’s future goblin queen. She was just a regular human kid. How could she handle this full time?

  “The people trickle in steadily as the fires leave them with nowhere else to turn,” he continued, his expression hardening. “But the caves cannot safely hold so many. We are more vulnerable every minute we stay here.”

  Her heart thumped. “Isaac, don’t do anything rash because you’re getting cabin fever. Wait for reinforcements. Stay where you are until I get there.”

  “You must take care of the people under your charge, just as I must do the same,” he said. “They are depending on you.”

  There was a hint of disappointment in his tone. He hadn’t asked her to hide away and wait, because he believed in her. Now he expected the same, for her to let him do what he thought was best. She swallowed her fear and nodded. “Just…please stay safe. Don’t take risks out of some crazy need to be a hero. This world can’t survive without you.”

  His lips curled. “And how many times have I asked the same of you?”

  “I’m no hero,” she protested.

  He laughed and cupped her face, thumb caressing her cheek as he bent closer. “No, not a hero. Only a warrior. A savior. A friend. A lover. A queen. This world is empty for me without you.”

  His lips covered hers, and she held on for dear life, but even his kiss couldn’t drain the fear out of her now. Worry ate away at the lining of her gut, and it pulsed behind her eyes. When he pulled away, lines drew his forehead tight, and she knew that he felt the same.

  “Where are you going?”

  “There is a place…but it may have been compromised.” He paused as the setting around them both shimmered. “I’m being awakened. I’ll find you in sleep again on the next moonrising, and I will share everything then.”

  He pulled her close and dipped his head. Every time they had to say good-bye, there was more edge to their kiss, more desperation. Fate was coming for them, and it wasn’t going to be gentle, and it wasn’t going to be merciful. Her fears about the future were probably pointless, because the likelihood of either of them living long enough to face the future declined every day.

  His teeth nipped at her bottom lip urgently until she opened her mouth and gave him her tongue, and she held on to him so tightly that her fingernails left deep impressions in the thick muscles of his arms.

  But they couldn’t ignore the burden of reality pressing in. Isaac was being summoned, and whoever wanted him awake was persistent. She wasn’t used to being on this side of the dream, knowing that he was the one who might awaken to danger.

  “Be
careful,” she said again with a frown.

  “Siona…” he murmured. “Tell her to say my name. If she does, then I will be able to lend her strength to speed her healing.”

  Hope flared, but before she could say anything more, it was all gone.

  As soon as she jerked awake, she knew something was wrong on her end, too. Dryden had left. She patted the spot beside her for the slight mound that was Siona. She let out a sigh of relief when the body stirred and coughed, but Siona’s lungs rattled when she drew in a breath, and it made Greta’s heart go cold.

  Greta leaned over and nudged her gently. “Siona, listen to me. Say the goblin king’s name. Call for Isaac. Wish for his strength. He can help you get better.”

  She didn’t think Siona heard, but when Greta shook her again, she groaned weakly and turned her face away. “I will not take from him,” she wheezed. “He needs—”

  Greta gripped the girl’s hand. “He’s fine. He needs you to be okay,” she said. “Please, Siona.”

  Someone shouted and Greta swore. She didn’t want to leave. Where the hell was Dryden?

  A figure dropped down to a crouch right in front of her, so suddenly she barely bit back a screech. Speak of the devil. “Dryden! Where were you?”

  He leaned in close so she could see his face in the darkness and raised a finger to his pursed lips. She stilled immediately, listening.

  “Where?” she asked, barely moving her lips. The silence wasn’t reassuring in the least, not after that one fearful shout. She looked for movement in the dark shadows and had the eerie sensation of being watched right back.

  She reached for her sword. “Stay here. I’ll go and check things out.”

  He shook his head. “We’re already surrounded,” he said in a low voice.

  “Gnomes?” she asked, incredulous. The night was too quiet for her to believe that an army of clumsy, bullish goons could have closed in around her group without making a ruckus to wake the dead, no matter who—or what—was directing them.