BLOODSINGER (The Starchaser Saga Book 5) by Renee Dugan

Author:Renee Dugan [Dugan, Renee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Renee Dugan
Published: 2021-12-06T16:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER THIRTY

IN HER DREAMS, Cistine walked stone halls scripted in ancient runes, blood and breath pounding in her ears, the world a heartbeat away from collapsing around her.

A gentle touch grazed the small of her back, and blue eyes like the heart of flame flared in the dark.

I’m right here, Wildheart.

A jolt of uneasy laughter woke her, sitting with knees pulled to her chest against the tent post in Thorne’s alcove. For a moment she was frozen, hands gripping her thighs, watching the black filaments of a shadowy catacomb anneal into the endless gray blotches of the war camp. At a fire nearby, that same warrior laughed again, a forced sound waved desperately like a standard in the face of fear.

She hadn’t meant to fall asleep, just to shut her eyes for a moment and rehearse her plan. But with darkness slithering down the mountainside, there was no more room left to plot. Only to act.

Cistine stood and shed the augment pouch taken from Selv Torfjel, tucking it away underneath Thorne’s belongings. She’d already tallied the stock and found it lacking in anything curative, but rations were rations. What the Bloodwights saw as bait, she considered a prize far too valuable to bring along on this venture.

Strapping on a saber stolen from the communal armory, she towed up her hood and hurried through the maze of canvas tents out toward the trailhead leading up the mountain where, according to Sander, the Bloodwight was bound. Few looked her way in passing; few expected a princess to creep off in armor and weapons to accost their unlikely prisoner. She might’ve feared what they made of it once, but there was no concern for appearances in war. With the fate of all the kingdoms in the balance, her focus crystallized, and through it she saw the world differently. This was the sort of action that books of war theory and history called brash but necessary—the kind that shaped victory, if all went to plan.

But she should’ve known it would not go that way for her.

“I was wondering when you would finally play your hand.”

Just beyond the trail’s mouth, Cistine froze at that familiar voice, its cadence equal parts exasperation and appreciation. Slowly, she turned back to face Ariadne, the warrior peeling herself up from the curve of the mountain where she’d reclined, masked in utter shadow. Cistine hadn’t spotted even a flicker of her presence in passing, not a glint of her eyes or a sway of her inky hair.

She sagged. “How long have you known?”

“Since you first suggested capturing a Bloodwight. The others are too distracted, but I see you, Logandir, and you are not the same girl who went away three months ago.” Ariadne halted before her, arms crossed, studying her face with head cocked. “You didn’t only come back to fight. You came prepared.”

Cistine raised her shoulders stiffly. “Like you all taught me.”

“I am fairly certain we didn’t teach you to take powerful prisoners or to creep off and see them in the dark.

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