House of Shadows (Royal Houses 2)

No one wanted to admit that they’d rather be in the thick of the fighting, prove to everyone they were worth it. It was hard not to feel like they’d been given this job to get them out of the way. The youngest of the lot of Society members, and they were farthest from the battle.

They spent days working on the dam. Each day, when they returned to camp and found more wounded, the feeling only grew that they could be doing more. But Alura stopped them from ever voicing that opinion. All work was valuable, and what they were doing would make a difference if the House of Shadows tried to retreat. It was a big if.

Because as far as Kerrigan was concerned, the House of Shadows was doing way better than they had predicted. Only one dragon and rider casualty, the one she’d watched fall, but they’d had barely any reinforcements come in. They were still waiting for the bulk of the dragons and the foot soldiers that they’d promised would be there. And still, they worked on the dam.

Kerrigan stretched her aching back. Her magic had already been low, and after days of work, it was down to sputtering. She felt useless as Roake and Fordham picked up the slack. She drank long and deep from her waterskin and ate a small lunch to try to bring back her bottomless well of magic. It was the wrong time for her to be pulling up short.

The food did help. She could feel herself managing to knit it back together, if slowly. But as she sat on a nearby rock with Audria at her side, she tilted her head.

“Do you hear that?” she asked.

“I don’t hear anything, except us,” Audria grumbled. She turned for the hundredth time back to Lethbridge, as if she could go to the thick of it by force of will.

“No, no, there’s something.”

She closed her eyes and listened harder. It was a whooshing sound. Like wind through the trees or an avalanche or…

Her eyes snapped open. “Get back!” she screamed. “Get away from the river.”

She scrambled to her feet and tugged for Tieran to come to her. He broke free from his work instantly, rushing to her side.

“Get back to work!” Alura shouted. “I didn’t say you could stop.”

“I hear it now,” Audria said. Then, she pointed north. “The river!”

Alura jerked around. Her eyes widened in horror. “Move, move, move!”

Kerrigan jumped on Tieran’s back just as the first rush of water came flowing down out of the mountains. It was enough water to fill the river and then some. It was the flood that came with the first snow melt. It was easily a month early.

Tieran jerked straight upward, and Kerrigan clung to him with all her might as the river hit the top of the rocks and obliterated the dam in a matter of seconds. She screamed and closed her eyes as water cascaded all around them. Tieran leveled off when he was high enough to be out of the way and then circled back down.

Audria and Alura had gotten out, but Fordham and Roake weren’t as lucky.

“Fordham!” she yelled over and over again.

A head bobbed up out of the water. Kerrigan recognized Roake and gestured for Audria to dive down for him. Roake’s dragon, Luxor, had just pulled himself out of the torrent of water on the opposite bank and would be no help. But still, no Fordham.

She closed her eyes and concentrated. She’d thought so many times that she and Fordham were connected because of the visions she’d had. Even when she couldn’t always tell what he was thinking, it felt like she could always sense where he was. She followed that, as she would the tether with Tieran, and directed Tieran back toward the mouth of the river they had been damming.

“There!” she shouted.

With one hand, Fordham clung to a rock on the surface. His face was half-in, half-out of the water.

Tieran dived toward him, going directly into the spray of the water and picking him up in his claws. He carried Fordham away from the river, depositing him safely on the riverbank. Netta appeared a minute later, coughing up water and checking on him.

“I’m okay,” he said as they landed next to him. “Thank you.”

Kerrigan nodded. Alura, Audria, and Roake were stranded on the other bank. She waved to them to give them the all-clear.

“How did that happen?” she asked when they were all together again in a clearing a short distance from the river.

“It’s months too early for that much water,” Audria spat.

“They must have melted it in the mountains,” Alura speculated. “Is there a place they could do that?”

Fordham cleared his throat, spitting out more water. “We collect the snow melt every year. We have an underground well, but melted snow is safer for drinking.”