“The mermaid,” she answered.

He stopped smiling as he was now perplexed.

“What does that mean?” he inquired.

“Storms, in life or from the sky. Magic afoot.” She paused then finished, “Revenge. In other words, nothing useful.”

“Revenge? Fern’s army?” he asked.

She shook her head but said, “Perhaps. Or perhaps its literal and somehow the Mer will alight from where they’ve hidden for centuries and swim to our aid.”

“In a mountain range?” he asked drily.

She shrugged.

He grinned at her.

She grinned back.

Mac rode up to his left side and asked, “Are you two going to flirt until dawn? Or are we going to ride down this mountain so I can gut something?”

Jazz rode up to Mac’s left side and concurred with, “Yes. What he said.”

Cassius turned his head when he sensed movement at Elena’s other side, and he saw her sister line up there, Hera beyond her, Rosehana beyond Hera.

Serena did not appear in a joking mood.

She was gazing down the mountain with sheer focus.

It would be good to finally fight alongside that formidable warrior, instead of against her.

He looked behind him to see Nero and Tone at his back.

Behind them, Airenzian and Nadirii, all mounted, all ready to seek their fates on the battlefield.

Nero jerked up his chin.

Cassius dipped his.

He then looked again to his princess.

She was watching him.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

She nodded, and as if to assert this, she hunkered over Diana’s neck, her eyes straight ahead, her heels lifting, ready to dig into her steed’s sides.

Serena, Hera and Rosehana assumed this position.

Cass looked left and saw Mac and Jasmine the same.

So he bent over Caelus, thrust his forearm into the bands at the back of his shield hanging at his side and lifted his heels.

But he turned his head one more time.

“Elena.”

She looked to him.

“I love you,” he said.

He caught only the shock and warmth suffusing her exquisite features before he dug his heels into his mount and shot forward.

And as the hundreds of Nadirii and Airenzian horses with their riders were tearing through the pines…

None of them felt the earth shuddering violently beneath them from something else altogether.

The prophecy was now complete.

Love was sealed.

It was the dawn of the end.

However that would be.

But the warriors could not miss it when the heavens opened.

And poured down rain.

117

The Surfacing

Tedrey

Ancient Ritual Ground

WODELL

Tedrey was tied to a tree, his face averted, his hands busy, his ears feeling like they were bleeding, his eyes behind closed lids feeling like they were scalding.

There was a huddle of women close beside him, gagged, but not blindfolded, tied together, fretting, moaning, but they’d learned in difficult ways not to struggle or try to escape.