They don’t know it’s just as dangerous inside.

Three wyverns circle overhead, picking off the archers stationed at the walls. Arrows ricochet off the wyverns’ scales, showering a host of arrows upon the soldiers and crowds.

“Tell the archers to stand down. Have them search the castle for servants and children and lead them into the bunkers,” I yell at a nearby soldier, who looks back and forth between me and my father, unsure.

“Well, did you hear him or not?” my father bellows.

The boy doesn’t need to be told again; he sprints through the courtyards and toward the archery towers.

My father unsheathes his sword, as do I, and we throw ourselves into battle.

I come to regret sending the archers away once the pack of mere arrive. Silver blood sprays as I slice the head off a mere that my vines caught just before it devoured me.

I cut down several mere who dug holes underneath the gates, their venom-soaked teeth often gleaming at my neck before my vines wrap around them and force them to the ground, allowing me time to stab them through.

I don’t particularly like how slow my magic remains, but it’s more in my control than it’s ever been.

I suppose I’ll have to thank Orion for that, assuming both of us survive this battle, which seems unlikely at this point.

That’s fine. I don’t really want to endure Orion’s smug refusal to accept my thanks, anyway.

My father and I slip into a rhythm. We’ve never communicated well, never found a medium by which we could understand one another, but on the battlefield we come together as one. As if we’re simply extensions of one another.

A mere lunges, and my vines wrap around it just in time for my father to slit its throat. Another pounces toward a child whose mother sent him scurrying under the gates, and I scoop the child into my arms and out of the way while my father cuts the beast down.

Once the child is passed off to a soldier, my father and I turn, backs facing, guarding each other.

The words we exchange are short, simple battle commands, but they might as well comprise an ardent conversation compared to the exchanges we’re used to.

Because, for once, I’ve found something my father and I have in common, and it’s not a thirst for blood or the thrill of the battle or anything I might have expected from a male so hardened.

It’s that we’ll do anything to protect the city we love, even if that means cooperating. Or dying.

That sentiment is cut short as a wyvern swoops over the crowd. I redirect my vines toward the rogue beast.

And miss.

Time stills, almost to a halt, as the barb of the wyvern’s tail punctures my father’s chest.

Shock ripples across my father’s hardened features, and for the first time in my life, I witness fear in his eyes.

Buzzing swarms my ears as my father’s knees buckle.

He hits the ground.

And then, in that moment of quiet, my father looks at me.

Our eyes lock; he tilts his chin downward, just slightly.

Then my father thrusts his sword upward at the same moment the wyvern’s jaws encompass him.

A horrible crunching sound pierces through the fog in my ears, followed shortly by a female’s screams.

My mother’s screams.

They snap me back to the present, out of that horrific moment where time itself hadn’t existed.

To my left, my mother cries out in anguish. She’s screaming my father’s name, clutching her stomach, even as swarms of vines burst out around her, strangling mere and wyverns in their fury, dashing their bodies against the stairs.

Then something replaces the rage on my mother’s delicate face. The flush of battle pales from her sinking cheeks. She retches, grasping her stomach. The vines around her fall limp, dropping the strangled carcasses of the mere, but one survivor wriggles free from their grasp. It stalks my mother from behind, but she doesn’t appear to notice.

It lunges, but not fast enough. Not before I send a vine shooting out of a crack in the ground, puncturing the mere’s throat until a cluster of thorns protrudes from its eye socket.

The creature falls limp behind my mother.

She doesn’t notice.

Murmurs echo through the crowd. The king is dead the king is dead the king is dead, they seem to say.

The king is dead.

My father is dead.

The words ring in my head as if in a language I don’t recognize. As if I don’t have the ability to process them.

My body goes still, the Others’ corpses littering the courtyard.

The murmuring in the crowd grows louder, but perhaps it’s just the buzzing in my own mind.

My father is dead, and I’m unsure what to do with that information.

“Evander.” Ellie comes running up, her gown splattered with ink. Or no, it’s not ink. It’s ichor, the spray of blood from an Other she slaughtered with her still-dripping sword.

“Evander.” Her hands find my jaw, gently nudging my face to look at her.

I’m not sure what she finds in my eyes, but hers water. She blinks the tears away, setting her jaw.

The mutterings in the crowd grow louder, but I can’t hear them over the buzzing. Over the crunching that resonates through my mind, over and over.

I wish for another mere, another wyvern to fight, to strangle and bleed and slaughter, because then at least the noise of battle would drown out that awful sound.

Ellie turns to face the crowd, something like disgust and dread mingled on her face, but I can’t hear what’s causing her reaction.

She glances back at me, then my mother. My wife draws up her skirts with one hand, sword still dragging the ground with the other, and marches toward the place my father was slaughtered.

A hush goes over the crowd as she steps over the corpses of the fallen, as she grips her sword with both hands.

And separates the wyvern’s head from its body, one hack at a time.