She’d wear both into battle.
As she called her dragon, horses and riders thundered down the road. Dragons and riders swept through the sky, all to form other lines, to move in as reinforcements at the waterfall.
And scouts headed east to sound a call if the enemy broke through the line at the next portal.
Had Sedric sealed the crossing in the world of the red vines, she wondered, trapping the enemy inside?
She trusted he had.
When Lonrach landed, she ran behind Bollocks to mount.
“Wait! Breen!”
Marco came running. He carried a crossbow, a sword.
“I’m going with you.”
“Marco.”
“I can handle it! Brian’s at the waterfall. He’s at the damn front, I’m going with you.”
She didn’t argue. “We won’t let you fall.”
“Just get there.”
She felt him tremble once as Lonrach rose.
Even as they flew toward the fight, Harken and Morena, on dragon-back, fell in beside her.
“We’re with you,” Morena called out. “Keegan and Mahon and a dozen more are well ahead of us. Aisling has children safe on your side, and my nan has more in the next shelter.”
“My nan, Sedric?”
“Springing the trap as planned,” Harken told her. “They’ll not get through that way.”
She saw riders and winged warriors flying in from the Far West. The Mers would hold the sea line, she knew, and fight from the bay as well. She could hear the wild war cries of the Trolls charging to battle with their clubs and spears, and thought of Sul and the daughter she’d birthed on a pretty day in May.
She felt her heart drumming, pounding, thudding inside her chest, in her throat. It wasn’t like the battle at the Tree of Snakes. That had happened so fast, and this, this was planned, coordinated, expected.
Here, she didn’t fly to warn, but to fight. To kill. To end.
Though she’d told Keegan she wouldn’t be, she was afraid. Afraid she wouldn’t be enough, and she had to be.
For a moment, she closed her eyes, let the power rise up, let the whole of herself embrace it.
She would be enough.
Then they winged through the woods toward the thunder of the waterfall, the cries and clashes of battle, the stench of smoke and death.
Bollocks let out a rumbling snarl and leaped off to sink his teeth into the throat of a dark Were in wolf form. Breen shifted, gripped her friend’s hand, met his eyes.
“Stay alive, Marco.”
And jumped after the dog.
Don’t think, she remembered. Act.
She hurled power at an elf, caught him as he blurred to attack. She blocked the sword of one swinging toward her, one that hesitated when the dark faerie wielding it recognized her.