Page 89 of Raven's Dawn
No matter how entrancing Rania may have been, when those glowing opal eyes turned on me, it felt as though a probe pierced through my body. Beautiful, she was, but not as passive as Iliantha. She wasn’t as eccentric as Caeda, either. Assertive was the best word I could use for her. I respected it, but I also acknowledged what I was and why my presence may not have been all that welcome here. It made it hard to hold her gaze.
Warren seemed to feel the same way, because he only edged his hand upward when she asked. Ramona did the same, alongside Luci and Jeremy.
“It won’t be enough.” Shaking her head, Rania crossed her arms against her chest. “Four necromancers is simply not enough.”
“Me and my sister did it to an entire town,” Jeremy said. “You felt our power.”
“Yes, and our enemy possess the same,” she insisted.
“They don’t,” Caeda murmured, looking us all over. Her eyes stayed on Laila, Jeremy, Connor, and Naomi for a few heartbeats. “I understand your worry, but the island has a few thousand. Together, all of these people, they possess the strength of at least a million.”
“Perhaps.” Flowing red gown billowing behind her, Rania stepped slowly around the table. When she got to each necromancer, she scrutinized them up and down. “But how long have they trained?”
“Most of us are far older than the air an tagadh,” Luci said. “We have eons of experience that they don’t with this magic.”
“He does not.” She wagged a finger at Warren, and then at Ramona. “She does not.”
“That’s why he and I are taking the lead on this.” Jeremy gestured between himself and Luci. “I have two more necromancers back home. I can go get them as well. But I have no doubt. We can handle this.”
“Like you handled the Angel uprising?” Rania’s eyes glowed when they turned on him. Her face stayed blank. No expression, no anger in her voice. Just blunt, to the point. “Don’t overestimate yourself, Nix. You failed before. You could fail again.”
“Not with this,” Laila said. Her voice was a bit softer, but her expression was just as hard. “We failed then because of our love for our nephews. We won’t make that mistake twice. And either way, the only emotion we have attached to this is protecting you and your people.”
“Oh, do gràs, that’s where you’re wrong.” Tracing her tongue along her lips, a smirk quirked up the corner of them. “Your husband stands beside you. There’s a reason that when I go off on a battle, or when my partner does, one of us stays behind. The person who matters most to you will always come before the masses. That’s not an insult. Simply a fact.”
“If you were right, I would say so,” Laila replied. “But we have been fighting for years, many battles that I doubt you’ve ever heard of. We protect each other, but we protect the mission first.”
“Kind words,” she said. “But they are only that.”
With a heavy exhale, Laila rounded the table. Once they were only a foot or two apart, she said, “I understand. You don’t know me. You have no reason to trust me. I hope we can build that over time, but as it is right now, we both have to take each other’s words at face value.”
“I’m glad we understand each other,” Rania said.
“So am I. And that’s why I’m glad we decided to keep this mission hands-off,” Laila said. “None of us should be in any danger at any time.”
“Unless we fail, and they invade my city,” Rania said.
“We won’t,” Laila said. “We’ve done this before. We can do it again.”
“She’s right, Rania,” Iliantha said. “It took them no time at all, and our people were free. They were safe. Every single one of them. Then, they had hostages. That made it all the more difficult. This situation is simple.”
“We aren’t certain that they don’t have hostages,” Caeda said. “It’s possible they do.”
“I doubt that.” Connor shook his head. “They kill and eat their victims. There’s no reason to keep a hostage. There’s no information they want.”
“There could be,” Caeda said. “If they knew the right spells, they could find a way to break through the barriers of my city and every other Elvan one.”
“Have any of your generals gone missing?” Laila said. “Or are we arguing hypotheticals for the sake of arguing?”
“I agree,” Rania said. “This debate is pointless. As much as it pains me, even if they did have hostages, we would still do what we have to.”
My heart ached at that sentence.
Very seldom did I wish harm on anyone, especially innocent people, people on my side. But I couldn’t say that I didn’t understand.
War was a brutal thing. The Fae were fighting two. One against the Angels, and one against the air an tagadh. They were losing, and they had been losing for centuries. Maybe not in numbers, considering the Fae were still around. They hadn’t all been wiped out. But every day, their people died. They lived in constant fear.
At some point, they had to choose their evils. Let a few hostages die? Or let thousands of their enemies live? They could attempt a covert mission to rescue the hostages, assuming they knew where to find them, but how many would die in that process? How much longer would the war go on, if the sacrifice wasn’t made?