Chapter Thirty-One: Julian…

The smell hit first.

A cloud of rot, descending on Eden with the wind. That was the first sign the enemy were on their way. Brady had clapped a hand over her nose and mouth, turning away to retch the moment the odour registered.

Julian wrinkled his nose, but didn’t vomit. He’d smelled a lot of death in his life.

“Ember says they’re still a couple of hours away,” Elda told them, striding up in the armour her father had demanded she wear. It was black, polished metal with gold accents at the edge of every plate, and a gold emblem of a star of on each pauldron.

“What do you need from us?” Brady asked, folding her arms across her own new silver chest plate.

“Can you ask Gira to take a unit to re-check the outer wards? They have to be perfect. If they’re breached, we’re done for.” Brady nodded and jogged away.

“You okay, pipsqueak?” Julian asked, pausing in his gentle brush strokes of Syd’s coat.

“No, but neither is anyone else.” There was a short sword at her hip, and her bow was fastened across her back. “Reiner is organising the army to reinforce the main gate. Ember has the dragons stationed in the trees out of sight. Once the undead are funneled towards the gate by the wards, the dragons will incinerate from behind, cutting them off.”

“And if the undead breach the gate?”

“That’s where we come in.” She took her thick braid and wound it into a knot on the back of her head. “Gira and I will reinforce the gate as best we can, but if they still get through it’ll be close quarters. Our goal is to stop the soldiers getting scratched.”

“Are they all wearing leathers?”

“As many as we could find,” she nodded. “When they heard a leather jacket stopped you losing your life, they were eager to follow the order.”

“Good, we don’t need to add to the horde.” The tulpar demon snorted and butted his elbow. Julian chuckled and kissed her brow, unfazed by her white eyes and carnivorous nature. “I’ve missed you.”

Syd looked back at him with understanding, then pressed her nose against his chest in a show of affection. Elda smiled and ran a hand over her silken flank.

“I’ve missed you too, Syd.” The winged horse turned and butted her gently in the chest too, letting out a soft murr of acknowledgement. “I bet you’re glad to be getting out of the stables, even if it is for a battle. You take care of Julian, okay? Keep him safe.” She too kissed Syd’s brow, then stepped back and lifted her chin.

“I can take care of myself, don’t worry,” the vampire beamed, flashing a smile that didn’t mirror the hollow ache in his chest.

“You’d better come out of this alive,” she warned.

“The king wants to see you,” captain Reiner stated, marching into the stables to cut off the conversation. “He figured out you changed the unit positions.”

Elda winced. “I was hoping he wouldn’t notice.”

“It’s for the better anyway,” Reiner shrugged. “I’ll come with you to help talk him round.”

Julian watched the two women leave and shook his head, returning to lovingly brushing Syd’s fur. Brady returned eventually and hopped up onto stall gate, swinging her legs.

“You were awfully eager to get away,” he commented.

“You and Elda were having a moment. I didn’t want to get in the way.”

“You don’t get in the way.”

“Yeah right,” she snorted good-naturedly. “I’m not part of the inner circle you guys had before I arrived.”

Julian set the brush aside and leaned back against Syd’s flank, turning to arch an eyebrow at the bear shifter. “There isn’t an inner circle.”

“There was. You, Elda, Sypher and Vel.”

“That’s a square,” he quipped, trying to cover the throbbing pain in his chest with humour.

Brady’s amber eyes saddened, not fooled. “Whatever it was, I wasn’t part of it.”

“You are now.” He moved away from Syd to sit beside her on the gate. The tulpar demon settled down in the hay, fluffing her newly brushed feathers proudly. “You’re always there.”

“Yeah, like an annoying fly that won’t leave.”

Julian shook his head. “Like an anchor. A lifeline.”

“A… lifeline?” Her dark brows shot up, wild curls falling into her eyes.

“Elda has become part of my family. I love her dearly, but she, Sypher and Vel had so much going on that sometimes they just couldn’t be there.” His head dipped. “But you were.”

“All I did was follow you up the stairs,” Brady mumbled, pushing her hair out of her face.

“And every moment after that, you showed up. You kept showing up. It’s like you know when I’m about to lose it.”

“I don’t, I swear.”

Julian forced himself to look her in the eyes. “If you weren’t here right now, I wouldn’t be either. Don’t ever think you’re getting in the way.”

Brady blinked, her lips forming a small, startled ‘o’ shape, but then a smile split her cheeks like the sunlight after a rainstorm, and she slung her arm around his shoulders, almost tipping him off the gate.

“I knew you couldn’t live without me,” she teased. “But I have to say, your declaration of absolute adoration is gonna need some work. You didn’t even get on your knees.” She winked, and warmth filled Julian’s chest, tumbling out of his mouth in a genuine laugh. “There’s still hope, Jules. As long as we keep living, there’s hope.”

Brady was bubbly right up until the moment a dragon roar sounded far out in the forest. The signal of the undead horde’s arrival sent a deathly silence over the city, every soldier pausing amid their flurries of activity to take in the seriousness of the situation.

Julian watched them continue with renewed vigour, rushing back and forth with weapon supplies, ammunition and healing salves. Food rations were stationed throughout the various checkpoints to make sure they could last a while if hemmed in.

Elda was a different woman - her commands were confident and clear, her back straight and her eyes clear. She threw herself into leading the units beside Reiner the moment her father elevated her position.

Gira had also been elevated to share their status, his muscled form clad in scaled armour. Aetheria never strayed more than a few feet away from him, the vines of her hair billowing behind her with every step.

The king strode among them in his golden armour, crown replaced by a helmet emblazoned with the same star on Elda’s shoulders. A shield was attached to his left arm, and a golden axe was strapped across his back. He looked formidable, but his daughter no longer shrank in his presence.

Another roar cut off Julian’s assessment - the horde had reached the first lot of wards. He slipped into the saddle on Syd’s back and kicked off, gripping the reins as she climbed higher than the city walls.

The forest was chaos. Bouts of flame lit the air, the trees trembling under the shambling footsteps of the undead. Dragons rose and dipped and rose again, dropping bodies at the height of their arc and swooping down to scoop more up. Ember stood with her wings flared at the scarred edge of the tree line, one foot resting on a huge oak she’d felled at Elda’s command.

Twin bouts of green flame were her signal to set the tree ablaze. When it was engulfed in a blue inferno, she beat her wings steadily, directing the embers towards the trees. One branch caught, then another, and another, until a path of fire carved its way between the wards.

The putrid smell of charred flesh hit Julian’s nostrils, confirming that the dead did indeed still burn. In his hand, his wardstone pulsed, sensing its counterpart not far above his head.

His job was to wait until the horde advanced. To hang on until there was no way to stop them breaking down the gate. When that happened, he was to press the ancient wardstone against the invisible symbol that had hung in the air over the city for centuries.

When the dead finally emerged from the treeline, it was like nothing Julian had ever seen. There were thousands of them, far more than they’d faced before. All of them had rotted almost beyond recognition, their clothes little more than stained rags, dried skin stretched tight over emaciated skeletons.

But there was no sign of the Soul Forge walking among them.

The secondary wards placed in the soil around the city began to activate, evaporating anything that stepped on them. The dragons could scent their locations even through the stench, but the undead weren’t so lucky.

While Ember’s flock continued thinning the horde, Julian circled high above, watching for any sign of Malakai and his cohort. The horde only came from one direction, like they’d travelled straight from the coast on a direct route to Eden once the monolith in the Dragon Isles had been secured.

“Too easy,” Julian murmured to himself, and that’s when he saw it. A flash of black, so fast it could have been a mirage, not far from the palace. He turned to chase it, only to find the streets deserted.

He scanned them again, bringing Syd lower, but there was no sign of that shadow. Had he imagined it? The tulpar demon didn’t seem disturbed by it, and he was running on so much adrenaline that it was entirely possible he was hallucinating.

A roar from Ember distracted him, turning him back to the gates where a stream of the undead shambled towards the outer wall. They were indeed funnelled by the dragons and the wards, but still very much a force to be reckoned with.

The fire had caught on the oldest of the corpses, engulfing them until their bodies were too ruined to continue moving, but the newer ones didn’t seem to burn. Their clothes caught, but their aged skin remained uncharred.

They pressed onwards in an endless wave, blank eyes fixed on the gate standing between them and their food source, jaws gnashing in that silent, eerie way Julian had started seeing in his nightmares. They were more listless, less ferocious than he remembered, but still determined to reach the fresh meat beyond the wall.

More wards flashed and crackled, leaving holes in the horde where dozens of bodies once stood, but more filled the spaces they left behind. When they were five feet from the gate, Julian directed Syd towards the ancient symbol above him.

He didn’t need to see it to know its location - the wardstone clenched in his fist hummed with energy, towing him towards it. Syd caught an updraft and followed its path, also drawn in by the power the old ward exuded.

The moment the stone touched the air, the symbol became solid. Julian shrank back, watching the air become a hard, impenetrable shield, encasing the entire city in a bubble that slammed down just before the horde could scratch at the gates. It sliced through the first row like a cleaver, brown blood staining its base where the undead fell.

Satisfied that his job in the skies was finished, Julian gently squeezed Syd’d sides, urging her back to the ground. Her hooves clopped on the cobbled streets, echoing as she trotted towards the king and his daughter.

The relief on Elda’s face was quickly squashed, replaced by steely determination. “Well done, Julian. Now the shield is up, we need to get the gates reinforced. Irileth, we can…”

She trailed off and looked down. The vampire followed her gaze to find a fine black mist snaking around his ankles. All the colour drained from Elda’s cheeks when the darkness thickened, rising until it towered over her.

A choked noise tore its way from her throat when the corpse of the Soul Forge stepped out of the blackness and dropped the queen’s body at her feet.