~VANNIE~
They were still looking back at her, shaken to their cores, but angry, and that was all that mattered to her.
"I don't know how long we'll have to stay there. But we will be ready when they attack us, and we will fight for every helpless Inlander that can't, do you understand me?"
Their roar of assent shook the grounds. She could already feel the danger looming on the horizon, ready to swallow the lands whole. "Pair up and watch each other's backs. Remember, all these could end very soon. Just stick to our plan and do exactly as I tell you."
They bowed and left the palace in a march, picking up weapons as they left. The Inlanders in the safe houses couldn't cheer them on this time, but she felt their anticipation through the pack link. The Keepers must like to know the other Inlanders were as involved as possible.
She ran up to the watchtower at the palace, which gave her a clear view of the gates and walls. From there, she watched as minutes later, the Keepers arrived and took their positions. But it was not enough. She couldn't see the men.
It was faster than she'd expected, the rival attack. She saw the walls of the Inlands fall into rubble — all of it. The boundary hexes couldn't do anything in this situation. It was unlike anything she'd ever experienced.
Wolves from all angles poured into the Inlands.
It was just like she'd planned for. They came to fight us in their wolf form, expecting the same. The pounding of approaching paws on the soil made Vannie's heart race.
"Nock," she whispered through the pack link, not close enough to see if they were following her instructions.
But then a mental image was channeled to her — by Marshall of all people, who was supposed to be one of the archers. If he was sending her this, then he wasn't concentrating.
She was about to reprimand him before she really saw what he was trying to show her. Before she realized what was wrong with the picture.
Maeve was there. And with one of the runed swords, she cut through three of the Keepers' throats. The image went blurry then disappeared, but not before she heard her own scream of disbelief.
She looked back out of the window, but there was now a haze of smoke covering the gates, so that she could not see a thing. She doubted the Keepers could see anything, either.
"Maeve, you better make sure those males are not dead. If they are, you better find a way to f*cking resurrect them."
Just as the last word escaped her, she felt her magick come to a rise without her permission. She was crying and choking on her sobs, and now, she was no more in control of her body.
Her wolf was trying to protect her pack, just like Zara said it would. Now, all she could do was watch from the sidelines and hope the Inlands would not fall to utter ruin under her watch.
She conjured up a vision of the walls, watching as the smoke hovered in the horizon. The enemies had come with a plan this time. And Maeve, f*cking Maeve.
She was the traitor. "Alpha Sin is the King of the Realms. He knows everything," Maeve had said mere hours ago. But apparently, even the King hadn't known about this.
"What am I going to do? Oh, dear Goddess, what am I going to do?"
Blow.
The voice came in her head, as eerily calm as Alpha Sin's voice in her head had been that night. Just like that time, she was confused as all h*ll. She didn't know where the voice had come from and she didn't know what to make of it.
But she wasn't dumb enough to disobey.
Leaning into the vision she'd conjured, she gathered air into her cheeks and blew it out. She'd done some pretty amazing things that surprised even her before. When she was six, she'd drawn her first rune and breathed magick into it. When she was thirteen, she'd helped a trampled flower bloom again with her blood.
But in this very moment, as she blew into the vision, she hadn't been expecting anything. And most of all, she hadn't been expecting for all the enemy's smoke to disappear. Just disappear, like a giant vacuum had come and sucked away the fumes.
"Chant," the sultry voice in her head came again, and Vannie didn't have time to recover from what she'd just seen happen before her mouth fell open.
Incantations — mending and strengthening spells — began to come out rapidly, and she didn't know which of the Keepers even needed it, but when she whispered "Shoot" into the pack link, an appropriate amount of arrows went into the air.
"Take over," she said desperately into the space around her. She was hoping the voice in her head was a physical thing that could hear her. "Use me! I don't know what I'm doing. Just take over and finish the—"
Before she could finish, a force was knocked into her, lighting her up from within and dissipating rapidly.
She'd seen this happen before. She'd seen Sinclair go to his knees and take powers from the soil. But experiencing it, feeling it thrum through her spine and heat her blood was a whole new experience altogether. And she couldn't even have a minute to understand what any of this meant; how was she worthy of this? Was this the lands trying to protect itself?
"Fight," she said in the pack link. It wasn't till she heard her own voice, guttural and throaty, did she realize that indeed, her body had indeed been taken over. Her prayers had been answered.
"Kill them all. Kill Maeve. Kill everybody," her voice said.