Her Cinder Throne (Completed)

Chapter 87

THREE MONTHS LATER...

Cole blinked away the sweat in her eyes as she flopped onto a cushion and let her head loll backwards. The tent canvas just a few feet above her head swayed in the breeze, and Cole quickly stripped off her breastplate to try and get in a better lungful of air.

She only had one minute to herself before Tanwyn and Mabon, her head of the guard, marched into her tent with grim faces and dust creased into their skin. Cole took one look at their eyes and sighed heavily as she reached for her breastplate and strapped it back into place over her loose tunic.

"I suppose you're here to take me to another battlefield?" she asked, pushing herself to her feet and trying to ignore the aching muscles in her legs and torso.

"I don't think that will do much good anymore," Mabon said, his fern green eyes glinting in the orange-glow of the setting sun. "Gethwine and her Eldritch supporters have attacked the city, and we're not sure if our troops were able to stop her before she destroys the palace."

Cole frowned. "Avallen falls every night more and more into her clutches," she muttered.

"Thijs' black magic is hard to fight," Tanwyn replied. "Even with our Eldritch supporters."

"He simply has us outnumbered," Mabon said. "Even if most of Avallen supports you, he still has a sizable chunk of Eldritch magic, not to mention all the humans he's pressed into his service."

Cole ran a hand through her hair, which now hung to her shoulders. She'd had to learn to braid it back. "I thought that's why you were parading me around and showing me off at all the active battlefields? I thought if they saw me, it was supposed to inspire the humans to drop their weapons and stop fighting for Thijs. And to recapture the loyalty of Eldritch who took Gethwine's side."

"Yes, and it worked for a while," Tanwyn replied. "But now that Thijs has been able to use Gethwine's magic, and that of her supporters, to bind them with the shadow creatures, we're running out of humans and Eldritch who have the capability to think for themselves."

Cole bit her lip almost hard enough to draw blood. The run-ins with the Cursed, as they had taken to calling them, were getting more frequent. She'd fought in a few of the battles, trying to reclaim land in Avallen, and had been whisked away by Mabon and his men as soon as one of the shadowy creatures appeared among the Eldritch troops. She would only get a glimpse of their forms, dripping black and laughing maniacally as they ordered their monsters to attack, before being moved back to Soma and put under strict guard. It was frustrating to be taken away from the battles, and even more frustrating that now it seemed like she almost never was allowed into the fields because of how many Cursed were roaming around in both Avallen and Soma.

"So what now, then?" she asked, sitting back down and adjusting her sword in its sheath on her belt.

Tanwyn exhaled and glanced at Mabon. They looked almost as opposite as could be, with Tanwyn's black hair still cut short and Mabon's fiery red hair gleaming in long sheets down his back. But they were both alike in their determination to win the battle for Avallen and Soma, which meant that sometimes Cole had to hate both of them when they teamed up against her. And she was sensing something like that might be coming up.

"We're going to have to strike at the roots of the tree instead of trying to take out all the tiny branches," Tanwyn said. "We've been trying to save as many people as possible, but I think it's time we forget about the little battles and take it to Thijs himself."

Cole shook her head. "We can't take down Thijs until we figure out how to help the Cursed," she said. "You already agreed to give me one more month to work on the spells to undo the binding."

Tanwyn's shoulders sagged. "At this rate, I think we'll save more Cursed if we take down Thijs now. He's been creating Cursed at a stunning rate, and the longer we wait, the more people and Eldritch he can bind to the monsters he's finding deep in the mountains."

Cole knew he was right, but she didn't want to admit it. If they took down Thijs now, that meant eliminating the secrets of the binding as well. She had no idea if they'd ever be able to unbind the Cursed, and she didn't want to think about having to murder hundreds of Eldritch and humans alike, all because they had been attacked by Thijs' magic.

"We should head into Soma and enact the plan to take down the king," Mabon said, his tone lowered but not as bothered as Cole or Tanwyn's. He was older than both of them, though he barely looked it, and the training in the Eldritch Royal Guards did not exactly emphasize pity or empathy.

Cole glanced at Tanwyn, but he merely looked back at her. It was becoming common now that he deferred to her own judgment when it came to royal decisions. She missed having him jump in and tell her what to do or how to interact with the generals and leaders that seemed to always be around her, but she also knew that he could not always be there to give her advice. Once the battle was won, and Cole was sitting on the throne in Avallen, Tanwyn would be a simple subject of her realm. She couldn't lean on him forever.

With fists clenched tight, she nodded to Mabon. "Fine. We'll take out Thijs. But I won't give up on the Cursed. We're still going to find a way to reverse it."

Mabon's lips pressed tight, but he didn't fight her on it. She was his queen, after all. And that was still something that Cole was getting used to, not to mention all the other people who only saw a young woman with scrubby hair and plain features.

"I'll go tell the generals that we're going to siege the city," Mabon said, ducking his head and then turning sharply to leave the tent. Tanwyn and Cole followed him out into the open air, and Cole took a look around at their camp. It sprawled across the land that once had housed mining equipment. She still wasn't used to seeing her old work place, especially not with the tents and fires and people scattered around the mine entrances. Humans and Eldritch drilled and milled around, waiting for their next orders. They had fought a battle only a few hours ago, but everyone knew that real rests were almost impossible to achieve. Instead, they stood around in their armor still slick with sweat and blood, eyes wide and hands shaking, waiting and waiting.

Cole passed by them, heading for the battle tent where she and the generals always met to talk about the strategies needed to keep Thijs and Gethwine from taking over all the land in both Soma and Avallen. Not that it had been doing too much good. They had lost almost all the ground except for a thin slice near Soma, and the outerrealms in Avallen.

Cole paced in front of the tent, gnawing on her thumb until the skin split and she was forced to press on it to stop the bleeding. It took the generals a full twenty minutes before all were present and accounted for. There were thirty in total of the ones who were close enough to be summoned to a meeting. The others would be of no use a siege of the city, so Cole instructed that her Eldritch generals use their magic to tell the others at a later date. Right now, they needed to move quickly before Thijs made any new moves.