Three Broken Kingdoms-Book 1 of the Lost Continent (Completed)

Chapter Eleven: The Embers of War

Myra's Point of View

The news rung through her ears. There would be no going home with Kestra this summer. Maybe not the summer after, or the summer after that. A general did not go back to the palace when a war was raging. Nor did a War-Queen.

But she had known it would come. The calm never lasted, even if they had fought for so very, very long, through the darkest depths of the earth, through war camps and the pestilence that spread through them, through arcane magic all of it for her country. Even if she had already gone through hell and back; now hell was beckoning to her again, stealing her daughter and that glimpse of a life with her away.

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Three hours earlier, the messenger had torn through the mountains, demanding to see Viktoria.They had both been woken, bleary-eyed, Viktoria making burlesque yawning noises. The anxious look in the eyes of the officers that had woken them had Myra worried by instinct, her green eyes quickly snapping between her queen and the officers.

They barely had time to change into something a little more official than nightgowns before they had to rush into the council room.

A fatigued messenger stood in front of the thrones that the War-Queen and her heir sat. It was clear she had been riding all through the night. Seeing the two of them seemed to wake her up enough for the frantic herald to bow respectfully, watching the two of them with something that might have been awe and wonderment if not for the exhaustion that lurked in her eyes.

"Kallias has declared war, your majesty." The courier coughed out. "An officer of their army came to the border patrol and told us that...that their justice would be upon us," The unspoken words hung in the air. The messenger was likely already dead at the hands of the valkyries. "Us and the other God-born." The herald completed. Myra couldn't breathe, processing the words.

Why on earth would the Empress want to fight both of them at once?

"The God-born?" Myra rasped. "The God-Born?"Her fists clenched, and blood roared in her ears.

"Let us burn them all!" shouted Diaz, one of Myra's lower Generals. "Forgive me, Your Majesty, but I say we respond to their cries of war with the pure, unbreakable force of the valkyries. Let us wipe humanity off the map entirely."

"Silence, Diaz. You cannot destroy humanity for it."

Diaz almost opened her mouth to disagree, but then she nodded her head at Viktoria in deference, a soldier to a queen. Viktoria stood at Myra moved with her, the old instincts of a protector and heir locking into place. An heir's most important duty was the protection of their queen.

Viktoria turned to address her three generals, one for each of the three units: cavalry, aerial riders and the warriors who fought on foot. One for each daughter of Sarai.

Diaz, of the calvary, firm and unyielding as the harshest steel.

Calais, of the foot soldiers, the greatest warrior of the three lower Generals.

Ruby, of the Gryphon and Wyvern Riders, the girl she had been shaping to lead them to a new future.

"Today, we must set the war in motion. By noon, we will inform the entirety of the army of what is to come. In the hours before that, spread the word of the meeting to come, but nothing of the war itself.

"Inform your Right Hands of the news and do what you can to prepare. I want couriers heading to the Warlords of the other three Mountains, Falcon, Eagle and Osprey and to the host in front of the Bird of Prey Mountains. We will convene on the Plain of the Peregrine in five days. Be ready. Myra?"