Arynn Frey had offered protection in return for a wall. Implicit in their promise of safety was the expectation that the kingdom would be able to defend both themselves and the refugees from the Eldouir should the need arise. In return, the Dresmondi refugees working on the wall would act as the first line of defense for their kingdom: meat shields to buy Arynn Frey time to react. Kester had always recognized that her people would be the first to die should the Eldouir attack. That was a necessary part of the bargain they had struck in which they had nothing to offer except themselves.

The decision to abandon them to their fate while the Arynnite military struggled to determine its head from its ass was not.

Disgust and anger were far easier to acknowledge than fear, and by the time they made it back to Elyusian and Kaveri’s tavern of choice, both had solidified into something as cold as the ice that Walnut wielded. Tension etched in every line of her body, she sat beside Kaveri and ordered something strong. She itched for the fight she had been denied. For now, at least. His question had been on her mind, too.

“I would be surprised if they don’t,” She answered, eyes finding Walnut where he climbed onto the table between them. “They showed no restraint in the past, and we’ve both seen how they revel in bloodshed.” Kester shook her head and reached out to run a hand down Walnut’s back. “Neither us nor the Adoi could stand against them, and we had – we still have – far more experience fighting the Eldouir and Coheed than anyone in this kingdom.” A huff and another shake of the head. “To me, the question is less whether they’ll attack the cities and more what we will do when they appear.”

Kaveri’s answer was to be expected, and holding his gaze, Kester nodded. Even as she posed the question, she had realized a moment later that that was the only possible recourse. The four of them had run from the Eldouir once – twice, if they counted this morning – but they wouldn’t do so a third time.

Nephys offered an alternative, and she shook her head. “We’ll make them kill us before they can capture us.” What exactly would await them at the Eldouir’s city in Dresmond, Kester wasn’t quite sure, but she knew it would be infinitely harder to fight them there.

Only when she noticed him eyeing the drink on the table before him did Kester recall just what they were doing in the larger context of Kaveri’s sobriety. And it had been her idea, too. She hadn’t been thinking. Eyes narrowed, she watched him take a careful sip, moving from the drink in his hand to his face, a portion of her thoughts lingering on that even as Walnut relayed Kaveri’s following statement.

“Do you know anything about their weapons?” Kester asked, fingers drumming on the table in front of her. “Arynnite ones. With what they can do with enchantments in their cities—” A vague gesture to everything around them “—they must be able to make special weapons, too. When we go back to Dresmond, it should be with some of those weapons in hand.” Whether that meant with some form of an Arynnite military – whatever didn’t get obliterated this morning – at their back or with the two of them stealing something from the palace, she left ambiguous.

A pause, then: “Are you okay to be drinking that? Should we get you some water instead?”

Feeling her own temper rise to meet his, Kester held Kaveri’s gaze as he eyed her, dreading and demanding the fight in equal parts. Impotent anger lurked just beneath the surface of her skin, silently driving her and daring him to pick a fight where no one would emerge the winner. But Kaveri must have recognized the glint in her eyes, for he backed down before an argument could begin.

Kester looked at him for a moment longer. “Good,” She said, out loud just as he had, and then attempted to wash her hostility away with another swallow of her drink.

It was easier said than done. Kaveri’s words lingered in her mind, combining with the helpless fear and frustration of the entire morning to form a potent mixture of disillusioned rancor toward their hosts and their empty promises. Once the wall was done. A bitter snort escaped her, and she shook her head, swallowing down the bile in her throat with another swig of her drink. It would never be done now. The wall that they had us build and us dying for, that they promised would protect us.

She shook her head. Neither the strength nor the nature of her anger was new to her. After all, Kester hadn’t faced the Eldouir with any more success, though she found it far easier to protest Arynn Frey’s failures than her own. The acerbic mess of guilt and hatred and shame that had settled deep in her bones was better left unacknowledged, but now the words, hissed out between flattened lips, escaped before she could bite them back: “At least we tried.”

We should have known, Kester agreed, resting her elbows on the table before putting her head in her hands. Even as she clung to the smoldering remains of her incandescent fury, her shoulders hunched under the weight of the morning’s failures. All the more potent for her unwillingness to acknowledge them, shame and self-loathing curdled in her gut, stubbornly resisting any efforts to wash them away with their drinks. They should have seen it coming. They should have prepared more. They should have done a lot differently than they had. After all, Kester and Kaveri knew who was truly to blame here: if they had done their jobs correctly, they never would have needed to trust the Arynnites to defend them in the first place.

Head still resting heavily on one hand, she took another drink and nodded. An army that can’t defend its own people will never be able to fight for ours. At least we would have died at home. Kester thought, then, of the people whom she’d left behind at the camp by the wall and realized with a nauseating jolt that had Mikhail not decided his wagon had needed fixing, she and Walnut would have been with them, too. Dead, undoubtedly, leaving Kaveri and Nephys to find them amid the wreckage, just as Kester and Walnut had—

Kester finished off her glass and pushed it aside. The Arynnites had found the relatively disorganized Dresmondi way of life intriguingly counterpoint to their own, with some questioning the effectiveness of their defensive capabilities with no clear leadership. Could that be attributed to their failure to defeat the Eldouir? Never mind that the Adoi and Dijila had centuries worth of experience defending their land from Coheed or that the redheads had stumbled upon the Dresmondi at their lowest. Well, when the Eldouir finished destroying the wall and moved on to the cities, Arynn Frey would see for themselves just how superior their own military was. In the meantime… What now?

What did Kester want? To eradicate the Eldouir eradicated. To restore Dresmond to its former glory. To leave behind the shame of survival and failure that wrapped itself tighter and tighter around her throat.

Fingers curled into white-knuckled fists as wrath warred with exhausted despair. Beside her, Kaveri finished off his mug and began a silent fight of his own while Kester tried to bite down on her own frustration, which rose and fell like ocean waves. In one heartbeat, she needed to hit something - do something - before the prickling under her skin and the clenching of her jaw and the metaphorical noose that threatened to strangle her caused her to explode. In the next, the combined enormity and impossibility of the future she wanted to have pass caused her limbs to feel like lead. Where Kester oscillated, struggling to stay afloat on her raft of frustration, Kaveri merely settled and sank.

The defeat was evident in his whispered words, and suddenly, she was angry again. At Arynn Frey. At the Eldouir. At him. At herself.

Taking a deep breath, she resisted the urge to break something and turned to the other Dresmondi instead. Her jaw tightened. “Get up,” She said, the breathiness of her voice possibly tempering the sharpness of her tone. Kester grabbed his arm, hooking her fingers into his elbow, and tried to pull him up as she stood up herself. “There’s enough room in here if we move the tables. We’re going to spar. No dyrs.” If her words didn’t get him swinging, hopefully the physical provocation would, for Kester wasn’t about to take no for an answer.

She couldn’t defeat the Eldouir. She couldn’t return Dresmond to its rightful glory. But she could hit someone - and better yet, he could even hit back.