Blades Of Illusion: Crown Service #2 by Terah Edun Read Free Book Online Page B

individuals around them.
    Men with hollow eyes met her gaze. Women looked around with desperate glances. In the silent faces of the adults, the stark despair was an especially explicit reminder that none of the Cams’ had survived. The quick movements of their feet and the occasional yells and cries as they ran afoul of an irritated mercenary were nowhere to be found. The orphans were long gone. But plenty of the mercenaries were young enough that Sara would have given them a portion of her meat pie...if she had any. Hunger gnawed at the faces of the growing men and women. But it wasn’t just hunger. The men and women of one of the empire’s premier mercenary companies had taken pride in their appearance. Now scraggly hairs grew on the male chins and the once lustrous manes of the women, of all styles, had long since given away to lanky and dank clumps of dirty hair. Desperation had set in and they all had long since given up their vain self-maintenance rituals.
    Even their prized Kade mage, Nissa Sardonien, was not immune to the torturous march. Under the orders of their captain, she was being escorted to the Algardis encampment and there she would be under orders to perform whatever needed to be done that would end this battle and win the war for the Empress of Algardis. Nissa stumbled in front of her. Mud covered the back of her robes, from the tip of her braided hair down her back to her calves, which sunk into the muck with each labored step.
    A small smile of determination crossed Sara’s face as she breathed heavily and took another step, placing one booted foot in front of the other. The heavy squelch of mud as she raised her feet was the only sound she made. The only sound they all made except for the occasional grunt and the numerous curses that rang out in the damp air. That was okay. The damn bog made more than enough sounds for all of them. Creatures she didn’t even want to think about cackled and cawed in the distance. Rain had started to pour from the sky days ago. Rain that seemed the one good thing to happen to the Corcoran Guard since they entered this godforsaken place. But they soon discovered that even the rain here wasn’t normal. The troops had watched in dismay life-giving droplets had been transformed in mid-air to a slick, oil-like substance. The same kind that rested like a layer of filth on every water source in the swamp. Sara was beginning to wonder how anything survived here. Let alone colossal predators.
    This day she listened to the splash of unseen creatures as they entered the muddy waters to hunt. Sara knew they were surviving because these creatures knew the ins and outs of this swamp. They hid in dug-out caves, slunk stealthily on tree roots and branches high in the air, and paced through the dense vegetation like ghosts. And little-by-little they had picked off men, women, and elephants to dine on. Now just a skeletal crew of mercenaries remanded.
    One of the carnivorous creatures had even loomed up like a monster from the depths of an algae-covered pool and eaten two of her fellow mercenaries whole before she could blink. She had no name for that creature. But she remembered jaws like long and pointed triangles filled with serrated teeth. That jaw, as big as her body, had gaped open in a maw of darkness while two beady eyes stared down the men surrounding its prey.
    When it first appeared and ate one of their own, the mercenaries had surged forward to fight the beast. Not to save the man. Even in the instant after its jaws had latched closed, the warriors surrounding the beast had known that saving the man in its mouth would be an impossible feat. The creature’s mouth had slammed shut with such force that she heard the bones of the poor mercenary snap like a dry twigs, and his blood had gushed out from between the serrated teeth like a red waterfall. No, the mercenaries had surged forward to instead avenge their fallen foe. But they had all soon learned that the beast’s plated