Free A Sky of Spells (Book #9 in the Sorcerer's Ring) by Morgan Rice Page A

anything so
powerful could be reduced to this. The foundations remained, the remnants of
stone walls, the outline of the greater city; there was certainly a foundation
left to build on. But most of its great, ancient stones and statues were
toppled in heaps of rubble. Only half of King’s Castle stood.
    “Seven generations of MacGils,”
Gwendolyn said, shaking her head, “all wiped out because the Shield had been
lowered, because the Sword had been stolen. It all started with her brother,
Gareth. And now there lies my father’s kingdom. Gareth always wanted to destroy
our father: and now, somehow, he has.”
    Thor could feel her tears
down the back of his neck.
    “We will rebuild it,” Thor
said.
    “Yes, we will,” she replied
confidently.
    As they dove down lower,
circling again and again, this place brought back so many memories for Thor. Here
was a place he had been afraid and intimidated to enter as a boy, its gates and
powerful sentries looming larger than life. And yet now here he was, no longer
a boy, but a man, riding on the back of a dragon, the head of the Legion and
already one of the Kingdom’s famed warriors. It was hard for Thor to process
all that had happened in his life, and so quickly: it was surreal. Was anything
in life, he wondered, stable? Was everything always changing, shifting? Was there
ever anything that one could really hold onto?
    The sight below brought Thor
great sadness—yet it also brought him great hope. Here was a place they could
build again, a place they could make even more resplendent. With the Empire
finally gone, the Ring finally secure, Thor felt every cause for hope. They were
all alive and safe, and that was all that mattered. The stones, they could all
go back to the way they were. And with Gwendolyn at his side, Thor felt that
anything was possible.
    Thor felt his mother’s ring,
bulging inside his pocket, and he knew the time had come to propose. The time
had come for them to be together, forever. He did not want to wait another
moment. He opened his mouth to speak.
    “Set down there,” Gwendolyn suddenly
called aloud to Mycoples. “I see the knights approaching.”
    Thor looked down and saw the
men traveling down the road, beginning to filter in through the gates of King’s
Court. Mycoples dove down, as Gwen had requested.
    They landed right before the
incoming army, Mycoples setting down in the center of the courtyard, the men
rushing out to greet them. Thor knew that his moment to propose was gone. But it
would come again. He’d be sure of it. Before the day had passed, he would find
a way to make Gwendolyn his wife.
     

CHAPTER ELEVEN
     
     
    Luanda marched and marched,
exhausted, weak from hunger, freezing, feeling as if her trek would never end. She
couldn’t allow herself to stop. She had to make it back, to her homeland, to Bronson.
She was still reeling as she thought how lucky she had been to escape, what a
close call it had been. She had been looking over her shoulder the entire march
back, still fearing that somehow, maybe, Romulus would find a way to take down
the Shield, to follow her, to grab her and bring her back.
    But he was never there. He
was gone now, the Shield was truly up, and Luanda had been safe marching, all
this way, through the wasteland of the Ring, determined to make it home. She was
relieved, yet she also felt a sense of dread. Would her people take her back
in, after all she had done? Would they want to kill her? She could hardly blame
them. She was embarrassed by her own actions.
    Yet she had nowhere else to
go. This was the only home she knew. And she loved Bronson, and ached to see
him again, to apologize in person.
    Luanda was remorseful for
what she had done, and she wished it could have been otherwise. She wished she
could take it all back, could do it all differently. Looking back on it now,
she didn’t understand what had come over her, how she had allowed her ambition
to overcome her. She had wanted it all. And she had