Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Clay
Splatters of ink coated my aching fingers.
They throbbed from hours spent drafting letters to anyone I could think of asking for their alliance.
My return to the war camp we’d created at Nikolai’s compound was supposed to have been nothing more than a brief stop on my longer campaign, but when I’d arrived back to the unfortunate news that Tenebris had already sworn allegiance to Hyrax, my plans had changed.
It had been irritating to learn that Nikolai had spies hidden within my castle and had for some time, but the update had been valuable nonetheless.
Valuable and completely demoralizing.
Tenebris had a large army, and frankly, I’d been counting on their support given my close relationship to Damon.
That left only the Gelumont and Promissan governments as potential allies, and I wasn’t feeling confident in those relations.
So, I was instead reaching out to men like Nikolai—powerful men around the world who might have private legions of their own I could capitalize on.
So far, we’d had some luck gathering small numbers of men loyal to the cause, but we didn’t have nearly enough soldiers to win any war, let alone a war against a God.
Sighing, I cracked the knuckles on my fingers, pushing my chair out from the tiny wooden table I’d been using as a desk. Before he and Iris had left, Nikolai had allowed me a permanent room in the main house, while he stationed the others in various rooms around auxiliary houses on the property.
My accommodations were nice enough, complete with an enormous bed covered in a dark quilt.
The small table meant for dining, where I had instead been doing much of my correspondence, sat to the left of the two sitting chairs near the dusty hearth.
An unused chess table sat in the middle of those chairs, mocking me.
A game of strategy right in front of my eyes.
All while I was losing the very real game of strategy that I was currently engaged in.
Pulling magic out of my core, I blew a plume of dragonfire towards the fireplace, lighting it in brilliantly blue flames that settled into sparks of orange and yellow.
It still felt cold.
Most places felt cold these days.
A rumble of shouts stole my attention, and I rose swiftly to my feet, brow furrowed as I stepped towards the large arched windows that overlooked the front lawn.
Men moved into a practiced formation, each moving rapidly to line up arrows against bows and unsheathe swords to hold them at the ready. They formed lines, shields held at the front.
Shit.
“Clay!” Elaina skidded to a halt outside my room, grabbing onto the frame of the door to steady herself. “Dragons.”
She barely had time to move out of the way before I was barreling past her, undoing the buttons of my shirt as I did. “How many?”
“Two.”
My steps paused for the briefest of moments. Two wasn’t an attack.
Nikolai’s second, I couldn’t remember his name for the life of me, was already on the lawn when I arrived, my shirt, jacket, and shoes in a discarded pile behind us.
He barked orders at his men, telling them to ready themselves.
In perfect precision, they each slotted the arrows into their bows, readied their fingers, and lifted their weapons to the sky.
The commander raised his arm, preparing to call the order, just as two dragons pushed through the cloud cover, the heavy flap of their wings an unnatural thunder that boomed across the sky.
One with scales of emerald green, so dark in places they looked as ink-splattered as my own fingertips. A crown of horns was atop his head, his eyes wider around the far edges and narrow towards his snout. A characteristic trait of Tenebrisian dragons.
The other, smaller than the first, with orange scales, searched through the crowd gathered on the lawn before his reptilian eyes locked on mine. Slowly, he bowed his head.
I launched towards Nikolai’s commander and shoved back his arm before he could give the order to fire.
“What in all of creation are you doing?” He roared, turning towards me at full height, dominance and fury burning in his gaze.
The beast inside me roared, and a deep growl tore out of my chest.
“Mind your tone when speaking to a king,” I reminded him, stepping forward.
His eyes flashed, indecision warring with loyalty before he announced, “I follow Nikolai.”
Instinct pushed me to lash out, to shift right there and show him exactly the kind of monster he was tempting.
But fuck me, I needed Nikolai as an ally, and eating his friends would not foster a good relationship between the two of us.
“I know those Dragons,” I barked, that buried rage still obvious in my tone. “They’re friends.”
He didn’t surrender an inch, not at first at least, but eventually his head bowed.
The dragons above us dipped low, aiming towards a clearing in the grass where they could land. Without hesitation, I pushed my way through the line of archers, coming to stand before the gigantic forms as they shrank, shifting into two that I recognized well.
“Oh,” Camilla gasped as she and Elaina came to stand by me. Her head tilted as she took in the naked bodies of the two men in front of us, not at all shy about where she focused her attention. “A prince.”
Elaina slapped her hand over Camilla’s eyes as I fought the urge to sigh in exasperation before turning towards our new guests.
“Friend or foe?” I asked them.
Damon gave me an exhausted sideways smile, glancing at Veric a few feet behind him.
“Technically, a friend of a friend nowadays,” Damon said. “We’re here with a message from the Queen, the Goddess Theadora.”
I swear my heart stopped beating. Pangs of longing, worry, and love reverberated through every inch of me until I wasn’t a king or a man or anything other than hers.
“You—” I forced myself to swallow, to clear my throat and ground my feet. “You’ve seen her?”
It took all my strength to clamp my mouth shut and stop myself from immediately demanding every detail they had about Thea.
I didn’t care if they were both naked or surrounded by armed men.
I also didn’t care that whatever message she had sent was undoubtedly about the war effort and better discussed in closed quarters.
I didn’t care about anything other than hearing that she was okay.
And if they wouldn't tell me, I could force them. My magic was ready, nearly itching to be set free. My father would have insisted they drop to their knees or be taken to imprisonment.
But I was the king now, and I didn't want to be anything like the monster he tried to craft me into.
I would be a better King than him. I would be a better partner to Thea than he had been to my mother.
So, I swallowed down my personal needs for reassurance and reminded myself over and over that she was alive while we sent for some clothing for them and led them into the dining room.
I sat at the head of the table, offering the seat on my right to Damon, who accepted with a tired nod.
As he lowered himself into the tall-backed chair, I took him in subtly, scanning over his frame.
Aside from the hollowness under his eyes, he looked unchanged from the last time I saw him, with shorn dark hair and the slightest shadow of a beard against dark chocolate eyes.
The ring of dark bruises lining the tan skin around his neck was markedly new, though.
He noticed me staring at it and tugged awkwardly at the collar of his shirt, trying to shift the fabric higher.
“A gift from the God of Death,” he explained in rushed, curt words.
I nodded, smiling my thanks to the staff member who brought us glasses of wine.
“I’ll never adjust to how green your kingdom is,” Veric mused by the windows where he looked out at the lawn, his eyes tracking a cat that moved along the tree line. “Or how many stray animals just walk around.”
He cleared his throat, clapping Damon’s shoulder as he took a seat next to him. We fell into a tense silence, Camilla lifting her brows expectantly as she glanced between Damon and me, waiting to see who would make the first move.
“I heard you paid a visit to Hyrax.” I watched Damon as I spoke, taking in every twitch of his fingers and rise of his chest. “You can imagine my surprise at seeing you here now.”
He took in my words in measured silence, pursing his lips and watching me with the same intense scrutiny. “You don’t want to ask about her first?”
Yes.
How is she? Is she okay? Is she safe?
I shrugged, twirling my glass in my fingertips. “She wouldn’t want me to.”
Even Camilla tilted her head in acknowledgement of that. Even she knew Thea had learned to play this game better than most, and she wouldn’t want me sacrificing an inch of leverage before I had to.
“Your Majesty.” Veric shifted in his seat, turning to address Damon. “Perhaps it’s best for everyone if we simply announce that we mean no harm.”
Camilla, across from him, glared at Veric with a mad kind of look in her eye. “Those are words that best come from the mouth of the prince, not his attendant.”
Veric’s eyes flashed golden for the briefest of moments. “I’m not his attendant.”
“You’re also not someone with the power to propose a truce!” Camilla snapped back, leaning forward even as Elaina placed a hand on her elbow.
I recognized the look on her face. Her eyes were narrowing in the way they typically did before she was about to spew venom.
Venom on my behalf.
To defend not just her king, but her friend.
Like she used to do before the world went to shit.
I cleared my throat, and she took my silent order, closing her mouth with a heavy sigh. A look of silent communication passed between her and Elaina before she rested back in her seat, crossing her arms stubbornly over her chest as she continued to glower at Veric.
“Veric is correct,” Damon announced when things seemed to settle. “We mean no harm. We’ve both pledged ourselves, and all of my forces, to Theadora.”
I kept my face neutral, not showing the way my heart surged at the mention of additional forces. “You have men?”
“My parents bowed to Hyrax, taking most of the Tenebrisian forces with them, but I have a small contingent loyal to me.”
“How many?”
“Five thousand.”
Only five.
The Tenebrisian army was fifty thousand strong during the Great War. Five thousand wouldn’t match the forces the Emperor and Empress had pledged to Hyrax.
Not to mention, he also had the Athenian forces that had defected to his rule.
Five thousand simply wasn’t enough.
“We flew ahead of them, but they’re marching this way. They should arrive in a few days.”
A beat of silence passed, and I turned to Camilla and Elaina, a question in my eyes.
“We can make it work,” Elaina answered.
“We’ll have to spread to the forests,” Camilla shrugged, before turning to Damon. “I hope your men aren’t expecting luxurious accommodations.”
We had filled all the extra rooms in the primary manor and auxiliary houses with high-ranking generals, women, and children, many of whom were sleeping on floors. Our army was primarily in tents or in the open air on the back lawn, but space was getting limited.
Damon only inclined his head in acknowledgement and brought his wine to his mouth.
“Who else knows we’re here?” I asked.
If Damon and his forces could find us, we might have another problem on our hands.
“No one. We found you only because Theadora suspected you would come here after Hyrax Manor."
Camilla chuckled under her breath. “She is clever.”
Damon continued as if no one had interrupted him, turning towards me with a heavy sigh. “She’s as well as can be expected. Unharmed, albeit changed since you last saw her.”
A heavy weight pressed down on me, locking my throat and tongue even as I hung on his every word.
“Changed how?” Elaina asked, giving life to the question I couldn’t bring myself to ask.
The beast inside me was roaring, demanding I push the table aside and fly directly to her. I never should have left her there.
“Markedly thinner,” Veric answered after an uncomfortable pause. “She is… troubled. Restless. Hyrax and Caldrius have not harmed her, but she is forced to stay at their side and guarded night and day.”
I felt Camilla and Elaina’s eyes on me as I stared at the burgundy wine before me, the glass cold in my fingertips.
“Her powers?” Camilla asked.
Glancing up, I swallowed as Veric averted his eyes. It was just a flicker away to glance out the window behind us, where the sun was just beginning to set. Just a moment, but it was enough for icy fear to clench around me.
Say they came back.
Say they came back.
Say they—
“She doesn’t appear to have any.”
I squeezed my fingers into tight fists, hiding the blackening skin under the table.
“Nothing?” Camilla’s voice was hard, but I knew her well enough to hear the flash of concern hidden under her words.
Damon shook his head. “There was an altercation in the throne room. She attempted to step in on my behalf, but she didn’t use any magic. It’s not just that she’s weakened. She almost seems to be Mortal.”
And she was trapped. Trapped and alone.
We fell silent, everyone taking in that update with pursed lips and worried eyes.
It had been weeks since I had left her there. Weeks that she’d been stuck there with no allies or magic to defend herself against them. The love of my life was in an unspeakable amount of danger, and I was the one who had left her there.
“Perhaps we should just surrender now and save Hyrax the trouble of defeating us,” Camilla mumbled under her breath, resting her head on her chin.
“You said she had a message?” I asked, my throat feeling like gravel.
Damon turned to Veric, allowing her former fiancé to deliver her words. “She’s planning to steal the Book of the Gods from Hyrax, and then she will come to you.”
Risky.
So fucking risky.
That book could give us the advantage we needed, though.
“Oh,” Veric’s mouth curved into a grin. “She also said that she hopes you’re not too attached to your castle. She’s thinking it might be time for new accommodations when all this is over.”
I chuckled under my breath. Yes, when all this was over, I never wanted to walk through those halls again. There wasn’t any fondness left in my heart for those halls. My parents died in that castle. Thea nearly died there on more than one occasion.
No, when this was all over, she and I would build something new.
A new castle.
A new kingdom.
A new era.
“Anything else?” I breathed.
We hung on their every word. Even Camilla and Elaina both seemed as invested as I was. Two women who didn’t know Thea well, but knew her enough to worry.
Veric’s smile was a burst of warmth in a freezing world. “She sends her love. To all of you.”