Chapter 6
Aurora
Head pounding, Aurora got to her feet, feeling sick and shaky.
Screams and battle cries pierced the gloom as hoofbeats pounded in time with her racing heart.
Bronze on bronze clanged all around her.
The roar of fire added to the din as its sting urged her to move.
She lurched on her feet, unsure if she were in a vision or the real world.
Her leg pained her, but she could put more weight on it than she had before.
How had she gotten here? She’d been in the black tent, begging first for mercy, then for courage as they’d placed that horrible device on her still-infected leg.
She remembered screaming, then being trapped in her vision, then nothing.
Confused and lost, she looked around but saw nothing familiar save for scenes from her nightmares.
No one would know where she was now. Orithyia had left her behind, and she’d told Theron she would be with his aunt. There was no one coming to rescue her.
As despair began to overtake her, the blaze of the nearest flame spurred her onwards.
She limped away as best she could, tears stinging her eyes as the smoke became thicker.
Slow and steady, she told herself. If she ran, she’d be nothing but a target.
She had to keep her head, to hide. Aurora did her best to turn away from the noise, the screams, to scrabble in the opposite direction of where the active slaughter was taking place.
Fire and debris blocked some paths, violence others.
The moment she heard the hoofbeats, she dropped to the ground beside still-warm corpses, praying she would remain unnoticed.
Slowly but surely, she trudged through the horror.
The screams became dimmer, the clashes less frequent, the hoofbeats further away. Salvation was at hand.
Until the next set of hoofbeats drummed in her very bones and her nerves failed her.
She panicked and ran, scrambling over broken wooden beams and bloody body parts, the stench of burnt hair and death surrounding her.
The wind picked up, and blazes that had seemed at a safe enough distance roared back to life, nipping at her heels.
As if the wind had given a second breath of life to this orgy of death, soldiers and the attackers clashed once more.
The attackers sped through the camp, always two tents behind her.
She sobbed openly then, as the bodies of Viridian clerics, nobles, and attendants littered her path, every breath harder to take than the last as the smoke poured over her.
She stumbled and landed on her side. When she got to her hands and knees, she recognized the intricately embroidered tunic in front of her, even if his face had been trampled into a gory mess—Lord Bacus.
She fell back, pushing away from him, staring at her wet hands in horror. Blood and mud coated every inch of her.
“No. Please, no,” she begged.
She’d seen this before, and yet she couldn’t look away when Stentor’s war cry rang out.
In a clearing where the tents had been fully trampled, he hacked one of the attackers to pieces, nearly cutting the enemy loper’s head clean off. Another attacker sped towards Stentor, his sabre gleaming with fresh blood. The Viridian general blasted him with flame.
Why? Why would he bring himself here, exactly where she’d seen him in her vision? He might have stood a chance if he’d run from the camp, but he looked almost gleeful there on the back of his loper, cutting down enemies. He knew his fate, and yet he’d come to face it.
As he turned his head, searching for more slaughter, an arrow pierced his throat. Stentor choked on his own blood as it flowed from his mouth. A mad smile stretched his lips. Several more arrows pierced him in quick succession. As he fell from his loper, the beast ran off into the darkness.
The next set of hoofbeats pushed Aurora to her feet.
She had to run. The attacker who barrelled into the clearing trampled the general under his loper’s hooves.
He scanned the clearing, his gaze finding Aurora.
As he urged his loper to chase her down, Aurora turned and ran as fast her maimed leg could carry her.
She fought her way through debris, hoping it would slow the beast down, hoping the attacker would give up to find easier prey.
But instead of racing off, he pushed his loper through the broken pots, charred flesh and overturned tents.
Aurora ducked under broken poles and squeezed between slain lopers, dragging her leg as her breath sawed in and out of her, desperate for just another moment to live.
It was only when she found herself in another area trampled flat by repeated attacks that she realized he’d herded her out into the open.
With nowhere left to go, she tried to flee back into the nearest pile of debris, but the whole maze was either on fire or fully impassable.
As her pursuer picked his way out of the debris with a bloodthirsty smile on his face, Aurora tried to call on her magic.
She tried to imagine it as a beast like Drakon, fearsome and hungry, but she was spent.
What energy she’d had, she’d thrown away trying to be stoic in the face of pain, and what magic she’d possessed, she’d drained so Lord Bacus could see a vision of himself dead.
As she backed away, she hit a solid wall of bodies, many of whom wore armour.
Aurora grabbed the nearest weapon and held it up in her defence—a broken spear shaft.
Her pursuer laughed as he finally entered the clearing.
It was all for nothing. If this was her end, then none of it had mattered.
I’m sorry, Fae.
“Aurora!”
Theron?
Something whistled through the air and landed with a thunk. Her pursuer’s laugh was cut off with a gurgling cry. He clutched his stomach, or more precisely, the spear that had pierced him through, and fell from his loper.
“Aurora!”
Theron raced into the clearing. His clothes were torn and burnt, his hair wild and blood-soaked, and his face was covered in gore. And yet, here he was. He’d come for her. Saved her. In this pandemonium, he was her salvation.
He swept her up in his arms and held her tight. His heart hammered against her ear as he squeezed.
“Thank the Triad, you’re alive,” he sighed.
Why had he come? He could have left her to die and saved himself a great deal of trouble.
They were nothing but bitter enemies. She’d come here to stop him from using his beasts to destroy Trisia.
He was nothing but an agent of chaos, determined to set the world aflame so long as he could rule over the ashes.
And yet, she felt safe in his arms in spite of everything. Aurora threw her arms around him in turn and wept into his chest. She let her legs buckle as the screams she’d trapped in her heart were freed.
“I’m here, my fairy. I’m here,” he whispered in her ear, standing to his full height with her in his arms. “You’re safe.”
It was either the first truth to pass his lips or the cruelest lie in the Tapestry.
One made all the more tempting because she wanted with all her heart to believe it.
As he raced through the fire and smoke, she found her strength leaving her.
Whatever panic had animated her before bled out of her in the shelter of his arms. Dreamless oblivion crept up on her in waves, her nightmares kept at bay by the steady beat of Theron’s heart.
The blaze of a fire woke Aurora. Drenched in sweat and weak, she tried to get her bearings.
It was dark, but moonlight filtered through the room.
Room—not a tent. Despite the low light, she could distinguish the décor.
A temple. One of Passion’s. Had it all been a horrible nightmare?
She prayed it was so, that her Passion-bound husband was the man she’d believed him to be—as fierce and strong as he was true to her.
He lay beside her, his arm around her waist, his body cradling hers.
But if it had all been a terrible dream, why did she ache all over? Why did her head hurt? Why did her leg feel like it was on fire?
“Theron?” she croaked. “Something’s wrong.”
He roused in an instant. Theron put his hand atop her forehead, then her neck and cheek. His magic poured over her in a wave. She welcomed it, let it soothe her aches, to tempt her back to sleep.
He shifted in the bed, helped her sit up, and offered her a drink. The bitter tea was cold but soothed her parched throat. She drank as much as he gave her. Once it was done, he pulled her back into his arms.
“You have a fever. Rest. I’ll keep you safe.”
“I had a nightmare,” she mumbled.
“It’s over now. Sleep. You need your strength.”
“Please don’t leave me,” she pleaded. “I was so scared.”
“Shhhh. I’m not going anywhere.”
Aurora faded from sleep to wakefulness. Each time, her surroundings changed.
Temple rooms blurred into the Aurean royal tent, day into night, the gauzy curtains of the palanquin with the horns of a loper.
Dream and reality bled into one another, the colours blending so seamlessly she stopped being able to distinguish one from the other.
And yet no matter where or when she woke, Theron was with her, cradling her in his arms, his magic washing over her.
He was her only constant, his heartbeat the compass she used to find her way through her fragmented mind.
She opened her eyes to a bright sky and the soft swaying of a loper’s gait.
Its glossy amber coat gleamed in the light.
Raising a hand to ward off the harsh light, she felt Theron’s magic envelop her again.
One of his thick arms cradled her head and shoulders, the other rested on her knees, keeping her astride his saddle.
“Is this real?” she asked.
“Yes,” he replied, adjusting her in his arms and producing a waterskin. “Are you thirsty?”