Chapter 24
The time between battles was strange for Ariadne.
While the dhemons collected their injured and dead, escorting them out of the city to be healed by Phulan and her team of medics or, for the latter, buried in a cairn, she sorted the Valenul soldiers.
These men had tried to kill them, certainly, and likely took some of their own fighters with them to the next life, but like those who fought for her and Azriel, they were following the orders of others with more power.
“What do you want done with them?” Azriel asked as she dragged what felt like the hundredth vampire soldier into line with the other dead she found. He adjusted the man’s body so he was not positioned like a discarded ragdoll.
Ariadne sighed. “They should be burned, as is tradition.”
“You’re hesitating.”
“Yes.” She chewed on the inside of her lip as she closed the next soldier’s eyes. “I do not like the idea of doing that before they have been identified.”
This time, Azriel scooped the soldier into his arms and carried him into the row of the dead. “We can’t leave them out like this.”
It made sense. Ariadne knew this. The bodies would not last more than a day or two in the cool, but above-freezing temperatures.
That amount of time would not suffice to bring in most families or local friends to identify them.
Any soldier still alive who could assist in the matter had retreated from the area, abandoning them.
“These are people,” Ariadne said slowly, “whom I wish to create alliances with.”
“Then we build a soldiers’ pyre before dusk.” Azriel picked up the next soldier, flinching as his fingers brushed the cold, lifeless skin. “Is there no way for them to be identified by their effects?”
Ariadne grimaced. “Not Rusans.”
Muttering a curse under his breath, Azriel set the corpse in line. The man’s head turned, placing his cheek in Azriel’s palm. He yanked his hand away and shook it out, jaw clenched and eyes shut tight as he turned away.
In three quick steps, Ariadne was by his side.
Azriel held his shaking hand out before him, fingers splayed and arm stiff, as though afraid to move and reignite the vision of her decapitated head in his hands.
She touched his chest, gentle and tentative, hating the way he froze beneath her fingertips.
“I am here,” she said quietly, “I am safe. I am yours.”
Slowly, Azriel’s eyes drifted open, fear shining amidst the crimson there. He searched her face for a long moment before letting his hand ease back to his side. When his shoulders sagged, signalling his return to the present moment, she added more pressure to her hand and stepped in close.
“Thank you.” He let out a breath and leaned his forehead against hers. “Thank you.”
“We can have someone else finish up,” she whispered. “A pyre is perfect.”
With that, they stepped down a side street to allow the others to continue the work without them.
There, Ariadne took Azriel’s hand and brought it to her face.
He tried to pull back, but she held firm as she lay her cheek against his palm, never taking her eyes off him.
Azriel’s face twisted in despair as his thumb brushed along her cheekbone.
Still, she leaned into his touch, forcing him to feel her warm and living skin.
“What your mind sees,” she said, “and what you think you feel…none of it is real.”
He sucked in a shuddering breath. “I know.”
Lifting onto her toes, leather boots creaking, she brushed her lips over his. “We should head back to camp while they take care of things here.”
“I should stay and help—”
“You should rest.” Ariadne turned and hooked her arm through his, resting her hand as she did so many times when he escorted her to Society events. “We will be back here in a few hours; let those who are rested prepare for the next surge.”
Azriel sighed in defeat. “As you wish, my Queen.”
When they arrived back at the camp, Ariadne was not properly prepared for what awaited them.
From the huge medic tent came cries and groans unlike anything she had ever heard before; muffled screams and desperate pleading for everything to just end.
Where the battle had been loud and intense, these sounds were filled with melancholy and agony.
“Gods,” Ariadne whispered as they rounded the back side of the tent where row after row of cairns lay, housing the remains of dhemons in their final resting places. “Keon watch over them.”
“They are home,” Azriel said, his gravelly voice cracking and giving her a gentle tug towards their tent. “Soon we shall be as well.”
But Ariadne did not budge. “Wait. I need to see Emillie.”
At first, Azriel opened his mouth as though to argue. Then his eyes softened, and he looked to the medic tent. With a silent nod, he turned with her, and they made their way back toward the despair cloaked in canvas.
The tent flap swung open as Azriel swept his arm across it, holding it aside so she could step in.
Magic flared through the space, caressing a part of Ariadne that she now knew to be the ancient mage blood in her veins that could never be reawakened thanks to the curse of the night.
It had the same tang as the nights she lay on Phulan’s floor, having her scars removed.
Now it seemed to dance along her exposed skin, seeking wounds to heal and scars to pluck free from existence.
With no focus to it, however, it was useless.
Emillie knelt beside a dhemon, face taut with focus as she and weary Margot worked together to stitch the blue skin together along his abdomen.
Across the tent, a bleary-eyed Revelie wrapped a salve-covered injury with a fresh bandage and spoke in a quiet tone to another dhemon who likely did not understand a word she uttered.
Further back, Phulan’s hands flared with the healing magic, dark circles under her eyes from the constant drain on her body.
It was Revelie who looked up first. Her dark eyes did not seem to register them for who they were for several long heartbeats.
The number of people who had come in and out of the tent all day would most definitely have taken a toll on her.
Or, perhaps, Ariadne’s wounds had been far worse than she imagined and muddied her visage.
The moment her mind registered who stood at the entrance, however, Revelie launched to her feet. “You’re alive!”
Every possible head in the tent turned in their direction. The moans of pain shifted to surprise and joy as the patients, too, recognized them for who they were: their King and Queen.
Before Ariadne could say anything in response, two bodies slammed into her. Air punched from her lungs, and she choked out a laugh as she hugged her sister and friend in return.
Then the tears came.
“I have been so worried,” Emillie said, then she pulled back with wide eyes. “Is Luce—”
“Luce is well,” Ariadne confirmed. Anticipating the next question from Revelie, she added, “As is Jakhov. I am surprised neither has come back yet.”
A wizened voice carried over the others: “I am grateful for you, Grandson.”
Looking back, Ariadne found Margot holding Azriel’s face in her hands as she spoke her words of love—a far kinder greeting than what came next, for the moment the Original vampire stepped back, Phulan took her place.
The mage stood tall and grabbed Azriel by the horn, giving his head a shake that verged on too rough. “The battle ended well over an hour ago, boy. Where have you been?”
A slow grin spread across his face. “Scared, Phulan?”
“About losing the likes of you?” She swatted his face with a bloodied cloth that she had just wiped her hands on. “You’re just fortunate I’ve been busy or I would’ve tracked you down myself.”
“You’re fortunate you didn’t have to track me down in the Underworld,” Azriel snapped.
Ariadne drove her elbow into his gut. The surprise blow left him wheezing. “That was rude.”
He shrugged, and Phulan tried to hide her own smirk. “I’d do it and drag you back here, kicking and screaming if I must, to get you to finally finish what you started.”
“Do they always bicker like this?” Revelie asked in a hushed tone.
It was Margot who responded with a huff. “Far more often than one would imagine.”
“I have put far too much time and effort into you,” Phulan said, “to let you die now.”
While Ariadne did not have much experience to lean on herself, she imagined the way the two of them fought—Phulan with her strict commands and high expectations alongside Azriel, who tried to appease her at every turn—was something akin to a mother and son.
A relationship that neither of them had otherwise.
Except Azriel was not Phulan’s only child in this case—all the dhemons were, for they looked to her with reverence even when they did not know her name.
It was almost as though Kall spoke to them from the Underworld, whispering to them about how they needed to follow her instructions with snarky deference.
When they finally departed from the medic tent to clean and prepare for nightfall, Ariadne felt lighter than she had when leaving the streets of Monsumbra. Her sister was safe. Revelie was safe. Everyone she loved, who was present in Eastwood Province, was safe.
Azriel paused to speak with Boti, the high fae in charge of that company of their soldiers.
He agreed to send a handful of his people into Monsumbra to convince those who had yet to evacuate to do so by nightfall—a critical job, what with the dragons preparing to join the battle against the Caersans.
Failure to leave before the next siege on the city could result in a fiery death.
“We will only use flame as a last resort,” Razer reminded them both, his voice quiet in Ariadne’s mind due to Almandine’s greater distance from the battle.
Still, the smaller dragon’s attention perked up, and her consciousness grew stronger as she no doubt moved to a more advantageous position. “The mages and fae have been practicing extinguishing it.”