Chapter 54
Three more weeks passed and still, Tethys didn’t stir. Physically her body healed, but her mind drifted somewhere far from the continent. Far from the mortal realm itself, perhaps.
Araes stayed by her side with each sunrise.
Plates from dinner service were left untouched and cold by the bedchamber door.
He was never the praying type, the war ripped that piece away a long time ago, but Araes found himself whispering quiet pleas to Eos.
Return his queen. Guide her back to herself safely.
Had he just pushed harder, ran faster, when the cavern fell to rubble.
They wouldn’t be here in this gilded castle by the sea.
He didn’t deserve silken, sun-warmed sheets or breathtaking beachside views while she battled for recovery.
He should be the one laying there unconscious, melting into the goose feather mattress.
In the end, he couldn’t protect her, couldn’t guard her.
He’d broken the oath he’d made so many months ago.
Sunlight whispered through the room, sending dust particles and honeyed light beams scattering along the walls.
She must wake up. Venia needed their queen.
The realm declined into darkness without their bright morning light.
More so, however, she needed to recover because Araes couldn’t imagine a world where he existed without her.
She filled a void left behind after Enyo’s death—so large, so all-encompassing, it nearly swallowed him whole.
“Please, Goddess,” he whispered, brushing a thumb along the back of her delicate hand. It was so frail, so lifeless. “Venia needs you to wake up. I need you…” He trailed off, refusing to allow that heartbreak to well in his eyes. He wouldn’t mourn someone he hadn’t yet lost.
Tethys’s finger twitched against his.
“Come back to me, Goddess,” he breathed.
Hope was a fickle, selfish thing, however.
Her face still drooped. Her body didn’t swell with life.
Araes sighed and rose from his seat, his eyes catching on the cerulean blue beads laced through Altair’s braids.
The immortal stood in the corner, his features grim and heavy.
“Why don’t you go for a walk, Lieutenant? I’ll stay until you return,” he whispered. The god’s personal healers cared for Tethys well, but Araes couldn’t find the strength to move. Crossing the threshold was a betrayal—leaving her unguarded and alone. He wouldn’t break his promise. Not again.
“I can’t leave her. Not like this,” Araes replied, keeping is gaze fixed on the slumbering goddess.
He was forced to trust Altair, and while the king had welcomed them into his home with the highest of discretion, Araes couldn’t help but linger on the truths the summer king refused to disclose.
Tethys’s fate is already sealed…he didn’t know what the immortal meant, but it terrified him, nonetheless.
“Alright, Lieutenant. If you change your mind, I’ll be just downstairs,” Altair said, taking his leave.
Arched windows overlooked the shoreline below, flooding the room in natural warmth.
Araes placed a hand on the glass, feeling it shiver against the southerly winds.
Aquilae was quite beautiful. It was no wonder why its people didn’t venture too far from their coastline.
The southern sea’s beauty was a tether, keeping the southerners connected to its rolling swells.
Once Tethys woke up, Araes would insist they explore the beach, maybe bask in the tropical sunlight and collect purple mollusks at low tide. They both needed some peace before facing the future’s hardships.
He sighed and glanced back at his queen.
This woman, this goddess, pulled him from the pits when the darkness took over.
She’d offered a hand when he felt so fucking angry, so tired of fighting.
She truly was the quiet he desperately sought for since before the war.
Now, without her, his mind was too damn loud.
When he enlisted, Araes never intended to make it off of the battlefield.
Now, the future he’d face, the life he’d build with her, was clearer than freshly polished glass.
Even if he would grow old and withered while she stayed timeless.
It didn’t matter that his body would age and decay while she remained just as she was now, so long as he held a place at her side.
Two male voices shouted down below, ripping Araes from thoughts.
Their words, indecipherable through the glistening wooden floor, fought against one another.
Two sets of steps flew up the stairwell and boomed down the hall.
Araes leapt for his sword, now hanging undisturbed in the wardrobe, and drew the blade from its sheath.
“Brother, listen to me. She cannot handle visitors right now,” Altair’s voice filtered from behind the bedchamber door.
“She is my wife. You cannot keep me from her any longer.” Procyon’s thunderous rage grew palpable in the air.
The walls shivered against the sheer power of his demands.
Araes stiffened into battle stance. He would first be pummeled into dust before allowing that miserable fuck to lay even a finger on Tethys again.
Like a kettle brought to boil, his blood blazed through his veins.
Flashes of the purplish bruises painted over her body tainted his vision red.
“Procyon, you will respect me in my own home. Or have you forgotten who I am?” Altair hissed, their voices quivering the door in its frame.
“I will see my wife.” Procyon growled. Araes’s heartbeat roared in his ears, drowned out only by the violent quakes of immortal fury just outside.
A chill seeped through the cracks, bringing with it the putrid stench of rotten leaves, like carrion.
This was bad. Araes had seen glimpses of the autumn king’s temper, but never like this. His anger thickened the air like smog.
“Until you calm yourself, you will not take a single step into these chambers. Do you think I am blind? I’ve read the healer’s report. Her body was riddled with bruises far too advanced in their healing to be from the accident. Do you think I don’t know who gave them to her?”
“What goes on in our marital bed is none of your concern. Let me see my wife,” Procyon replied. Footsteps scuffed against the door and the golden handle twisted on its lock.
“You won’t, little brother. Pull yourself together and cool off. I won’t allow you to hurt Tethys anymore,” Altair boomed, firm in his resolve.
In the seconds of silence that passed, Araes debated his next move.
He considered throwing the goddess over his shoulder and scaling the castle’s exterior wall, but they were at least four stories high and the smooth white walls didn’t offer any reliable footholds for their descent.
As extensive as his training and battle experience was, he didn’t stand a chance against the immortal.
He cursed, positioning himself between the doorway and his queen—it would be a fight with death, then.
The lock turned over and the door swung open. Only Altair stood in the doorway, though, his eyes sunken and dark.
“He’s gone, although I don’t suspect it’ll take much before he returns again. I can’t keep him away forever,” he said, joining Araes beside his sister. He brushed a gentle hand across her brow, smoothing back a stray golden curl. “Eos, help us all if she doesn’t wake up.”
Araes shifted in his boots, watching the immortal pour a sip of water between his sister’s lips. All Tethys had was time. An eternity of it. Yet each tick of the clock was a battering ram to his chest.
“Lieutenant, I know you don’t want to leave my sister’s side, but rotting away in this bedchamber beside her isn’t helping her recovery.
Get some air. Some sun. I swear to you, I won’t leave her side until you return,” Altair suggested, his gaze still fixed on Tethys’s pale face.
Braids curtained his face as he took her small hand in his.
A single shake of his shoulders gave the god’s grief away.
Altair wasn’t concerned for Araes’s well-being or the fate of the realms. No, he needed a moment with his sister. An hour or two to collect himself.
“Alright. Some fresh air might do me some good, my king,” Araes whispered.
“Take this. My people don’t take outsiders lightly, and seeing you wear my sigil, they’ll accept you.
” Altair slid a ring from his index finger and tossed it to Araes.
The weight of its gold band was surprisingly heavy as he caught it in his palm.
The magic humming in the metal sent shivers up his arm as he slipped it on his own finger.
Araes paused, waiting for Altair to continue, but the god was silent and unmoving.
Before he swung the door open, however, Araes turned back and said, “Promise me you’ll watch over her until I return? ”
Altair glanced over his shoulder, his eyes glistening in warm daylight, and nodded. That was all the immortal could manage before he broke apart. Araes sucked in a breath before turning on his heels.
As the bedchamber door clicked shut against his back, he could’ve sworn the summer king whispered to the slumbering goddess, “I’m so sorry.”