Chapter 16 #2
I ignore that, my mind already making plans. Miniature ambrosia cakes. Fruits drizzled with honey. I’ll hand-feed them to the Devaliant, a bite at a time—a nice interlude before I kill her.
“What else?” I ask, dragging myself from the edge of distraction.
“Let her lead. Something tells me agency and autonomy have been in short supply for a Princess of the Blood.” Amara’s wings rustle. “Maybe if you give her a little freedom, she’ll bite back harder. Show you what she’s made of.”
Yes, that’s good. The Devaliant has been an Anchor for the Shroud her entire life, her choices stripped away. She seemed to enjoy being in control when she cut me up with my dagger.
“A word of advice.” Amara gives me a look of distaste. “When you go to her later, try not to be covered in human guts, you savage.”
Then she’s flying off with a sharp flap of her wings.
Well, then.
I turn back to the village and take in another breath of the sharp air, admiring those quaint cottages before they’re rubble.
Time to get to work.
Power ignites within me, and with a downward thrust of my wings, I launch into the sky. Screams erupt as I tear into a building. Someone tries to run past me, but I catch them by the throat and squeeze until something snaps.
The first death is always the hardest. After that, I become the monster they made me into.
There’s an art to carnage. A poetry in the way bones break and flesh yields.
You have the hands of an artist, the Devaliant said, and she was right.
I’m a masterful painter, and tonight, this settlement is my canvas—a masterpiece of violence.
The blood against the red hues of the fading light, the rubble silhouetted in lines of teal, the stars glittering above the slaughter.
I paint the world in my fury.
A whisper echoes through my thoughts, the ghost of my mother’s voice: Destruction is easy, son. Any beast can tear something apart.
“Shut up,” I mutter, crushing another windpipe. “Just shut the fuck up.”
Some human tries begging me, but I barely even hear it over the buzzing in my head as a deluge of memories batter at me. Images flash of the decimated cities in Scillari, all our dead, the pyres stacked high. These people squandered the peace we paid for with our lives and sanity.
Three hundred years isn’t enough to forget. Vengeance is a cruel master, and it never lets me rest.
By the time the last body hits the ground, my ears ring in the silence. I’m drenched in gore, my clothes barely visible. The stink of death is overwhelming. I straighten and take a slow measure of the devastation I’ve wrought—a once thriving settlement is nothing more than rubble and dust.
There’s always a strange stillness after a slaughter, a sound unique to each place. Here, it’s the lapping of distant waves and the rhythmic grind of sea rocks, the coo of a bird in the distance. And in that hush come the too-loud thoughts.
I want a drink.
I want my brother from before the war.
Remember when you were more? When you wore a crown instead of a collar?
I shove the images down where they belong, into the locked box in my chest where I keep all my weaknesses. There’s no place for sentiment in this line of work.
A figure moves in the wreckage. I walk through the rubble to the remains of what was probably a charming little town hall twenty minutes ago.
A woman huddles there, hunched and shaking, and in her arms is a man.
I know a corpse when I see one, and he is firmly, emphatically dead—and I’m his murderer.
I stare at the woman curled over her deceased love, the oathbreaker’s mark glimmering on her wrist. A declaration of her guilt. She swore her life to the Accords, and she reneged. She failed in her duty.
I should finish this. Put her out of her misery and call it a night. It’d be a mercy, and the stars know I’m not in the business of being merciful, but…
There’s something hypnotic about her grief. She’s lost everything in the space of a single night, her entire world reduced to ashes, and it’s like being confronted with a mirror image—horribly, viscerally familiar.
But centuries of loss and duty have carved out all my soft places, everything in me that should have been the king Scillari chose me to be.
Now, I look at this woman, and images fill my head of golden spires crumbling to dust. The air in Turpori stinking of bodies.
My brother, broken and bleeding against my side as we staggered through the streets humans tore apart with stolen power.
A rustle of wings jars me from the memory. I don’t turn. I’d know that aura anywhere, cold enough to numb.
“You missed one,” Alexios says.
I keep my attention fixed on the woman. “Didn’t realize you were keeping such close tabs on me.”
“Someone has to.” He moves to stand beside me, wings settling.
His irises glow in the dim light—the same color as the blood on my clothes.
“Especially when you hesitate over simple executions.” His breath ghosts across my ear as he leans in.
“Did that little princess fuck with your head and get too deep under your skin? Is that what this is?”
My hand shoots out, wrapping around his wrist. “Don’t.”
“Or what?” His smile is mocking.
“Don’t,” I repeat, very softly. “No games. Not tonight.”
His expression falls with a sudden understanding. “You’re thinking about Turpori.”
It’s not a question. He understands me too well, knows all my scars like they’re his own. After all, he found me in the aftermath and offered me purpose when all I wanted was for the realms to bleed the way I did.
I nod.
“Put those memories back in their box.” His voice is almost gentle. “Lock them away.”
I can’t help but watch the woman again. Some strange heaviness settles in the pit of my stomach as the screams echo from the lockbox of my memories. “Ever consider trying mercy? Change things up?”
Alexios jerks his head toward me, eyes blazing with inner light. “You can’t be serious.”
“Thought exercise.”
“Don’t start that thought exercise shit with me. One human skips their tithe? Fine. But then another follows, and another, and soon I’m drowning under the pressure of a thousand broken vows. So don’t stand there and preach to me about mercy when you don’t carry what I carry.”
At this moment, he’s not Eternal of Asteria. He’s a male buckling under his burdens—the Shroud, the neglected tithes, two realms balanced on his shoulders.
“If you feel so bad for her”—he gestures to the woman—“go on and Claim her. See how long your compassion lasts when you’ve got her every thought bleeding into your skull and her constant existence pressing against yours.”
I hesitate. There’s a feverish light in his eyes I don’t like, a manic energy thrumming beneath his skin. He’s fraying, and I’m not sure I want to be around to witness the shape of what’s left when he finally loses it.
“This isn’t working,” I say, picking my way through the minefield of his mood. “Beating them into obedience isn’t a solution. The Vartenans already hate us, and someday, we’ll have another war on our hands.”
“Then give me an alternative to the blood and the tithes.” He spreads his arms. “Tell me how else we keep the realms at peace and maintain the Shroud without sacrifice. Come on, enlighten me.”
“You could try showing yourself once a century. Attract the crowds, speak to them. It wouldn’t go against the Accord’s clause about interfering with Devaliant rule if you—”
“I can’t,” he says through his teeth.
That pulls me up short. “What do you mean can’t?”
“Their voices get too loud.” He taps his temple. “I don’t hear them when they’re dead, which is why I prefer to visit their corpses.”
I knew he could sense his Claimed and sometimes hear their thoughts. I hadn’t realized proximity sharpened the connection until it was physically agonizing for him. But then, no god in history has Claimed as many as Alexios. No god has held an entire realm barrier together with their power alone.
“You came to me full of vengeance once,” he continues with a sigh, “determined to make the humans pay for what they did to our people. You understood why this was our only option. So if you want mercy for her, what are you willing to trade?”
I swallow down a surge of bitterness at how easily he wields our shared past like a dagger poised over my chest. “You never bargain for human lives.”
He gives a sharp, mirthless laugh. “That’s because I’m still choking on the last deal I made with one. It’s currently splitting my skull in two. Be grateful I’m making an exception for my favorite Wolf.”
“So, those are my options? Save her or kill her?”
“Yes,” he says simply. “Choose.”
He makes it sound so simple, as if he’s not asking me to crack my ribcage open, pry out a shard of this woman’s soul, and stake it to mine. “My mother taught me it was obscene to Claim someone without soulbonding with them. It’s sacred. For Chosen only.”
For those who earn the right to touch your wings, to share your breath and know your soul. To soulbond is to bare your jugular to someone’s teeth and say, Here, this is where I’m softest. This is where I break. I won’t Claim anyone I’m not willing to soulbond with.
“Well, your mother’s dead, along with everyone else who believed in sacred anything. This is what’s left. These are the choices we make now.” He jerks his head at the woman again. “Choose. Kill her clean, or I’ll make it last. You know I will.”
So I obey because I’m his Wolf—his weapon. And a weapon doesn’t get to choose, not really. It simply cuts.
The woman clutches her dead lover tighter. “Please,” she whispers. “Please.”
“Shh,” I say.
My hand closes around her throat, and her pulse flutters against my palm like a trapped bird. With a sharp jerk of my hand, I snap her spine and drop her to the ground.
Alexios watches me. “Don’t ever ask me for mercy again.” He turns to leave, then pauses. “One last thing. The princess’ body—did you find it?”
I keep my face blank. “Not yet. Scavengers probably got to it. I’ll get her for you.”
Once I’m finished with her.
“You better.”
Something dangerous flickers in his expression, a warning of what he’ll do if her corpse isn’t found.
Thunder rolls across the sky and lightning flashes, painting everything in harsh white light—the broken buildings, the scattered bodies, the blood turning black on the ground.
Alexios’ mood making itself known. His wings rustle as he walks away in dismissal.
“Clean yourself up,” he says over his shoulder. “You smell like a slaughterhouse.”