Chapter 27
Vane rolled onto his side as he finally opened his eyes, coughing and sputtering.
She gripped his shoulder, unsure of how bad his injuries still were.
When she had brought him back from the brink of death two days ago, the largest wound, just below his ribs, had closed, leaving a tender, angry scar, but he was still covered in bruises and other, shallower slices and cuts.
When he stopped coughing, he sat up slightly, wincing. His fingers brushed over his stomach, and his eyes widened.
“How?” he said hoarsely.
She set her jaw. “Thessa reminded me who my father technically is.”
“You scared him off.” The words were half-question, half-statement. She wondered if she had done it before.
Not like this, Thessa rumbled, her head resting in the crook of Heles’ wing.
She cleared her throat, trying not to look too long at Vane’s face. She had stared at it enough over the last day, willing him to wake. But now that he was looking back at her, it was nearly too much to bear.
He had lied to her from the beginning. He was no swordmaster or even captain.
The king had probably sent him specifically to spy on her once word of Thessa reached him.
What she couldn’t figure out was: why? Why, given everything he had told her about their past, would he betray her like this?
And if it was a lie, why would he have risked his life to save her during the battle?
Calloused fingers brushed across her brow, and she flinched. Vane took a shaky, rasping breath. “You’re confused.”
Her laugh was as cold as she felt inside. “How could I not be?”
“I can explain, Soren. I promise.”
Shifting, she looked away at the nearly setting sun. Night would fall again soon, and the blistering cold would return. They had no food, only water from the stream, and King Johannas was surely looking for them. It was only a matter of time before they were found.
“Your promises mean very little to me right now,” she finally said, glancing back at him.
He blew out a breath, coughing again as he sat up fully. She sighed and moved towards him, positioning herself just behind him then ordering, “Lay your head in my lap.”
“Soren—”
“You still need to rest. This way, you don’t need to prop yourself up with your arm while I decide whether to gut you again myself or not.”
He grimaced but obeyed. She resisted the urge to thread her fingers through the waves of his hair, instead placing her hand on either side of her head, her already-filthy fingers curling into the grass and dirt.
“One hundred and four years ago today, Kronos took your life because you would not let him have it for his own to control,” he began quietly.
She sucked in a breath and almost asked him to stop right then and there, but ultimately, she let him continue. Deep down, she knew she needed to hear this.
“All I wanted was to die with you, and he knew that. So, he made sure I lived in agony, banished to the kingdom that hated me as a child and bound in service to a line of mortal kings. I was an anomaly to King Jonah, Johannas’ father.
Most demi-gods fled to Arcadia as soon as they felt the veil sealing.
Others went into hiding when mortals became suspicious of those still in connection to the gods.
But I had nowhere to go. I was trapped, and the mortal king knew it.
At first, he merely used me and Heles for various…
errands, dirty deeds the crown wanted to be doled out in the shadows.
Jonah was just as cruel as his son, but he was not as wise.
When he died and Johannas became the ruler of a starving kingdom, he called me into his council room and asked what I would do if I were him.
I suggested asking Mise for aid, as its climate was the most amicable to crops, even without magic.
Farming had really only ever been possible in Aren because of the assistance of mages.
The field we met in is covered in stone and dust now. ”
She tried to ignore the feeling of tearing in her chest at the knowledge that the field was gone.
“How many times did you go back there?” she whispered, her eyes stinging as she focused on the horizon, away from him.
He paused. “Every year. It isn’t far from the capitol. I watched it slowly die as the seasons came and went.”
She clenched her jaw. “Continue.”
“Johannas already had a plan in place when he asked me that, one that included taking rather than asking. But when he proposed his idea of becoming a conqueror to his council, he told them I had advised him in that direction. They all know what I am. Any who disagreed with the idea kept their mouths shut over fear of ‘provoking’ me.”
Vane let out a bitter laugh. “I realized then that I was no longer just a pet with a blade. Johannas wanted me to become a figurehead in the coming war. I became not only the reason, but also the tool he used to win it.”
“You couldn’t go against his orders?” she asked, finally looking down to find him smiling sadly at her.
“I still can’t, Soren. I was something that disturbed the order and control Kronos so desperately needs and depends on. He remedied that—he cursed me.”
She blinked rapidly, her hands shaking even as she dug them into the earth. “What are we going to do?”
“You could leave me behind,” he said softly. “Run now. Go somewhere Johannas cannot find you.”
“And then what? He would send you to hunt me, wouldn’t he? And what of Kronos?”
His throat worked, and his next words were careful.
“With you…I’ve been able to bend some of my orders a bit.
There’s always room for error when Johannas hands them out, and he’s grown careless over the years, but this…
it’s different. If the last order he gave me had held, I couldn’t have stopped Kellmere. ”
“What was it, the order?”
“Lead the battle. Win at any cost, even if it was your life.” He paused then added, “Johannas isn’t stupid. He knew about us, and it didn’t take him long to figure out who you were.”
“I see. And Kronos?”
Vane’s eyes grew hard. “I’ll find a way to kill him.”
The sun was nearly set now, the world in a hazy twilight. She imagined it for a moment, a life away from all this, on the run, always looking over her shoulder. A life where she walked away, knowing that, once again, she had sentenced Vane to a fate worse than death.
She couldn’t leave him. She couldn’t do that to someone she cared for like this.
Tears began to stream down her face as she let it fully hit her.
She had known how she felt when he was dying, but even that had been in the heat of desperation.
Now, in the cold, quiet air of the valley, with him looking at her like she was the reason the sun rose and set, a wave of sorrow crested in her.
Vane sat up, even as she half-heartedly tried to stop him. His arms wrapped around her, rocking her as she wept.
“You know how this ends,” she gasped against his shoulder. “And this time, his punishments will only be worse.”
Thessa and Heles both made low, sorrowful noises, their heads low on the ground. The four of them were bonded by fate, trapped in its cycle of tragedy.
Fire and Death.
Darkness and Light.
The end was once again nearing…
Tiny cracks appeared in the jewel-toned eggs as the full moon crested in the sky.
Vane, who had been nursing the fire, eyes half-lidded, sat up.
Next to her, Ana stood, clasping and unclasping her hands as the eggs broke.
First came the pale dragon, then the night-dark one.
Both looked to her and Vane and made tiny mewling sounds.
“They’re claiming you two,” Ana said, her breath clouding in the air. “Gods, both of them… Fates help us.”
Sora knelt, Vane next to her. It had been nearly six seasons since he had found her crying in a farm field.
Her wedding neared, and Kronos had only grown crueler.
She had recently had to physically restrain Vane from going to the king’s palace and getting himself killed.
Bruises faded, but his life was precious to her.
The dragons spit sparks, and Sora felt the bond between all four of them settling as they crowed and hopped around the cavern. Vane’s mouth curved, and he said to the black-scaled dragon, “Heles.”
She met his eyes and nodded before brushing her fingers across the moon-pale hatchling. “Thessilnn.”
Heles: Beginning.
Thessilnn: End.
Fitting names for dragons born on the last night of the moon cycle, at the cusp of the changing of the seasons.
“Thessa,” Ana said, smiling, but she reared back as the dragon hissed, spitting more sparks.
“She doesn’t seem to enjoy nicknames,” Vane chuckled, stroking the dragon's snout as she calmed.
Ana sighed. “No. I need to go. Can you two handle them for a few hours? I’ll be back to take them to the temple at sunrise.”
“We’ll be fine,” she assured Ana.
Ana took one last, lingering look at the dragons and then hurried from the cavern, down one of the tunnels that connected back to the glen of trees that hid the entrance.
Once she was gone, they watched the dragons for a while in silence until the hatchlings fell asleep, nestled in a pile of hay Ana had brought.
“Sora,” Vane said softly, nuzzling her neck.
“Mhm?”
“Marry me.”
Her breath halted. “We can’t.”
“You know I don’t give a fuck what he thinks.”
She touched his cheeks with both palms, trembling. “He would kill you.”
“I want this. I want you. Forever.”
She looked down at the golden band balanced between his fingers, and a short sob escaped her. He was all she wanted, but this was more dangerous than either of them could likely imagine.
But she was selfish. Perhaps they both were.
She kissed him as she cried, and he slid the ring onto her pointer finger, the direct line to her heart. Muttered between heavy breaths and soft, possessive nips to his lips, she vowed, “If he kills you, I will die too. Fate has bound us.”
Vane bit her lip, and she moaned softly.
“Don’t promise that,” he murmured.
“You know this is damning us both. You know, Vane. Don’t tell me you would want to exist in a world where I was gone.”
He pressed their foreheads together, his hand fisted in her braid and his breath coming quickly. “Never. I would rather die a thousand deaths.”
“You understand then.”
He hesitated but finally promised, “Together, my love.”
The memory cleared, but he was still there, holding her as tears slipped down her cheeks. She wiped them away with one hand, cupping his cheek with the other. Her mind was set. They had made mistakes before, but they knew Kronos better now. This had to end.
“Together,” she breathed, her gaze locking on to his. “We do this together.”
“Sora—”
Ether flooded her, and his lips parted as she cut in, “You promised me. Does that vow no longer hold?”
He let out a breath. “Things changed. I broke my end of the promise when I sat by and watched him do things to you that will never leave me, not until I draw my last breath.”
“You didn’t have a choice—”
“I was weak!” he said, voice on edge as it rose. A hot wind disturbed the loose leaves of a Balor tree and the surface of the stream. He tilted his head back and laughed hoarsely at the night sky. “I thought I was ready to face him, but you were right—I was powerless and pathetic.”
“Vane,” she whispered, her eyes burning with tears she no longer wanted to shed. The sorrow building in her was too much, overwhelming her like a raging summer storm in Mise. The kind that would flood entire villages, the kind that left destruction in its wake.
On his knees, Vane lowered his chin from the heavens. Faint streaks of ether, gifts from a father he had never met, swirled in his eyes, rising to the surface with his rage.
“I am not powerless any longer,” he said, his voice a deadly timbre of softness. “This will end—on our terms.”
The wind quieted, though Thessa and Heles were still restless.
Soren glanced back at them. What is it?
Then, for the first time in this lifetime, Heles’ rasp filled her mind. Riders. We can sense the dragons approaching.
Vane must have heard the warning too, because he took Soren’s face in both his hands and said firmly, “They will want to interrogate us—separately. Insist on the interrogation being done with us together.”
“Why?” She could hear it now, the dragon’s screeched calls echoing in the distance.
“Trust me,” Vane said. “Threaten them if you must, give a show of your magic. I am sure Johannas suspects both of us now, but I’ve been questioned by him before. Leave this first step to me.”
She hesitated. An hour ago, she was unsure if she could ever trust Vane again. But everything he had told her was true, she was sure of it, which meant he’d had as little choice in this life as she had.
“Alright,” she said.
Vane searched her gaze for a moment then kissed her hard. Even now, even with the riders looming larger on the horizon, she melted under his touch, chasing him back when he pulled away.
“I know, my love,” he whispered, reading her mind. “I want more time too.”
Time had never been on their side. They both knew that.
The hand of fate was coming.