Epilogue
CASTIEL
B eyond the narrow window of the prison cart, the horizon burned orange as the sun bled into endless dunes.
Castiel slouched against the hard seat, wrists raw beneath the tight coils of rope.The rhythmic creak of the wheels barely registered as he tracked the shifting sands between the wooden slats, following the ripples the wind left behind.
It felt almost . . . peaceful.
The past few days had stretched slow and taut, each breath tighter than the last, as he replayed the events in the cave, over and over.
A sharp breeze cut through the cart’s cracks. Castiel shifted, dragging his focus away. He let his head rest against the frame, eyes drifting shut. But behind his lids, Aethonian-blue eyes still stared back at him.
His fists clenched.
It was better this way.
The creak of the wheels shifted—the horses’ steps growing heavier. His brow furrowed faintly. His head tilted, listening. The wind hummed over the dunes, but beneath it, another sound whispered at the edges of his senses.
Hoofbeats. Light, distant, but unmistakable .
A faint smirk tugged at his lips. He let his eyes fall shut again, head lolling against the cart’s side.
Perhaps they wouldn’t keep him waiting much longer.
Then, like the snap of bone, an arrow carved through the stillness.
The cart jolted, the force enough to throw him forward as wheels bucked over uneven ground. Horses screamed, reins snapping taut. The sharp ring of steel followed—blade meeting blade in brutal succession, the shouts of men splintering the quiet like glass against a rock.
He didn’t move, only listened.
One. Two. Three. Bodies hit the sand with heavy finality. More followed, each thud a brutal punctuation to the symphony unravelling outside.
His lips curved slightly.
Finally.
By the time the latch clicked, Castiel already knew who it would be.
A slender man filled the doorway, wreathed in the soft glow of dawn.
A rapier—slick and dripping—rested against his shoulder, crimson droplets trailing lazily down the crystal to darken the sand beneath his black boots, oddly still gleaming despite the desert trek.
Copper curls caught the first light of sunrise, glinting with the deceptive warmth of embers, but his smirk was as chilled as the breeze.
He leaned against the doorframe, letting the moment stretch.
“Well,” he drawled, amusement curling in his tone. “I was hoping they’d put up more of a fight.”
Castiel flexed his wrists uselessly against the ropes, his gaze flicking over the crumpled bodies outside before settling on the man.
“I thought you had better things to do than slaughtering foot soldiers, even Alpha ones,” he said dryly, “Lucen.”
His brother’s smirk widened as he stepped inside, the sword dragging softly against the doorframe.
“Come now,” Lucen murmured, crouching just enough to catch his eye.
Castiel barely had time to tense before the blade slid beneath his chin, cold as a winter’s breeze, the steel’s kiss sharp against his skin.
He felt the faintest shift as Lucen twisted the hilt, the edge grazing just enough to promise pain .
A thin line of blood beaded along his jaw.
“You’re lucky I came at all, little brother. Some wanted to leave you to your fate.” Lucen’s smirk sharpened. “As did I.”
The sword stung, but he met Lucen’s eyes squarely.
“Thank you for coming,” he intoned.
He lifted his wrists in silent request. The blade moved in a flash—sharp, clean, and the ropes fell away in loose coils.
“You could’ve done that earlier,” he muttered, rolling his shoulders.
“I could have,” Lucen agreed, sheathing his sword with a soft hiss, “but then I’d have missed the entertainment.”
Castiel stepped down from the carriage. The sand shifted beneath his boots, still cool in the early hour.
As his gaze swept across the dunes, he saw the convoy in ruins. Bodies sprawled, limbs splayed awkwardly across the desert floor. Arrows jutted from armour, throats gaped in wide, wet slashes. The sand drank greedily, pooling crimson around iron and bone.
Lucen and his men had been thorough. Not even the emissaries, tasked with attending his trial in Aethonia, were spared. The wind was already cloying with the thick scent of blood.
By the time the last body crumpled to the sand, the hired mercenaries were already moving with cold efficiency. One of them dragged a figure from behind the dunes.
The man stumbled as he was hauled forward, lean and wiry, clad in a plain white shirt and fawn breeches—an imitation to Castiel’s own clothing that felt almost obscene.
Lucen crouched beside him, tilting the man’s head in his hand as if examining a piece of fruit at the market.Their resemblance was uncanny, close enough to unsettle.
“You’ll do,” he muttered.
The dagger appeared without ceremony, the cut shallow but cruel, slicing across the man’s neck from ear to ear. Blood welled instantly, dripping down his throat in thick rivulets.
Next, Lucen made quick work of the man’s face, ruining it irreparably.
“Can’t have them looking too closely,” he cheerfully remarked, wiping the blade on the man’s shirt like he was cleaning up after a meal.
Castiel said nothing, watching as the copper strands glinted under the rising sun—familiar, like staring at a reflection warped by rippling glass. The body double sagged in Lucen’s grip, consciousness wavering.
But he was still alive. Barely.
The man’s weight shifted as Lucen’s men laid him near the splintered remains of the prison cart, a perfect stand-in.
“Vultures will take care of the rest,” Lucen added, flicking his attention to the sky.
Already, carrion birds circled above them, talons curling as they waited for stillness to settle over the sand. One bird broke from the flock, plunging toward the corpse of a fallen guard. Feathers ruffled as it tore into the soft tissue of the man’s exposed shoulder.
Castiel didn’t flinch. His gaze lingered on the double—on the bloodied, faceless shape wearing clothes so similar to his, with skin and hair so similar to his.
From a distance, under the harsh eye of the desert sun, it would be enough to pass for him. And enough to let the world believe he’d died here, alongside the rest of them.
Long enough for him to disappear, until it was time for him to be useful again.
A movement in the corner had them turning. One last Alpha soldier wearing the deep green and gold of the Asadian army staggered back, sword trembling in his grip. His chest heaved as his gaze darted between Castiel and Lucen, searching for an escape.
Lucen’s blade gleamed, but he didn’t strike. Instead, he took a slow step forward, the sharp arc of his sword slicing lazily through the air.
“You could try running,” he suggested, his voice smooth, almost kind.
The Alpha paled beneath a thin veil of sweat. He turned on his heel, nearly tripping as he scrambled up the dunes, sand kicking up in his frenzied retreat. His ragged breath trailed behind him, swallowed by the wind.
Lucen watched him for a few seconds, amusement flickering behind those hazel eyes. “What do you think, little brother? Do we leave a witness?”
Castiel’s hand dipped without thought, finding a bow by his feet, the wood still warm from the dead man who’d held it last. His fingers brushed blood-streaked fletching as he notched two arrows, the action smooth, effortless.
The soldier’s silhouette shrank with each stride, but Castiel’s focus sharpened—steady, unhurried.
He pulled the string taut and loosed. The twin arrows blurred through the air, striking in tandem. One punctured the man’s throat with a wet crack, the other embedded at the back of his skull.
The soldier’s body crumpled mid-stride, collapsing like a puppet cut loose from its strings. A soft thud followed as dust swallowed the lifeless heap.
He exhaled through his nose, lowering the bow as the silence thickened.
Lucen let out a low whistle, the sharp sound cutting through the lingering hush of the battlefield.
“Nothing like the sound of an Alpha hitting dirt to make a day worthwhile,” he drawled, his tone almost lazy—as if they hadn’t just left a trail of cooling bodies behind them.
Castiel didn’t respond. The bow in his hand felt heavier than before, so he tossed it aside, the thud of wood on sand quieter than the roaring in his ears.
Beside him, Lucen chuckled, a low, careless sound that grated beneath his skin.
With a sharp whistle, his brother called for a horse, swinging onto its back with the same easy grace he’d seen a thousand times. Copper curls tousled in the wind, his expression unreadable—unchanged by the wreckage behind them, the blood staining the ground.
“You know,” Lucen drawled, reining his horse around so he faced Castiel fully. His voice dipped just enough to sink beneath the skin. “I had a thought that you let the princess go—not just once, but twice.”
His eyes narrowed, sharp with accusation. “If we hadn’t kept a close watch on the messages arriving at the palace—when you swore she’d drowned—we never would’ve known she survived. ”
The wind stirred around them, shifting grains of sand in lazy spirals. Castiel didn’t move, didn’t blink, his gaze settling on Lucen’s with all the weight of the desert pressing down between them.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” Lucen pressed, leaning slightly against the pommel of his saddle. His tone was light, but Castiel could hear the undercurrent beneath it—soft, lethal.
He kept his expression smooth. “What does it matter?” he said tonelessly. “There are other Omegas.”
Lucen’s stare lingered, piercing in a way that made him wonder if his brother could see the cracks widening just beneath the surface . . . the ones even he wasn’t sure how to seal anymore.
The pause stretched long enough to threaten discomfort.
Then, Lucen smiled faintly, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“See that you get to your next mission,” he said at last, his voice returning to something casual, as if the question had been nothing more than idle curiosity. He steered his horse westward, casting a glance over his shoulder. “Don’t fail again.”
With a flick of his chin, one of the men brought Castiel a horse.
The reins felt cool against his palm as he swung up into the saddle without ceremony. The leather creaked softly beneath him, familiar but distant, like the echo of a life that didn’t quite fit anymore.
“Where are you heading?” He asked, more out of habit than genuine interest.
“Tremore,” Lucen replied, smirking as if he held some secret Castiel wasn’t privy to. “Big things are happening there.”
“And the High Chancellor?”
Lucen’s eyes narrowed. “No longer your concern. For now.”
Castiel’s grip on the reins tightened, but he said nothing.
The others mounted up around them, the rhythmic shuffle of hooves stirring the sand into soft clouds beneath the rising sun.
As he guided his horse toward the dunes, his gaze drifted back, catching on the far-off shimmer of Turasid’s towers in the distance.
He could feel it—the shift, subtle as the turn of a tide but as inevitable as the pull of gravity. The storm that would wash over the nine kingdoms, unmaking everything it touched.
And it wouldn’t come in the shape of armies or fire .
It would come through men like him; the ones left behind, ignored and underestimated for far too long.
His eyes flicked toward the cliffs where he knew Reiya had stood, watching from above. He hadn’t seen her, but he felt her presence like the weight of a hand pressed between his shoulder blades.
She’d let him go, just as he’d let her.
They could’ve been on the same side, but it was over now. He let his gaze linger a beat longer. Then, as the wind whispered across the dunes, he dipped his head slightly, just enough for the familiar words to fall beneath his breath.
“It’s all up to you now, dove.”
And with that, he rode on, leaving the sunlit towers—and whatever part of him still belonged to her—far behind.
THE END