Chapter 38
Chapter
Thirty-Eight
“Did I ever tell you how I met your mother?”
Augustus opened his eyes, careful not to move more than a breath. Pain knifed his back, immeasurable, merciless.
In the jail’s waning light, Mettius stared toward the ceiling with one hand draped to the floor, the other on his stomach. “She tried to slit my throat.” His voice was little more than a rasp. “She was an angry little vixen back then.”
“Why?”
Mettius’s head fell to the side, his blood-crusted beard scraping across his bare chest. “Why was she angry, or why’d she try to kill me?”
“Either. Both.”
“Her life wasn’t what she’d expected, and I was a foul, murderous pirate.” Mettius laughed. “She attempted to kill me a few more times after that—when she set her mind to something, she tried until she succeeded.”
“Sounds like her.”
“Aye,” Mettius whispered, his gaze turned back up. “My only defense was to make her fall in love with me.”
A laugh burbled up from Augustus’s chest, halted by the flare of white-hot pain. “Not unlike how I drag Selene around by the elbow, making promises to go straight while secretly hoping to slip right back into piracy.”
It was meant to be funny, but the truth hit him square in the chest.
This life was going to kill Selene the same way it had Cassia.
He was a fucking fool.
Mettius pushed upright, wincing. “Listen to me, son. Selene doesn’t stick around because you’ve got some kind of hold on her. Your smile is smug, not magic. In fact, I recall quite a bit of irritation every time you opened your mouth back when the two of you were just getting around.”
That was true. Augustus had been a constant source of her irritation, and he’d pushed and pushed and pushed…until she fell in love with him.
“How did you and Mom do it?” Augustus asked. “Decades together, Mom possessed by the gods, building a fleet, a reputation… All that, and no one died.”
“Is that what you think?” Mettius laughed. “Of course, people died under our watch. We were never that powerful. Lucky sometimes.” All humor vanished from his face. “Until we weren’t.”
Until Cassia died.
“I don’t want this life for Selene,” Augustus said. “But, who am I without it? All I ever wanted was my own ship. To stand at the head of my own fleet one day.”
“When you imagine that future, is Selene standing with you?”
“Begrudgingly. She’s too good for what I want my life to look like.”
Mettius nodded, slow and thoughtful. “What does Selene want?”
Good question. He’d never asked, and she never said. The future they talked about was his idea, derived from some notion that he could give her a life. One that was new and exciting and always changing.
In just a few short months, however, his idea of what was best got her kidnapped, scarred, and on a dangerous man’s kill list.
Possibly dead.
Augustus felt sick. “I should have left with you and the fleet months ago.” Deep in his chest, his heart stuttered.
“You know, Dimitrios’s mother was secretly hoping he would marry Selene.
Can you imagine the good she’d do as queen?
She’s perfect for a position like that, and Dimitrios…
he’s not so bad. They’d look good together. ”
Mettius sighed. “You can’t torment yourself with thoughts like that. That girl loves you.”
Augustus met his father’s eyes through the shadows and iron bars, through the dust motes dancing in the lowering sunlight.
“Loving me was the worst decision she ever made, and if I had any balls, I’d walk away before it’s too late.
But who knows? Maybe Thorne will take that choice from me, and none of this will matter. ”
Mettius’s gaze lowered. “The only thing we can hope for at this point is time.”
Time only mattered if their friends were still out there plotting some kind of miracle to get them out of this. Selfishly, he hoped that was true. Then again, he didn’t want any more blood to spill on his behalf.
A sound broke the quiet that turned Augustus ice cold. The click, click, clickclickclick of a scythe-shaped talon on stone. Then the flutter of those ash wings.
The Vorash landed between their cells, wings spread like wind-torn sails. It focused on Mettius, and all the while, its talon claws click, click, clicked.
Boot steps echoed toward the Vorash, steady and sure. Neither the beast nor the approaching man appeared bothered by the other.
Augustus pushed through the pain and rose. Regardless of the blazing fire burning across his back, he would meet Thorne in the eye.
The pirate captain stepped into view wearing a clean, pale tunic and black pants, pulling a long drag from a pipe.
Thorne exhaled a sweet curl of smoke into Mettius’s cell. “Hello again, friend.”
Augustus fisted his steel bars and growled across the space. “You’ll deal with me now, friend.”
Thorne turned casually toward Augustus, a smile taunting the edges of his mouth. “Will I?”
The Vorash crossed the narrow walkway. A fresh weight settled inside Augustus’s cage, and beneath it came the dry crackle of something ancient stretching awake.
Thorne and his pet scanned Augustus from the bottom up. “I see where Selene gets it now.”
Augustus flashed his teeth with a biting smile. “You don’t get to say her name.”
“Selene and Petrina really had me for a while. They’re good—” He stopped abruptly. “Forgive me. It sounded as if I meant that in the present tense, didn’t it?”
A cold chill flowed down the length of his neck to his spine, raising goosebumps along the way. “Say what you mean.”
“I have a head in my possession,” Thorne said. “And a body. Neither attached to the other.”
Augustus’s mind emptied of everything.
There was no world without her.
Not one breath in this cursed life unless she breathed first.
Mettius slapped the stone bench beneath him, drawing their attention. “If you mean to toy with someone, Thorne, let it be me. Is the girl dead?”
“One of them is,” Thorne confirmed. “The other… According to witnesses, she killed the Bladesworn in the street. Sounded like quite the spectacle.” He smiled and placed the pipe between his teeth. “I’ll let you guess who’s who. It’ll be more fun that way.”
Augustus staggered back, hands heavy, world tilting sideways and wrong.
Selene was a lot of things—fearless, competent, resourceful—but skilled enough to survive a trained mercenary?
His own words came back to him like a slap. “Are you under some illusion that after a few months of training to be a weapon, you’re suddenly ready for war?”
How she’d survived this long—
No. He couldn’t think that way. She’d killed actual monsters. She could do anything.
Thorne’s smile widened. “Your ship has left.” To Mettius: “Your fleet has vanished. They left you to die.”
Mettius frowned. “Then we die. Cassia will welcome us in the Valley, and none of this will matter.”
Except Augustus wouldn’t see the Valley, would he? He and Selene would eventually start over, and maybe they’ll live a long, peaceful life free of these prophetic chains. The gods owed them that much, didn’t they? At the very least, they owed Selene—she was the good one.
“You will die,” Thorne said. “In good time. We leave tomorrow. I suggest you say your goodbyes while you still can.”
Thorne started away, but the Vorash waited several agonizing seconds. Its eyes, like black holes, watched Augustus sink deeper into despair. He could have sworn it smiled before it followed after its master.
Augustus waited for their footsteps to fade before approaching the bars. “Tell me there’s a plan, Dad. The fleet wouldn’t just leave us.”
What he couldn’t say was that Selene, of all people, would never willingly leave him. That fact only solidified his worst fear.
Mettius held his gaze for what felt like an eternity, then lowered his eyes to the floor. “I hope they have, son. For their sakes… I hope they have.”
To Alexandra Vidalatos, princess of nowhere
From Selene Marinea, advisor to His Majesty, the King of Perean
I don’t want to write you this letter, but there is something my dearest friend wished you to know.
Petrina Minili, the woman you used and discarded like waste, kept me alive. She’s gone now, but she wanted you to know that I am still alive, and it’s because of her.
How many more of your Eyes will turn their backs on you? Will there be any left when your death finally comes? Will there be anyone left to shed a tear over your corpse? I don’t think there will be, and that’s not remotely the worst thing I dream for you.
Enjoy your remaining breaths while you can,
Selene
P.S. Oskar Dahlin knows you murdered Emanouella. Sleep well knowing that I was the one who told the Master Blade of the Assassin’s Guild that you poisoned the love of his life and their unborn child.
Selene blinked out of the missive, reality pressing from every side. She couldn’t escape what she’d lost. Not even in a cabin that once belonged to Cassia Rutiliana.
Not even at this mahogany desk, where evidence of Augustus’s last occupation still sat on the surface.
Scribbled notes and charts, weighted down by some of Mettius’s personal artifacts.
His favorite dented mug sat precariously on the edge beside a small knife he fidgeted with whenever he was deep in thought.
It hurt to be in the space they shared for a short time. In quarters he was familiar with, which were foreign to her. It wasn’t home. Not without him.
Chest tight, Selene crossed beneath the swaying lanterns hanging from low beams and strode outside onto the balcony. Stars blanketed the sky, and the moon lit the Entia’s wake.
Only nights ago, she’d stood in this exact spot with Augustus at her back, his warmth pressed into her spine.
“Nights like this remind me how small I am,” he’d whispered, his gaze cast to the vast net of stars.
“You’ve never felt small a day in your life,” Selene said with a soft laugh.