Chapter 43
Chapter
Forty-Three
Augustus had woken to worse sounds, but not many. A hammered nail splitting bone. A scream.
And the voice of a future dead man.
Thorne. “Painful, isn’t it?”
“Fuck you,” Mettius said. Defiant and pained.
Augustus rolled toward his father’s voice, blinded by the sudden sunlight. His mother’s words a faint echo. “You fight. You survive. That’s what our family does.”
He pushed onto his hands and knees, dug toes into the sand, and engaged his muscles to lunge—
Hardness like bone cracked him between the eyes. The world darkened with shadow, and a low, wet snarl charged the air. The Vorash spread its torn wings and released a sound like a high-pitched scream into the sky.
“Welcome back,” Thorne said. He stood over Mettius’s body, sprawled across a weatherworn gangplank in the sand.
Too friendly.
Too composed.
Mettius bared his gritted teeth, his face wet and drained of color. One of his hands had been stretched up above his head and nailed to the top, fingers like rigid claws.
Augustus lurched toward his father, ignoring the searing tug of the still-healing lashes across his back.
The Vorash flared and shrieked, a towering wall of shadow and ash. Power rolled from it in a soundless pulse—no, not sound. A pressure. A storm behind its eyes. A scream that didn’t need ears.
Augustus winced, and two men dragged him to his feet by the elbows.
Thorne knelt beside Mettius and began rubbing a thick scar in the center of his hand. “This is where Loto Savali found me.”
Mettius dragged his attention off Augustus. “What?”
“I had been lying there for only a few minutes. Felt like days.”
On a distant dune, several men approached wearing purple sashes around their waists. None were surprised by the scene below.
And suddenly, everything Thorne had been saying came together in Augustus’s mind. “You weren’t Gallagher crew. You were one of the villagers.”
Thorne rose and squinted in the direction of the sloped sand dune. “I was born just over that rise. I was married there—we were young, but when you meet the person you were meant to spend your life with, does age matter?”
Augustus locked down his biting response as Thorne strode toward the only empty upright board on the entire beach.
The Vorash flapped its wings and soared to the top of the board, where it settled. Its scythe claws tick-tick-ticked on the wood as it sat, its soulless, fathomless eyes scanning the dying fleet crew.
“Here,” Thorne said, stroking the front of the wood, “is where Cassia Rutiliana slit my wife’s throat.” The Vorash screamed, and Thorne’s gaze slid to where Mettius lay prone. “I meant to take your wife’s life here today, but in her absence, a son will have to do.”
A very pointed look fell on Augustus.
Mettius unfroze and reached for the nail holding him in place. The blood was too slick, and his grip was too weak.
But Augustus didn’t need saving. He would get loose, and then there was an array of weapons to choose from. Every man here wore a cutlass, knives, or both. A couple had strapped boarding axes to their backs. Some idiot left a harpoon leaning up against some driftwood nearby.
He would be fine.
However. He still had his father to consider. Regardless of Cassia’s advice, Mettius wasn’t losing his life here today. Not if Augustus could help it.
“First things first.” Thorne motioned to his men, who dispersed like rats. “A recreation of that day. I want you to understand what it was like to lie there, helpless, watching the people you knew and loved your entire life die.”
Mettius quivered from rage, and his words spat. “We saved your life—”
“You saved no one!” Thorne shouted, his hair slipping onto his forehead with the loss of his control. He paused suddenly to inhale and straighten his jacket. He slicked his hair back as he said with a cold calm, “You murdered my entire family. I can’t let that go.”
Mettius’s head shook from side to side. “You joined our fleet. Cassia trusted you.”
Indeed. He’d been her quartermaster, her confidant.
“Know thy enemy,” Thorne said simply. “I’m not the fool others were… I saw men fail time and time again to be rid of you. They acted without thought. No one had the patience to learn your weaknesses.”
He glanced at Augustus and cocked his head. “A woman, for example. Born a slave. Loved by a pirate. Trained by assassins—though not quite long enough. In the end, it hadn’t made a difference.”
Augustus laughed, a cold, dark sound.
“I’m glad you find this amusing,” Thorne said, and across the beach, his men planted themselves before several dying crewmembers. “Your father won’t find your death so entertaining.”
“No, you misunderstand,” Augustus said.
Thorne kicked a single brow toward his hairline.
“You spent all these years planning every detail,” Augustus began, standing as straight as he could, considering the men holding him to each side. “But Selene… You couldn’t be more wrong about her. And we both know she’s alive.”
Thorne’s expression twitched. A single blink.
His silence cracked like a cannon shot.
“She may not be the best assassin,” Augustus began with a smirk, “but she’s saved my ass a time or two. She’s whip-smart. Intensely fearless. Damn good navigator, too. Reads a map as if she were born to. And when she loves something—or someone—there’s nothing she’ll let stand in her way.”
Thorne shifted weight to his other foot, then a smile crept across his face. “Where is she now?” He glanced around. “Nearby? Just how fast is she?”
Dread pooled in his stomach.
“Fast enough to stop this?” Thorne faced the beach. “Begin!”
“No!” Mettius shouted.
Thorne sauntered across the sand as his men began opening throats.
Blinding rage shot through Augustus, and he heaved forward, putting every ounce of strength he had into slipping his captors’ hold.
With Nigel’s wrinkled smile giving him strength, he sank a shoulder into a man’s gut and stole his knife.
He thought of Lana with his handful of tossed sand into another’s face, and the way she once pushed him into a shallow pool to shut him up.
Augustus twisted and slashed, his list of crew—his family—dying in all directions. And he, only one man, surrounded by too many. Thorne had done his job well, ensuring Augustus was weakened just enough to think himself invincible.
The enemy pirates capsized over him, shoving his chest and face into the sand. Every hand on his injured back a searing agony. Salt and sand sucked into his mouth on every inhale.
And through his narrowed, blurred vision, Thorne paused in front of Edgar. The old man taught Augustus how to bone a fish properly, and now, he barely had the strength to hold his head up.
“My parents were here,” Thorne said to Mettius. “I watched you kill them without hesitation.”
Thorne dragged a blade across Edgar’s throat.
The old man gurgled and choked on his own blood, his body convulsing until it went still. Too still.
Thorne inhaled as if taking his first breath in two decades. “Just like that. Like they were nothing.”
“What we did for them was a mercy,” Mettius spat. “You would have had them suffer instead?” Tears ran from his eyes. “What you’ve done here makes you no better than Gallagher.”
“Maybe not.” Thorne returned to stand over Augustus. “But let’s see what kind of man you become after I slit your son’s throat. Let’s see who you are when you have nothing left.”
Above them, the Vorash ticked its claws on the wood, head twisting toward Mettius, features in a mockery of a smile.
The air vent tick tick ticked—a metallic stutter—then hissed out another gust of air.
Kai spun toward the sound—just in time to see a warrior drop.
Her body hit the floor hard. Legs kicked. Arms spasmed.
And then the mist rolled in. Thick. Heavy. A sickly green cloud sinking low over the ground.
“Get away from that vent!” Kai shouted.
“Cover your mouths,” Poloma ordered. She wrapped her headband around her lower face so that only her dark brown eyes were visible. “This is a poison.”
Kai’s heart struck her sternum like a drum mallet, her mind stumbling over one word: poison. Here, in this arena where she was in control. Where she knew every corner, every dip in rock, every pebble of sand. Her sanctuary.
And someone meant to use it against her. Against those she swore to protect.
Kai’s voice faltered over her next words as she unwound her head wrap. “Do as she says.”
Poloma spun, voice rising. “Get to the observation level! Take as many of your sisters as you can. Leave no one behind!”
Kai and her Stormguard directed everyone off the arena floor with sweeping, hurried gestures. With every fallen warrior, Kai watched the gas pump into the room, the slowest of killing blows.
This wasn’t how they died. Not like this.
All those dreams of a battlefield, all the warnings from the Eternal One and her seer… She kept her warriors late to prepare for a war with the gods. Not barred doors and a poisonous gas. Not at the hands of one man.
Usti.
Kai glanced up and around at her warriors. Her sisters.
Panic stared back.
Anger. Alarm. Suspicion.
It flashed in every face beyond the gates.
Milonia cursed her own recklessness—this need to protect the man she loved.
But it was too late. She was already here, and her sudden appearance had startled the crowd into silence.
“If it’s a liar you seek to punish,” she shouted, “look no further than right here.”
Dimitrios’s boot scraped the dry earth as he faced her. “What are you doing?”
Her heartbeat clawed at her lungs. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t look at him.
Her father would never forgive her for this.
Neither would Dimitrios.
But she would outlive her father, and Dimitrios would be half a continent away once she was gone.
Milonia did this for one reason.
One person.
Her son.