Chapter 44 #2
Augustus laughed, wild and breathless. He’d never been so happy to see that little bastard.
The ground shuddered under the weight of the oncoming herd.
Thorne blinked, reeling back—knife still in hand. “What—?”
Augustus drove a fist under his chin.
The pirate captain staggered, but rebounded fast, lunging with the blade.
Augustus twisted, caught Thorne’s wrist, and ripped the sword from Thorne’s own belt. Momentum found him, and he moved like memory. Like blood on water.
Like a Triarius.
Several men surged forward, weapons raised.
Augustus didn’t wait. Sunlight gleamed across silver, the weight of the sword already singing in his hand. He spun. Arced. Carved. A slash across the gut. A cut behind the knee. One man fell, then another.
He was fury and vengeance. An answer for all the lives taken. He swung high. Ducked low. He painted the sand in strokes of red.
“He’s mine!” Thorne roared into the chaos.
The fight paused.
Augustus straightened and laughed. Arms wide. “What’s the matter, Captain? Have to claim every drop of Triarius blood for yourself? Or what? You lose a little sleep?”
Thorne, now gripping a borrowed sword, stepped forward. “Someone has to take Cassia’s place on this beach.”
Augustus’s grin sharpened. “Then it’s your lucky day, Thorne. I am Cassia’s Bane—her likeness in every way that matters. And your death? Will be exactly as she would have devised it.”
Thorne mirrored his grin. “So be it.”
Cannon fire split the sky.
Offshore, a ship deck erupted into splinters. On another, the hull. Again and again.
Gulls shrieked.
And behind them, the Sandstone Elk thundered closer—unstoppable.
They escaped the arena without thunder or applause.
Smoke clung to Kai’s throat as she and the others staggered through the fractured exit, coughing and stumbling, half-dragging those too weak to walk.
The plan had worked.
The poison burned back to its source. Her warriors would live—barely. Too many were barely conscious, pale and blue-lipped.
But they were out.
They were alive.
Kai slowed to count heads. Called names. Grunts, nods, and tired smirks answered. Otekah and the Broken Axe sisters supported females between them. Poloma steered others directly to the healers, barking care instructions through the smoke.
It looked bad, but Kai stripped the cloth away from her face and inhaled clean, cool air. They were going to be o—
Screams ripped through the mountain.
She and the Stormguard turned in unison. It came from the great junction where all nine clan tunnels converged. A bustling hub of trade. Laughter. Safety.
The screaming accelerated. Grew louder. Desperate.
“Able-bodied with me!” Kai ordered, bolting ahead, muscles protesting.
Chaos surged from the central chamber and into the passage, crushing the Stormguard rushing against it. Mothers shielding younglings. Females scrambling and wide-eyed, dragging wounded behind them.
Still, the screams rose.
The chamber air was thick with the scents of sweat and fear.
Kai pushed through, braid slapping her shoulders, scalp prickling. This wasn’t the backdraft. Couldn’t be. Those vents didn’t lead here.
The hub was a mix of the clans, fear on every face. Those still inside pointed her toward the chamber’s center. Their words clung to her like mist.
“Males.”
“So much blood—”
“Why?”
The faces she passed had gone ashen. Few stood frozen where they stood, staring at the blood sprayed across their clothes. Younglings screamed.
Kai’s blood ran cold.
Every step, every sound dragged her into a waking nightmare. The old memories beat at her skull: the shuffle of feet scraped stone. Males stabbing with brutal precision.
She shook free of those drowning thoughts.
Never again.
Not today.
Not in her mountain.
Usti did this. He’d locked her warriors inside their own arena with poisoned air. The mountain couldn’t fall with Silver Wolf fully intact. But to fully take it, he’d also have to rid them of…
Her stomach rolled.
Surely, he wasn’t desperate enough to slay the entire council of matriarchs. Not every Silver Wolf warrior had been trapped. Dozens were stationed all over the mountain. Many of them would be in this very chamber.
Kai soon discovered those very warriors battling males marked by several clans. It was just as it had been the first time they stood in the hall. Rising Moon had stirred them, but their numbers came from everywhere.
The males attacked indiscriminately, slashing anyone who dared draw close. Their target was beyond an impenetrable barrier of Silver Wolf warriors: elders. Two of them.
Matriarchs.
Just as Kai feared.
The Stormguard surged toward the battle, an arrow piercing the crowd with battle cries. The floor emptied like a tide pulled from shore, revealing their dead. Usti’s dead.
Her dead.
Kai stumbled over a strong, female body. Silver Wolf tattoo. A sword protruded through her gut.
Another warrior lay beside her, axe buried in her back. Hair matted with blood. A knife limp in her hand—
Shadi’s blade. A gift.
Niabi White Spirit’s scream of rage tore through the chamber like a thousand blades. She fell to her knees beside the body.
Kai couldn’t feel the ground. The entire world vanished but for that one face. Those glassy, staring eyes.
Sitsi.
Kai choked on her next breath.
How would she tell her parents she’d been too late? That she hadn’t run fast enough? Hadn’t trained their daughter well enough? Hadn’t kept her close enough?
Sitsi had been perfect. Her absence didn’t make sense.
“Please wake up.” Niabi rocked her, smoothing her blood-matted hair. Tears streamed over her cheeks, and her voice was thick. “Come back to me.”
Hot tears pierced the backs of Kai’s eyes, but the swell of rage was much harder to contain. All her pain, all her exhaustion vanished.
Kai roared and drew her sword.
She would kill them all.
The Stormguard crashed against the traitors, an unleashed storm. Kai saw their shock. Recognized their fear. Some stumbled to escape.
They didn’t deserve mercy.
Kai drove her knife into a chest with a cracking thud and pushed the male off with a kick.
Beside her, Otekah opened a male’s throat with two blades, one in each hand, crossing at the middle. His blood soaked her forearms and face. She bared her teeth through it, feral.
In what felt like a single blink, only one enemy remained. The Rising Moon male’s breath came in quick inhalations, his attention darting to each of the approaching females.
“Wait,” he begged.
Tiponi punched him in the throat. Pamuy caught his leg with her boot.
He fell hard, his weapon clattering to the floor.
He scrambled to rise, only to get to his knees and find Poloma’s spear waiting at his throat.
She didn’t drive it in. Not yet.
Otekah seized a fistful of his hair and jerked his head back, blood-painted teeth bared inches from his face.
Niabi stepped forward. Silent. Expressionless.
A vengeful wraith.
She wrapped an arm around him from behind, knife in hand, and drew it clean across his throat.
He choked. Dropped. Bled.
None of them flinched.
And as one, they all took a single step back. A ritual. A reckoning.
Kai took her first full breath and surveyed the damage.
Amid the blood and bodies were two slain matriarchs: Bronze Raven and Crimson Wing. Leaders. Symbols of clan legacy. Cradled by survivors.
“They went after the matriarchs,” Kai said hoarsely. Her voice barely carried. Seven more were unaccounted for. “We need to find the others.”
But her numbers were small—Usti had seen to that. More than half her warriors were too ill and weak to be of any use. Those who remained would fight, would do their duty, but this war would be hard-fought. More would die this night.
A hush fell. Complete. Terrifying. Absolute.
From the mouth of a tunnel, they came. Silent warriors. Hooded. Armed. Unfamiliar.
Kai tightened the hold on her blade.
This army wasn’t hers.