Chapter 45 #2
He helped his father into the sand behind the partial barricade, thunder in his ears.
Within the beach’s graveyard, hooves shattered boards and bodies alike. The upright planks cracked and fell with their crucified men and women.
He didn’t look. Couldn’t. He clung to his father’s shoulder and ducked behind the wood.
An eternity passed before the sound slowed, and the number of beasts thinned. Not finished, but close.
Close enough for Thorne. “We’re not done.”
Sunlight flashed on silver.
Augustus barely got his sword up in time.
Steel clashed and rang. The pain in his body was merely background noise to the old instincts he used to counter every arcing swing. Sand clouds stung his eyes, but he felt his mother’s presence with him, guiding his hand. The taunt within his smile.
Thorne thought he could kill her family? Her blood?
He was dead wrong.
Augustus met Thorne’s attack between stampeding hooves and splintered debris, the two a storm within a storm. His sword flashed out to catch Thorne’s blade mid-swing. Thorne countered, driving forward, wild and elegant all at once.
A barreling elk separated them.
Augustus took that beat to inhale and grin across the space. “You know what your problem is?”
Thorne, winded, returned his smile. “Tell me, Triarius. What exactly is my problem?”
“You hesitate. You truly spent years getting us to this beach? You really thought you were doing something, didn’t you?
You had weeks to take care of Selene. Weeks to kill me, my father…
To what end?” Augustus motioned several feet away, where Mettius lay in the shadow of debris. “We’re all still alive.”
Nearby, an elk flung one of Thorne’s men like a rag doll. Another tried crawling and was trampled mid-scream.
“Like my mother once said,” Augustus continued, “Hesitate and die.”
Thorne rushed him, sword high. His fury was everywhere. Overhead. Behind.
Augustus caught his boot, knocking Thorne off balance.
Thorne recovered and swept a leg under Augustus’s feet. They fell into the sand, and Thorne came over him, swords locking.
“Your problem is that you mistake luck for cleverness,” Thorne said through gritted teeth. “You’re still just a boy.” His sword pressed ever closer to Augustus’s throat. “Another bloodstain waiting to happen.”
Augustus’s muscles screamed. Weeks of torture pulled at every joint, every breath.
“You’re still here,” Thorne continued, sweat dropping from his brow into the sand. “Beneath me. Weak. And your friends are all out there. You’re alone, Triarius. Alone and at my mercy.”
Selene stepped out of the glaring sunlight behind Thorne, a goddess of rage and retribution. “He’ll never be alone.”
Selene’s heart pounded against her ribs, a war drum. Thorne had years of sins to answer for—but this, the blade near Augustus’s throat, would be his final one.
Thorne bounded to his feet, sword pulling back—
Selene backhanded his face with every ounce of fury she’d buried. For Augustus. For Petrina. For herself. Her knuckles—weighted by silver rings—cracked across his cheekbone, splitting skin.
The strike knocked him off-balance, and he fell to a knee, hand in the sand holding him up.
He glared up from the corner of his eye—then laughed. “Good for you, Selene.” Thorne touched the gash. His fingertips came away red. “Well done.”
She’d dreamed of this moment. Of standing eye to eye as his equal—not the girl he once bent beneath his thumb. In those daydreamed reckonings, he stood tall—hair slicked back, clothes immaculate, chin high with power.
But this man… This was what happened to men who crossed Augustus on the wrong day. His hair hung in loose clumps. Sweaty, bloodstained, ragged.
Selene palmed the Poignard knives from the twin sheaths on her thighs and slid them free. “You’re not looking so good, Thorne.”
He straightened and loosed a long breath. “And you’re short a sidekick. Petrina didn’t look so good either, last I saw her.”
Thorne slashed for her midsection. She caught his sword with her knife, the steel screaming.
Augustus pushed off the sand and caught Thorne’s next swing, their weapons glancing off each other.
For the first time, she and Augustus fought together. Blades aligned. Synchronized. Sharing in each other’s fury.
Until Augustus yanked her back.
An elk barreled through the spot where she’d stood seconds ago. The gust smelled of scorched grass and sweat-drenched hide—earthy, raw. Her hair slapped against her face.
Thorne, too, was driven back several paces, and farther still by another pair of elk.
“Thanks,” Selene breathed.
Their eyes met, and those old echoes of lives became music finally tuned to the right chord.
A smile broke across Augustus’s face. “Hi.”
She smiled. “Hi.”
Augustus lifted her left hand to study the rings there, now coated in Thorne’s blood. “My mother’s rings.” His eyes—one blue, one brown—cut to the long knives in her hands. “And her blades.”
A decision she’d made at the last possible moment. The thought had pulsed like a second heartbeat: Cassia should be here for this.
“I didn’t think she’d mind.”
Augustus kissed her knuckles, his eyes gleaming. “She’d be honored.”
Several feet away, Thorne’s voice cut through. “The lovers together again. You never give up, do you?”
Selene and Augustus turned in unison, blades raised, bonded in blood and purpose. Their answer was one voice. One vow.
“Never.”