Chapter 47
Chapter
Forty-Seven
“We’ll find her.”
Those were the last words Atsadi said to Kai. It felt like a lifetime ago—before the narrow tunnels, before the weeping stone, before the world turned into this desperate, crumbling maze.
Somewhere behind them, a damaged aqueduct had ruptured. The water rose. Atsadi led Kai through what felt like a labyrinth, silent, his boots splashing with every step.
They passed others on the way. More healers. More injured. Almost everyone was coated in tears and blood.
Atsadi paused to watch them pass, the muscles in his jaw flaring like branches.
He met her eyes, and Kai read the fear there. It matched her own. In what state would they find their wife?
But Atsadi only nodded. They had to keep going.
“Stay close to me,” Atsadi warned, pointing at a gaping crack in the path. “It’s fresh. The ground could collapse further.”
Kai remained a half-step behind him the entire way, her thoughts a litany of her wife’s name. Fala. Fala. Fala. Every second they searched, the tunnels twisted tighter. If another collapse hit, Fala might not survive the buried silence.
They rounded a bend—
Atsadi came to a sudden halt, and Kai bounced against his back.
The tunnel opened into a wide cavern, as high as the sky and as deep as the entire world.
Kai had never been this deep into the mines—a whole other world existed here, unlike anything she’d ever imagined.
It was quiet, except for the sound of water escaping massive cracks in the walls.
Narrow stone bridges stretched over the dark bowels in weblike patterns, some leading to wide ledges, others dipping even farther down.
Far to the right, Fala whimpered.
Kai lurched—
Atsadi yanked her back into the shadow and put a finger to her lips. Without a word, he nodded for her to look.
Fala was maybe twenty feet away, seated on a wide stone path beside another female: Inola Rising Moon, her arm wrapped in bandages, face bruised, and one eye swollen shut.
Usti loomed over them, pacing in short bursts. His shirt was soaked, dark with water and blood. A scorch mark marred part of his face, and had burned away a portion of his hair.
His voice echoed through the chamber, manic and cracked. “This wasn’t what I wanted. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.”
A knife flashed in his hand.
Kai tightened the grip on her sword.
Atsadi pulled her against him, one arm bracketing her chest. His heart beat wildly against her back. “Wait,” he whispered into her ear.
He pointed to a fissure opening in the wall beside Usti. Water seeped and spat from it.
If Usti was aware, he didn’t show it.
“I’ll protect you,” Inola said to her son. “You know I will.”
“And return to a life where I’m left behind?” Usti spat. “Firstborn, but never first choice. Never given the same chances. I could have been more.” He aimed into the mines below. “More than this!”
Usti straightened and stared unblinking at his mother. “You know what I could have been for our people. You had it within your power to call for change. Instead, you let them look through me. You left me to rot in these mines.”
The wall split with a deafening crack—
Water burst through the crack with a roar, flinging all three toward the fractured edge of the abyss.
The ground gave way beneath their enemy.
Not in soil or stone, but in will. One by one, the Soterran line broke, and the Perean tide surged forward, unrelenting.
Dimitrios fought like a man possessed, his breath a steady beat. And around him, his people, the mighty heart. Not only soldiers, but those sons and daughters of a land they refused to surrender.
With every drop of blood, he thought of his broken father. His fierce, unfailing mother. Of the councilmen who sat in their polished chairs and told him to wait while other men decided his future. As if his birthright were something to earn through silence and inaction.
They’d turned him into a man who was quiet. Obedient. Powerless.
Today, he would show the world who Dimitrios Vidalatos really was.
A man who would not be pushed aside or disregarded. Not anymore.
Dimitrios drove through the Sotteran lines, unleashed. His body screamed for rest, but his mind pulled him deeper into enemy territory.
“I am your enemy.”
Milonia’s voice—her betrayal—only sharpened the blade in his hands.
Other memories snuck through, too. The way the morning light made her skin glow. How her body shivered when he touched her.
“Power always comes at a cost,” she’d told him once. “Few women survive such ambition, especially ones in my position. I have Caius to consider.”
Had she been trying to tell him, even then, who she really was?
He was the fool who hadn’t listened, letting his heart guide him into her bed. Blinded by a beautiful face and the promise of a new family.
Caius’s open laugh echoed in his skull, as bright as a curse.
Dimitrios roared into the open sky, throat raw, blood singing in his ears.
A Sotteran soldier lunged from the fray, sword high.
Dimitrios turned, the tang of blood and the salt of sweat thick on his tongue. Steel screamed. He drove forward, teeth gritted, swinging from the left, right, left. Pounding into the man’s guard until the soldier staggered. Dimitrios swept low and carved across the man’s thigh.
The soldier dropped with a yell, clutching his leg.
Dimitrios stepped back, his breath jagged, then turned toward the next threat without hesitation.
A Soterran soldier broke through the line, blade swinging for a Perean’s throat—
Dimitrios threw himself between them. The blow met his sword, rattling through his spine. He twisted, disarmed the soldier, and pounded a fist into his throat.
“Keep going!” he yelled to his people. “Push them back!”
A roar from behind brought a moment’s stillness to the chaos.
Dimitrios pivoted—
Pateras hurled a spear through a charging enemy’s chest. The old man looked half-dead but refused to give over to his exhaustion.
Sudden movement rushed toward Dimitrios.
He looked up—
And ducked beneath a warhammer.
The brute of a man at the other end snarled.
Dimitrios struck low—metal clanged off greaves. Another swing whistled past, close enough to graze his neck. He kicked hard at the man’s knee, and the joint buckled.
The hammer dropped.
Dimitrios caught it midair and swung wide, burying the hammer’s claw in the man’s chest. Bone cracked. The man dropped, silent and staring.
He panted over the body, sweat stinging his eyes. Blood soaking his sleeves. A burn in his shoulder he would feel for many days to come.
There had been a time when he thought a crown would make him king.
Now he knew better.
This—blood, grit, choice—this was the cost of sovereignty.
Ahead, the Perean banner still flew, raised high by a soldier with one arm bound in a bloodied sling. And beyond, the Soterran army was pulling back.
They were taking the pass back.
They were winning.
But it wasn’t over.
Not until every last Soterran either fled or fell.
Thorne wouldn’t get away that easily.
A jagged trail carved up the dune—footprints, dragging lines, shattered shells.
Augustus followed it up, sword raised, lungs burning. Somewhere back there lay a shattered fishing village. A place where only ghosts remained.
At the crest of the dune, Thorne stood like a king surveying the fall of his empire.
A graveyard comprised of smoke, ash, and blood-soaked sand.
Augustus aimed his sword. “There.”
Selene followed his line of sight, her shirt soaked with blood and sweat. “What is he doing?”
Thorne’s attention slid past them, and a smirk appeared.
Augustus’s blood went cold.
He turned—
Two pirates dragged Mettius between them. His father’s head lolled, body limp.
“Dad!”
Augustus broke into a run. They were ten—fifteen feet away… He could reach them. How had they gotten past Little Gus’s guard? Every fiber pulled him toward his father, but his focus split to someone nearly as important.
“Where’s Little Gus?”
Augustus scanned the wreckage. The sky. The shadows. That dragon would never leave him. Not willingly.
Selene ran at his side, turning in circles, scouring their surroundings. “I don’t kn— There!”
She pointed.
A flash of brown-and-blue iridescence peeked from the broken boards.
Too small.
Too still.
Selene didn’t feel her feet hit the sand. The world tunneled to a single point: a small, fragile wing, jutting from the wreckage like a broken flag.
She dropped beside the dronsian, fingers fumbling as she rolled his tiny body toward her. Heat still radiated from his scales. His chest rose, slow and steady. But his belly was streaked in blood, the gash deep enough to glisten.
Worse somehow was the silence. His mind, usually a soft hum, had gone still. Like he’d drifted too far to reach.
“Wake up,” she whispered, palming his head. A hot tear dropped from her eye onto his limp neck, and her voice cracked when she spoke. “Augustus, he’s hurt.”
Augustus shouted her name from several steps away.
A warning.
A crunch sounded from beside her. Wood shifted.
Selene turned—
A black shape peeled away from the wreckage. Slow. Deliberate.
Wrong.
What she thought was shattered timber rose as bone and claw and wings. A nightmare made flesh.
The Vorash rose out of the ruin and gloom, taller than she remembered. One feathered wing dragged, but the other flexed with a sickening pop. Eyes like pits of night locked on her.
Selene clutched Little Gus tighter and clambered to her feet. Augustus caught her by the shoulders.
She couldn’t look away.
The Vorash stepped closer. Clawed feet steamed with every stalking step across the sand. Its ragged, torn wings unfurled. It was pure hate, alive and breathing.
Augustus’s hand found her waist, grounding her. Sword raised, jaw set, he stepped back with her—one slow heartbeat at a time.
The beast’s gaze swept from her…to Augustus…to the bundle in her arms.
The Vorash leapt.
The world shattered with sand. The Vorash landed hard, and its tail swept at their ankles like a scythe.