Chapter 49
Chapter
Forty-Nine
Hooves struck stone with the rhythm of salvation.
Dimitrios turned toward the sound. Breath heaved. Blade heavy. Blood soaked his sleeves, streaked his chest, painted the side of his face. His sword-arm trembled. Still, he stood, unyielding, at the heart of the pass.
On the rise behind them came the thunder of cavalry. Sunlight caught on the silver of helms and polished cuirasses.
Antonis Nicolea led the charge, his white stallion kicking up dust as it crested the ridge. Beside him rode the provincial lords, followed by hundreds more: soldiers and farmhands turned warriors. Untrained, but unshakable.
Dimitrios exhaled.
They’d come.
His grandfather—his family—had come.
Antonis raised his sword and roared, “For Perean!”
The reply came as one voice, one war cry. They surged into the pass like a tidal wave. The battlefield exploded in noise and chaos. Steel against steel. Arrows flew. A Soterran horn wailed retreat—too late.
Perean’s fury had arrived.
Dimitrios plunged back into the fray, pain be damned. He was fire and blade, every motion forged from fury. He gutted one soldier and spun to parry another. Nearby, Nikolas had unleashed himself, his spear a blur as he carved a path toward him.
The Soterrans fell in waves, pressed hard between the flagging Perean force and the fresh reinforcements. The enemy line collapsed. Soldiers fled the mountain pass, trampling their dead, casting weapons aside in their haste.
Minutes felt like hours.
Then came the final horn.
The last Soterran banner fell.
And the silence that followed rang louder than war.
Smoke drifted low over the pass. Corpses lined the stone. And above them, battered and torn, the Perean flag flew.
Dimitrios dropped to one knee, not in surrender, but because his body had nothing left to give. Chest heaving, he bowed his head.
Someone stepped forward—Nikolas? Pateras? He couldn’t tell. A hand reached for him. He took it.
And when he looked up—it was neither.
His grandfather clasped his shoulder, eyes glassy. “They’ll remember this day, my boy. They’ll remember who led the way to victory. I couldn’t be prouder.”
Then, Antonis Nicolea took a knee.
“Kneel for your king!” he roared.
And they did.
The roar of the mine’s collapse still echoed in Kai’s chest, like a war drum that hadn’t stopped pounding. The tunnels narrowed the farther they ran. The walls wept with the runoff from the aqueducts.
Ahead, Atsadi pressed forward with Fala at his side. Kai brought up the rear, sword still slick with Usti’s blood. Her lungs burned. Her legs ached. But she wouldn’t stop, not until Atsadi said it was safe.
They took another sharp turn, and the air shifted. Not as heavy. Not as wet.
Atsadi paused and glanced around. His shoulders relaxed. “We’re out of range.”
Kai almost dropped her sword then and there. Her fingers shook. But she sheathed it, slowly, hand trembling.
Fala collapsed into Kai’s arms, soaked and shaking, her sobs renewed.
Kai cupped her head, hardly able to believe she still could. They were alive. By some miracle granted by the gods, Fala hadn’t fallen to her death, and Atsadi didn’t slip in after her.
Atsadi—
Kai blinked, breath catching, and looked up.
Her husband stood three feet away. His gaze wary. Devouring. He wore the proof of his bravery: soaked clothes, wet-clumped hair, and the torn remnants of his shirt. Across his tattooed chest, red welts marred his light brown skin.
Kai reached for him. “Husband.”
Atsadi’s steps ate up the distance, and then he surrounded them in his strong arms. His chin came to rest on Kai’s crown.
Between them, Fala loosed another sob and reached behind to hold Atsadi, too.
They stood like that for some time, crying in silence. Clutching with gratitude. Soaked and exhausted.
There was still so much left undone. She should find the Stormguard. Her mother.
But this mattered, too. This moment. This breath of peace.
Kai raised her head.
Atsadi met her eyes. His breath ghosted over her lips, warm and steady. He threaded fingers into her hair. His thumb swept an arc across her cheekbone. Silver lined his eyes.
Kai felt up the smooth column of his neck, the curve of his throat, over the thrum of his pulse. Fast…just like hers.
Fala’s arm tightened around Kai’s waist. Otherwise, she remained still. Content in their shared embrace.
Atsadi’s warm brown eyes posed a question as his gaze lowered to her mouth.
One she was no longer afraid to answer.
Kai nodded.
His nose brushed hers, once, twice, before his mouth pressed to hers. Soft. Patient.
She inhaled sharply, the world tilting around the point where their lips met. For a moment, there was only warmth and breath and heartbeats.
When he pulled back, their foreheads touched. Her hand was fisted in his wet tunic. She didn’t want to let go.
Fala pulled back gently, careful not to jostle the close hold they all had on each other. She kissed Kai, her lips damp and salty from tears. “Thank you, beloved,” she whispered.
Kai shook her head—whether to deny the thanks or banish the image of the flaming arrows she sent into that vent, she didn’t know. There wouldn’t have been a need to save Fala if she had found any other way out of the arena.
She swallowed hard. “Don’t thank me. I did this. I—”
Atsadi gripped the back of her neck. “Usti did this. You—we—did what was necessary to survive.”
Fala stroked Kai’s cheek. “It’s okay. Whatever it is.”
It wasn’t okay. None of it. But that truth could wait until tomorrow. Tonight, she would gather her loved ones close and mourn those they lost.
Starting with her wife and husband.
“I love you,” she told them, meeting their eyes in turn.
Fresh tears streamed from her wife’s eyes as she nodded, then met Atsadi’s eyes as well. He held Fala’s face and bent to kiss her.
Kai held her breath, expecting the sting of jealousy.
It never came. Only warmth. And love.
Fala was happy, and Atsadi was where he belonged.
And Kai loved them both.
The village reeked of blood and salt. And now, thanks to the dronsian battle, smoke and fire devoured half of it. Thick, choking ash veiled the sun to a sickly orange-gray.
Selene moved through the battle on steady feet, poignard knives singing against swords. Around her, the two pirate factions clashed like a breaking storm. Thorne’s loyalists locked in brutal combat with the Triarius survivors. Every corner she turned held more blood. More fire. More death.
Even the sky was at war.
Little Gus and Turos met the Vorash in battle, fires blazing in twin trails.
The Vorash screamed through the smoke, wings like a tattered shroud.
The beast struck fast, forcing the smaller dronsian to scatter.
Turos darted away, drawing the Vorash off-course, then returned in a sharp arc to slash at its exposed flank.
Selene ducked a crossbow bolt and buried a knife in the gut of a charging man. She pivoted, dragging the blade free, and looked up again.
Turos chased the Vorash low across a nearby rooftop, setting fire to the rotting wood. Flame surged.
Little Gus slammed into the Vorash, knocking the beast into the burning rooftop. Turos dove after them. Shingles exploded. All three vanished into the smoke.
Selene staggered toward the burning rooftop, heart hammering, as her bond filled with fury—and searing flashes of pain. How much more could they go on against this beast, who was more death itself than capable of dying?
“Vorash don’t favor the sea.”
Thorne said that weeks ago, on the deck of his ship. Odd, wasn’t it? For this beast to be so loyal to Tristan Thorne, but never brave enough to join him at sea?
Maybe…
Selene reached for that bond to the dronsian. She’d never spoken through it. Didn’t even know she could. But as she forced that one memory toward them and her thoughts about what that could mean, she felt them still, their minds unguarded.
“Lure it to the sea,” she said. “We have to try.”
Little Gus and Turos burst into the sky.
The Vorash followed, screeching in fury and showering black feathers.
The dronsian soared by her and banked, then disappeared over the dune. Taking their battle to the sea.
Selene climbed after them. The beasts were dark specks now—but the bond still surged. Gus snapping at the Vorash’s heel. Turos slamming into it from above. Wings locked. Claws buried deep.
And the sea, that glorious, beckoning sea. Thorne’s fleet nothing more than shattered remains.
The Vorash banked at the water’s edge—
Turos and Little Gus seized it in their claws.
A scream ripped into the sky that should have cleaved it in two.
The dronsian plummeted toward the waves with their writhing, furious cargo.
Selene felt as much as saw the impact.
The ocean shattered like glass as they hit, silencing the Vorash’s scream. The water scorched like acid, but the dronsian bared through it. The Vorash was rot and bone and shadow, but they were fire and myth and everything the gods forged them to be.
The Vorash’s wings disintegrated first. Then its limbs. It was born from grief and vengeance, but the sea was its sacred cleansing. Too pure. Too ancient. A god’s power still lived within its depths and wouldn’t suffer such contamination.
Turos let go first—with its wings gone, the Vorash could do nothing.
Little Gus held on. Selene’s face flashed across his mind. Augustus’s laugh. A thousand flickers of memory. Grief, and love, and the ache of what was almost lost. Gus held on for them.
His family.
From the height of the sand dune, Selene pressed a hand to her heart. The bond between them still thrummed, quiet now, but alive.
“You did it,” she whispered down that bond, sending it with all her deep, aching pride. “Now, rest. We’ll handle the rest.”
Then, with smoke rising behind her, she turned.
And strode back into war.
Augustus couldn’t get to his father.