Chapter 72
AEMONN
My fucking brother.
Ever since he came into my life, he’d done nothing but get me in trouble.
The day Taran was born, I snuck into the birthing room.
With my mother too taken by labor to dote on Father, he’d grown especially short-tempered, and it was the only place in the palace I knew I’d be safe.
I hid behind a curtain, and I prayed to the Blessed Mother to make the baby a boy—a brother who was strong enough to protect me from a father who loved to make me bleed.
When Taran shot into the world, big as a boulder and screaming like a fox, I thought my prayers had been answered.
“That one,” I’d shouted, too excited to stay hidden.
“Lumnos gave us that one. He my brother. He save us!” In my toothy childhood lisp, “that one” had come out sounding like “Taran,” so that’s what Mother named him.
She told that story often. Everyone who heard it cooed and ahhed. They called it adorable. What a close bond they must have, they always said.
She left out the part where I got twenty lashes when Father found out where I’d gone.
You’d think I would have learned then that my brother was more curse than reward.
When Taran misbehaved, he got a fist to the ribs—I got two because I should have stopped him.
When I misbehaved, I got a blow across the ears, then a second for setting a bad example for him.
Taran wasn’t the end of my misfortune. He was the reason for it becoming even worse.
As I stood in the center of a battlefield, surrounded by even more violence, I was struck by how little had changed.
I ducked to miss an axe that came swinging at my head, then threw up a shield to deflect a sword thrusting from my left. The mortal assigned to protect me had taken a blade to the gut about twenty seconds into the fight, leaving me to fend for myself.
“What am I doing here?” I grumbled.
“Fighting for your Queen,” Taran yelled.
As if being trapped in a dirty melee with a bunch of mortals wasn’t humiliating enough, I had to do it next to him. His assigned mortal stared with dumbstruck awe as Taran cast his magic with one hand while effortlessly slicing through enemy troops with the other.
I wrinkled my nose as the entrails of his victim spilled onto my shoe. “I like Diem, but I don’t like her this much.”
Taran barked a laugh. “Fine then. You’re doing it for me.” His bright-white grin against his blood-spattered face made him look maniacal. “You owe me for trying to ruin my mating ceremony.”
“You owe me for that,” I said, scowling.
Though I’d volunteered to join Diem’s army at the council meeting, I’d never intended to actually follow through.
I was a man of many, many talents, but physical combat wasn’t one of them, and my magic was too weak to be of any real use.
I’d only waded into the gathered troops this morning to bring Diem some weapons my father had stolen, hoping the offering would make up for going back on my word.
When Taran saw me and assumed I’d shown up to fight, he looked at me with respect for the first time in our adult lives.
That was the moment I realized I was utterly fucked.
I grunted as an empty-eyed Arboros Descended slammed into my shield, knocking me into a clump of mortals standing behind me. “Did you have to volunteer us for the very front?” I snapped at Taran as I shoved them off.
“Who better to lead us than a High General?” he teased, poking the regalia on my chest. Before leaving Lumnos, I’d hastily thrown on the uniform from my brief stint as the head of the Royal Guard.
I’d realized too late it had been purely ceremonial.
It had no protective armor, and the stiff wool felt like a prison under the sweltering sun.
Someone stumbled into me from the right—a terrified woman I recognized from House Benette. She clutched onto my arm. “Help me,” she pleaded.
“Where’s your mortal?” I asked her.
“I don’t know. We got separated.” Tears swam in her eyes. “I don’t want to die.”
I glanced at the mortal assigned to protect Taran—as if anyone could possibly keep that moron out of trouble. “You, come here. Guard this woman instead.”
The man took one look at my high-ranking insignia and put up no argument. He ran to the woman and stood in front of her, lifting his sword.
“Stay behind him,” I told her as I pried her fingers off my arm and backed away. “Focus your magic on the shield. You’ll be fine.”
“Nice,” Taran said, looking more amused than impressed. “You might be High General material, after all.”
I shot him a withering look. “If I was in charge, none of us would be here. Isn’t that why we have the Emarion Army—” I barely lunged in time to avoid an elderly Faunosian swinging a hunting knife.
Taran stepped in to put a sword through his neck, and I grimaced.
“—so people like us don’t have to do things like this? ”
Taran’s grin vanished. “People like us?” he repeated. He shook his head, mumbling under his breath. “Still taking after Father, I see.”
Immediately, decades of animosity snapped right back into place. I felt like a fool for coming all the way here to earn his respect when he was so quick to assume the worst of me.
Your brother doesn’t love you. If someone put you in a grave, he’d pour them a beer.
The words played in my head, but the voice that spoke them was my father’s. Every time he’d caught me lying to cover up Taran’s misbehavior or paying off someone Taran had upset, Father never failed to remind me that I was protecting a brother who thought I was lower than mud on his boot.
And Taran had never done a thing to prove him wrong.
My teeth ground together as I turned my back and stormed toward the forest. I was stupid to come here. The only thing fighting at Taran’s side would earn me was an early death.
A hand gripped the fabric on the back of my coat. “Wait,” Taran said. His shield glimmered into a dome around us as he scowled guiltily at the ground. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
My fucking brother.
Nothing had changed at all.
He was still the impulsive brat he’d been as a child, unable to stop himself from acting out, even when he knew it would bring down hell on both our heads. And I was still the bitter older brother, resentful of everything he brought to my life, but unable to accept one without him in it.
“I wasn’t just talking about Descended,” I shot back. “The mortal assigned to me was a baker, Taran. He didn’t belong here, either. The Emarion Army should be fighting this war.”
“They are,” he said. “But that glowing prick is too powerful. Queenie needs all of us to stop him. Besides . . .” The corners of his lips slid upward. “I don’t know about you, but I’m having fun.”
His shield misted away, and he let out a loud whoop as he took out two more people with a single arc of his sword.
I started to call out a warning to Zalaric that he’d bonded his heart to a lunatic, but the expression on Taran’s new mate kept me quiet.
His hands were raised, magic firing in luminous strands into the shield above us, but his eyes were on the bodies at his feet.
His lips were bloodless and pressed into a hard line.
“Aemonn, watch out!”
Taran crashed into me, and my back hit the ground. All ten thousand pounds of his muscle came down on my ribs.
“Get off me, you overgrown cow,” I wheezed.
“Then pay attention, you puny rat. You almost took an arrow. This is no place to get distracted.”
I coughed for air, trying and failing to push him off. “Tell that to your mate.”
Taran’s head snapped up. “Zal? You alright?” When his mate didn’t answer, he frowned. “Fuck. I think he recognizes someone from Umbros.” He shoved his sword into my hand. “Stay away from anything sparkly and black.”
He ran off, and I raised a shield as I dragged myself to my feet and looked around.
Zalaric wasn’t the only one seeing familiar faces.
Everywhere I turned, I spotted Descended I knew from court.
Weeks ago, we’d gossiped about trivial House drama over bottles of expensive wine while lounging on armchairs in embroidered robes.
Now, we were all staggering like kittens who’d lost their mother, unsure what to do or where to go.
The proud elite of Lumnos had revealed themselves to be an embarrassing, useless mess.
I gripped Taran’s sword and raised it to my chest, then took a tentative step toward the fighting. Don’t be delusional, boy, my father’s voice chided in my head. You can’t kill anyone. You couldn’t even fight me.
I’d heard those words often, too. Every time I asked to train in weapons or combat, my father forbid it. He wouldn’t even allow me a tutor for magical attacks, deeming my godhood too insignificant to be worth the effort.
Sometimes I wondered whether he really thought I was too weak, or if he worried that, once I learned to kill, I’d use it on him.
An enemy soldier hobbled toward me, if you could even call him a soldier. He looked more like a courtesan, with his chest bare and gauzy fabric draped around his hips. He was a mortal—from Umbros, I guessed. He had no weapon, and blood oozed from his thigh where he’d already taken a blow.
I raised Taran’s sword, and I sneered. My father was wrong. I wasn’t weak. I could fight, and I could kill.
I already had.
As I stared into the man’s vacant brown eyes, a different mortal flashed into my vision—a little boy lying on the street in a pile of broken wood.
It happened months ago, in Lumnos City. I hadn’t believed the boy at first. Every Descended had been warned that mortals often feigned wounds, then demanded to be paid, and that day had the markings of a similar ruse.
The boy had stepped right into my horse’s path, with another mortal standing feet away to serve as witness.
It seemed obvious that it was all a nefarious plot.
But the mortal with him never asked for money.
And the boy never moved. Never even blinked.