Chapter Sixty-Four Antony
Chapter Sixty-Four
Antony
The scent of blood and death fills my chest.
The sun is minutes from disappearing below the horizon, but I will not be at Galla’s mercy.
Not today.
She advances on me, stepping through her lovers’ blood, dragging the gore with her trailing gown, a growing fury on her lips. “You killed them.”
Returning my axe to my back, I pull off my helmet, no longer concealing my thoughts. My quiet rage. “No, Galla,” I say, quietly, calmly. “You killed them.”
She pulls to a stop, her breathing shallow, her lips twitching. I’ve always addressed her as Mother. Somehow, the use of her name seems to rankle her even more.
Her voice lowers. “I will hurt you, Antony, like I’ve never hurt you before.”
I return her furious gaze, but I’m calm. And the calmer I become, the more she trembles, the more intensely her lips and her hands twitch. Compulsively. Shuddering.
“No, you won’t,” I say. “Your men are dead. And there will be no more. From now on, you will only have ladies.” I incline my head at the women huddled in the corner. “Only them. If they perish, you will not replace them.”
Galla sucks in a breath, as if she would scream a retort, but I move toward her, pulling the assassin’s knife from the holder at my waist. “You tried to kill the Oracle.”
She gasps, backpedaling through the blood. “I didn’t.”
“You brought me here, to a place of pain. The place where your people were killed. You wanted to hurt me. But you didn’t succeed.”
When I pause, Galla’s focus flashes from the knife to Victor and Emiliana, both of whom have remained behind me, then to her ladies, and finally to the highborn.
“Nobody will help you, Galla,” I say, and in the next breath, “Victor will no longer live in the forge. From now on, he will stand at my right hand. Emiliana is no longer your lady. She will live wherever she wishes—with Victor, if that’s what she chooses.
As for you, Galla, you seem to love pain so much that I’m going to indulge your cravings. ”
Galla’s face pales as the back of her feet bump up against the dais, and she nearly topples backward.
“You’re going to live here,” I say. “In this place of pain.”
She blinks at me. “Here?”
I nod. “At the edge of the bloodlands. Where you will have no choice but to release your power each night. Assuming you want to live.”
“You can’t keep me here!” Her voice rises, a sign she’s rallying, remembering her power.
But I smile, allowing all of my savage impulses to surge.
Whatever blood was left in her cheeks drains from her face as she stares back at me, wide-eyed.
“I can and I will,” I say. “Whether or not you’re comfortable is up to you.”
At the corner of my vision, the sun’s rays finally disappear.
A hush falls.
An expectant silence fills the air as we wait for the curse to cover our stars in darkness.
I count the heartbeats.
One, two, three—
Dark light pulses across the air, inky waves rushing so suddenly that Galla appears to choke on whatever response she was preparing for me.
Her words don’t harm me anymore, and her threats are hollow.
Because I have hope.
But as the dark canopy casts us into impenetrable night, the hairs on the back of my neck rise.
Faster and thicker than ever before, the darkness bleeds across the air.
My sharp eyesight allows me to see through it even as the highborn, the ladies, and even Victor and Emiliana hunch low, flinching away from the sheer fucking dread suddenly swallowing us.
This is not the darkness I’m used to.
Seeking its source, I focus on the western sky.
Far in the distance, Azul rises into the air, his blue feathers clearly visible to me, as is Thyra’s silver form on his back, even if they’re both only the size of my thumb.
Even if the darkness is so much thicker around them, it appears to pulse from them.
I take a step in their direction, expecting their forms to grow larger as they fly toward me. I will Azul to beat his wings as quickly as he can, to bring Thyra to me, to bring back my hope…
But they only become smaller.
A chill strikes my poisoned heart.
They’re flying toward the bloodlands.
I’m frozen, my mind churning, trying to understand what could have caused Thyra to do such a dangerous thing, before I snap into motion, turn to Galla, and grab her shoulders with a snarl. “Release your fucking power. Or don’t. But know this: You don’t control me or my kingdom anymore.”
Turning away from her, I launch myself into a run, pausing only when I reach Victor. “Get Emiliana to safety.”
He nods, but I’m already speeding away, even as Galla’s pitiful cry follows me. “This darkness… It isn’t the same! I can’t… I can’t stop it!”
Without looking back, I shoot through the wide opening and out onto the grassy ridge.
If I thought I could commandeer someone else’s eagle, I would, but none of them will carry me. Only Azul would.
Even as I run as fast as I can, my arms and legs pumping, I know I don’t have a hope of getting to Thyra before she reaches the bloodlands.
Azul is too fast.
I can’t match him on foot.
But I won’t give up.
Not even when starlight explodes into the sky behind me, a bright-white pillar streaming upward.
The rush of heat across my body strikes across my exposed head and through every crack in my armor, burning my skin in pinpricks.
Making me hunch, forcing me to run faster until the light spreads out across the sky, promising the stars that will keep my people safe.
Except that they don’t.
The heat across my back cools, the starlight spreading across the sky vanishes into nothing, and still the darkness pulses from the direction that Thyra flew.
Again, a beam of starlight explodes up into the sky, and again it washes scorching heat across my back before vanishing into nothing as it hits the pulsing darkness.
A scream sounds faintly behind me. Galla’s voice. I recognize the frustration in it, but now I detect a new emotion. One she rarely shows.
Fear.
And again, she tries, but now, I’m descending the slope toward the Vividari’s temple, and I can only see the light from above.
I’ll move faster without my armor, without its weight, this cage around my body, but I’m not sure if I should remove it. When I reach Thyra—because I will reach her—I might need my armor to shield her.
But if it slows me down too much and I don’t reach her in time, then it won’t matter how useful it could have been.
Making a decision, I peel off my armor, each piece hitting the ground, until I’m dressed only in long black pants and the leather straps across my chest. I keep only my axe and the assassin’s knife, carrying one in each hand.
My speed increases now that I’m free of the metallic constraints, and I hurtle toward the Vividari temple, preparing to veer around it, only to dig in my heels when a figure emerges from the structure.
Hadrian?
His focus is turned to the sky, the direction Thyra flew.
As Galla’s power lights up the air once more, my brother turns to me, starlight shining across his face, lighting up his smug smile.
My heart sinking, I cross the distance between us, a clawing dread rising up within me. “What did you do?”
“What you couldn’t.” His smile doesn’t falter as he sweeps his hand out from behind his back—a move I should have been watching for.
His fist unfurls, releasing a plume of crimson dust right into my path.
The scent of iron fills the air as I veer left, attempting to evade the cloud, only for it to change direction and follow me.
What the fuck?
Iron dust wraps around my body, defying gravity to stream up my neck and across my jaw as well as cascading down my chest, burning granules searing across my skin, threatening to drive me to the ground.
I stumble but refuse to fall.
This burn is nothing compared to the pure fury that scorches my mind as I force myself to dig in my heels once more.
Force myself to calm my breathing. Lower my axe and the knife. Control my anger. Rise up to my full height, hair covering my eyes, face in shadow.
The slower I move, the slower the granules swarm across me, a force pushing me back from Hadrian, a defensive action.
He wants to talk, I’m sure of it.
So I force myself to wait.
Wait through the pain.
Wait for my prey.
He will tell me everything before I end him. It doesn’t matter that he’s my brother. All I can see is the ropey scar on Thyra’s side.
“It was you,” I say. “You hurt Thyra.”
Hadrian remains standing five paces away from me, his arms extended, with a look of intense concentration on his face. “It was me.”
My blood heats with new fury at his admission, but I force myself to remain still. “How did you know where she was?”
“That’s the curious thing,” he replies. “I didn’t. Stanimir did.”
Not a name I recognize, but the back of my neck prickles. “Stanimir?”
“A traveler. From the far east. Lowborn. He came to me six years ago and told me that if I did exactly as he said, I would no longer be overlooked.” A bright smile breaks out across Hadrian’s face. “He told me I would be king.”
I scoff, hoping to raise Hadrian’s ire with my derision, even if the prickling at the back of my neck becomes more intense at his claim. “You believed him? This lowborn from the east.”
Hadrian’s smile doesn’t fade, stretching, a cunning twinkle in his eye. “You’ve been my puppet for days, Antony, so yes, I believe him.”
Impossible to quell my snarl, although I fucking try to swallow it down. “You sent the anonymous note telling me where to find Thyra.”
He inclines his head. “I did.”
As he speaks, the iron granules burn across my chest, some of them crawling across my neck, others gathering around the leather strap covering my heart, leaving welts in thin lines, burning, fucking burning…
“You sent the assassins.”
“Stanimir has many loyal followers,” Hadrian replies. “All dedicated to his cause. All at my disposal.”
“What about the coins?”
Hadrian’s cunning smile becomes boyish. Too innocent.
How did I fucking overlook him for so long?