Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
ALENA
Alena’s heart clenched. “No. Please, no.”
She bolted forward.
“Alena!”
Phoebe’s voice barely reached her through the roar in her ears—the rush of wind, the pounding of her own heartbeat.
San. Kaixo.
She tore down the steep ridge, boots skidding on loose earth and moss. Just before the line of bushes, she lost her balance. The world pitched sideways. She slammed into the slope, brambles clawing her arms and slicing her palms as she tumbled.
“Alena, wait!”
She scrambled upright, blood slick on her hands, eyes already tracking Apollo. The grey wolf had pushed through the underbrush and now waited in the tall grasses ahead, ears alert.
“Go—find them!” she gasped.
Apollo sprinted off.
Her raw palms and stinging knees were nothing compared to the dread spearing her heart. The village lay silent, the only sound the crunch of ash underfoot. Huts stood collapsed and blackened. The smoke was long gone, but the air still held a faint tang of it.
Alena reached the charred remains of the farmers’ hut, breath ragged, eyes sweeping the wreckage. Nothing.
But their scents lingered.
“They’re not here,” she said as Phoebe caught up, panting.
“Are you sure?” The ’s lone eye scanned the ruin.
“I’d smell them.”
Through her bond with Apollo, Alena felt a flicker of hope—he’d found survivors.
“This way,” she urged.
They pushed on through the ruined village, past the skeletal frame of a toppled fence, until the land opened into a grove of olive trees.
Apollo sat waiting at the field’s edge, tongue lolling. In front of him, a teenage boy gripped a spear, its tip wavering in warning. Behind him, two men dug into the stony soil, each dull thud of the spade ringing in the still air.
The boy paused as they approached, lowering the weapon slightly. His wool tunic was streaked with ash and dirt, and his eyes widened at the sight of Phoebe—leopard pelt over her shoulders, sword at her side, shield slung across her back.
Alena gave Apollo a gentle pat. “He won’t harm you.”
The boy’s jaw tightened. “Tell that to the corpses the wolves have been feasting on since the raid.”
The words hit like a slap. Raid?
Phoebe’s brow furrowed. “What raid?”
“Slavers,” the boy said bluntly, his voice rough with more than just youth.
Alena’s stomach turned to stone. “Slavers?”
“They came in the night, just as the snow started to melt,” a broad-shouldered man with a bearded, dirt-smeared face said behind him.
He wiped his brow with the back of his hand, leaving a dark smear across his temple.
“They’ve been sweeping the valley, hitting villages with no protection. Taking whoever they can.”
Phoebe’s mouth thinned. “What about Rasennan patrols? The legions? Achaea is an imperial province, its people cannot simply be taken and enslaved.”
The man let out a bitter laugh and spat in the dirt. “Patrols? Those bastards look the other way. Some say the Emperor himself called for more slaves in the stone quarries. Says he needs labourers to build his temples.”
Temples. Stone.
Alena stepped forward, her voice trembling. “Did you see two Non-Humans? A woman and her son?”
The man gave her a long look, then nodded grimly. “They were taken. Like the rest of the villagers. The ones who resisted…” He gestured towards the grave. “We’re burying them now.”
Alena’s breath fled her lungs. The ground seemed to sway beneath her feet.
San and Kaixo were alive, but who knew what horrors they had endured since?
“Where were they taken?” she asked, her voice hoarse.
“We heard the slavers were heading for Dodona,” the man said.
Alena’s heart lurched. She recognised that name. “The sanctuary? Home to the oracle?”
The man shook his head. “Not anymore. The Rasennans dismantled it. Temples, sacred groves—all gone. They’re stripping the land now, working some ancient limestone quarry.”
Alena stared, stunned.
Dodona, once sacred to the Father—King of the Twelve—had been among the oldest sanctuaries in Achaea.
Damocles had told her stories of it: a place where heroes sought wisdom and oracles spoke in the rustle of leaves and the whisper of wind.
If it was truly gone, no wonder the Achaean Twelve’s power had waned.
She turned to Phoebe, throat tight. “How far is it?”
Phoebe’s jaw set. “Further south. Three days on horseback, at best.”
Alena didn’t hesitate. “We’re going.”
Even if it were a month’s voyage across the stormiest seas, she would go. She had to.
Phoebe’s lone eye flared in warning. “If you think I’m letting you charge into a Rasennan quarry guarded by soldiers, supervisors, and gods know what else, think again.
This isn’t Bruna’s arena. Quarries are fortified—watchtowers, barricades, and chained gates.
We’d need a small army just to reach the slaves. ”
Alena dropped her gaze, heart hammering too hard to think. San and Kaixo were her anchor—her family. She’d already lost Katell. She couldn’t lose them, too.
But Phoebe was right. Rushing in blind would only get them all killed.
She bit her lip, eyes sweeping the charred wreckage. There had to be another way.
A thought struck. “The wolves,” she said, turning to the men by the graves. “You said they come at night. How many?”
The boy looked up, wiping soot from his cheek. “Two dozen, maybe more. Mostly from the mountains, but we’ve seen others in the forest.” His grip tightened on his spear, youthful bravado in his stance. “They’ll go for our flock next. But I’ll be ready.”
The older man sighed, weary.
Alena closed her eyes, reaching past panic and grief for the quiet thrum of the Huntress’ Gift. A spark of connection flared, then dozens of wolves stirred in her mind like stars blinking to life in a dark sky.
Howls rose through the trees, one after another, until the valley trembled.
The villagers froze. The boy’s eyes went wide, all his bravado gone. “Twelve be damned.”
Alena opened her eyes and met Phoebe’s sharp gaze. “You said we needed an army.” The howls answered for her. “Now we have one.”
To the men, she said, “We need horses and supplies.”
The bearded man hesitated, then nodded towards a narrow path through the grove. “Our settlement’s just beyond the trees. You’ll find everything you need.”
“Thank you.”
She turned towards the path, the scent of ash and pine thick in the air, Phoebe falling into step beside her.
“Wait—” the boy called after them. “What about the wolves?”
Alena sent her magic surging through the bonds, guiding the wolves from the valley, out of the woods, and down the mountain slopes, driving them south towards Dodona.
When she glanced back, the boy stilled. Whatever he saw—her eyes alight with power or the fierce resolve in her expression—made him go rigid.
Phoebe cast her a sidelong look and smirked. “They won’t be a problem anymore.”
The road to Dodona wound mostly through forest, making it easier for Alena to travel with her army of wolves. Each night, nearly three dozen grey shadows followed at a distance, weaving through the trees and avoiding human eyes.
The last thing they needed was word reaching the Rasennans that she was coming.
Alena and Phoebe rode in tense silence, the uncertainty of San and Kaixo’s fate weighing heavy on them both. Guilt and dread churned through Alena’s thoughts. For days, her heart sat lodged in her throat. Sleep eluded her, and she could barely bring herself to eat.
Phoebe tried to ease the tension with training and sparring during their stops, but it only frayed Alena’s nerves further.
Slaves who worked the mines and quarries had the worst fate of all, Leukos had once said. If the labour or starvation didn’t kill them, the accidents did.
He came to Alena at night in her dreams. His arms wrapped around her just like in their final moments, and she woke each morning with the ghost of his presence lingering beside her, grounding her through the fear.
He had believed in her. You’ll find a way, Alena. You always do, he’d once said, with absolute certainty. That faith lived in her still, a quiet flame in the dark.
She clung to it now. Somehow, she would infiltrate the quarry. She would draw the guards’ eyes elsewhere while she searched for San and Kaixo. Leukos was gone, but his belief in her hadn’t. And she wasn’t alone—Phoebe and the wolves were with her.
It would work.
It had to.
By late afternoon, they reached the outskirts of Dodona. The sun dipped low in the sky, casting long shadows across the valley. A snow-capped mountain loomed in the near distance, its pale crown glinting with the day’s last light.
Alena had expected ruins, but not this haunting silence. The ancient city lay stripped and forgotten, its scattered bones of stone swallowed by grass and time. A few crumbled foundations jutted from the earth, skeletal remains of a place once full of life.
Her gaze caught on a ruin partially veiled in snowdrops.
The delicate white flowers blanketed the ground like fallen stars, nodding gently in the breeze.
At its entrance stood a single majestic oak tree, its limbs stretching wide over the ruins it guarded.
The air around it felt different, charged with something sacred and old.
Phoebe drew her grey mare alongside Alena’s, the lead rope of their packhorse, laden with supplies, held loosely in one hand.
“The oak of many tongues,” the murmured. “The priests once believed the Father spoke through its rustling leaves—messages hidden in whispers and patterns fallen to the ground.”
“Sounds poetic,” Alena said softly, wishing she’d seen the temple in its former glory.
A breeze swept through the grassland, catching their cloaks, the horses’ manes, and the oak’s sprawling boughs. Alena could almost picture Achaean heroes of old standing beneath its shade, eyes turned skywards, waiting for guidance from the gods.