Page 45 of From the Myths of Kings

The battle had raged for days on end.

Princess Cira propped herself up against a pile of rubble and gazed up at the smoke-choked sky. She clutched her ribs, several of them broken. With every heaving inhale, her body ruptured with white-hot pain. Dried blood and sweat clotted in her stringy hair. The once-polished bronze armor plates strapped over her calves were dulled with blood and dust. Her helmet lay discarded several feet away, cracked down the center. She closed her eyes and leaned back, listening as the monsters beyond the walls battered the gates. They’d swarm the Citadel soon.

The last words of her mother rang through her mind like the tolling bells: “Just give me time. I will come. Hold the city for us.”

But if the tiding feather she’d received that morning spoke true, her mother was dead now. The sirens had betrayed Basilia, just as they had betrayed Revelore. The Mer Queen would not be returning for her daughter thanks to their treachery.

The ground below Cira quaked. The rubble at her back shifted, loose stones tumbling down the pile to clink against her plated armor. At last, the Titans were coming, their footsteps reverberating through the earth like miniature earthquakes. They were coming for her.

After she’d killed the Titan of the Sea at the Battle of Darkwater Gulf, the three other Titans momentarily retreated to mourn the death of their sister, Charybdis. Cira could still feel the Titan’s hot blood dripping down her wrists and forearms as she held Charybdis’s colossal, twitching heart in her hands. The sputtering organ was as large as Cira’s head. She remembered how the life faded from Charybdis’s eyes as she fell backward into the ocean. Cira had held onto the dying goddess’s massive corpse as the waves rushed upon them. Her gigantic body dissolved into sea foam.

When the crashing waves receded and the froths of sea foam melted away, a dark pearl shone in Cira’s palm, the only piece of the Titan that remained. She had climbed out of the ocean, holding the pearl aloft as one might hold the decapitated head of their enemy. For the first time since the war began, their mortal armies finally had hope.

The Titans could bleed. And they could be killed.

In the wake of their victory, Cira’s mother had said she needed the pearl. Two weeks ago, she and the other three kings and queens of Revelore left the continent without sharing any information on where they were going. They’d vanished, abandoning their armies to Cira’s command. She was left to pick up the fragmented pieces of their armies with little to no information on where they’d fled, cobbling together a force of soldiers from Elor-Wyn, Terrahold, Auran-Helm, and Tel Mirsun.

Just give me time. I will come. Hold the city for us.

Cira had chanted those words back to herself when the Titans’ armies arrived at the gates of Auran-Helm. She’d inhaled and exhaled those words with every swing of her sword. When her soldiers fell around her and gore spattered the streets, she’d held tight to those words like a lifeline.

Now, her mother’s last words meant nothing as the three remaining Titans marched upon Auran-Helm, their dark armies swarming the forests at the base of the mountain. The earth continued to quake as the Titans drew near. They had formed the fabric of Revelore, had breathed life into their world.

And now they would unmake it.

Cira clenched her bloodied fists. The Four Kinsmen were supposed to be their salvation. For days, she’d held the city for them, promising her soldiers that aid would come. But her mother was dead and the other rulers had not returned. She was alone, and she would die today.

Cira forced herself to stand, her knees trembling as she rose. Lifeless bodies were strewn across the streets, crimson blood smeared over cobblestones like wet paint. When she’d killed Charybdis, hope had fluttered in her chest like a fire flaring to life. That fragile hope was reduced to cinders now, buried under the rubble of the city alongside the corpses of her people.

Cira withdrew her sword with trembling hands. From her vantage point at the top of the tiered city, the Titans rose like mountains from the earth, their divine forms towering over the trees they’d once crafted like artists. They were climbing up the mountain now. The rock below Cira’s feet vibrated.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath in, preparing herself for death and the realm of the Underworld. Gritting her teeth, Cira limped across the courtyard, ready to face the terrible gods at last. More soldiers rose to follow her, folding out of the shadows and slumping forward at her feet, their bodies weakened with injuries and their hope scorched to ash. But they followed her nonetheless, marching toward the last set of gates in a quiet procession.

Just give me time. I will come. Hold the city for us.

A horn cleaved through the air, stopping Cira in her tracks. The horn blew again and sparks danced over the embers of her faded hope.

She turned around to see Aris, the warrior-king of Auran-Helm, soaring over the Citadel, his outstretched wings gilded with the rising sun. He spiraled down to the courtyard, his face flushed as though he’d just flown for days on end. His golden sandals hit the stone and he sprinted over to her. Normally he favored a small dagger as his weapon of choice, but the longsword he brandished was unfamiliar to her. The metal blade glowed with ethereal light.

“Wait! We can stop them!”

Cira opened her mouth and turned toward the Auran-Helm king: “Rook, wake up.”

“Rook wake up.”

Rook was vaulted into consciousness, Cira’s phantom voice melding into Aurelia’s. The Mer captain was bent over him with a crease of concern between her pale eyebrows. He blinked up blearily at her. His present reality and the scene from his dream blurred in and out, the two planes of existence shifting between each other. He could feel the ground vibrating beneath him just as Cira had and could feel her cracked ribs in his own body. His nose was filled with the scents of battle: charred flesh, suffocating smoke, metallic blood. The primitive iteration of the Citadel was scorched into his mind, the ancient version of his city both familiar and foreign all at once.

Hel’s teeth. What was happening to him?

As he focused on Aurelia, the sensations of the dream faded from the tangible world, replaced by the wooden walls he found himself enclosed by. The pain in his side was not from broken ribs, but from the throbbing wound in his abdomen. The vibrating floor was not caused by the marching of ancient gods, but by the unruly, glacial wind that battered the small merchant shop he and Aurelia had taken shelter in. The wind howled fiercely outside while swirling ribbons of snow glistened in the light of the moon.

“Are you all right?”

Rook forced himself to sit up. He didn’t remember falling asleep in the first place. He must’ve dozed off after they’d made camp.

“I’m fine,” he answered when his head finally stopped spinning.

“You didn’t sound fine.” Aurelia sat back against her bedroll, a skeptical eyebrow arching upward. “You were screaming. Did you have a nightmare?”

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