Page 55 of The Oracle of Dusk

“I don’t suppose you could ask your goddess not to curse the next twenty generations of my bloodline?” he asked, wondering when the divine punishment would happen.

“I’ll see what I can do.” Hyllus’ smile faded as fast as it appeared. “Though the Viridians might prove to be a more immediate threat.” He nodded at the bloodied general confidently striding across the boundary that marked Theron’s territory.

Theron squinted. Damn. He recognised the man climbing over the corpses of his men with a fervent light in his eyes.

“Ah, Stentor. The ever-faithful lapdog of an unparalleled bitch,” Theron said, smiling when Hyllus coughed to cover a snort of laughter. “Before he makes a nuisance of himself, I’m curious. Why has an avatar been summoned?”

“Are you ungrateful for my assistance?”

“Not at all. I prefer living, given the option. But I sincerely doubt Justice called upon you for my benefit.”

Had an avatar been summoned to deal with Orithyia? If he had, Theron would pray at Justice’s temple every day for the rest of his life.

“All I know is that there is a great evil in Trisia and I’ve been called upon to end it.”

Typical divine omen drivel. Open to interpretation by any with an ounce of an agenda. Orithyia would take every opportunity to point her shrivelled finger at Theron. Which was why he needed to be the first to point the young man elsewhere.

“Be careful who you trust, Hyllus. Every ambitious cur in Trisia will happily point you at their foes.”

“Present company excluded, of course?” Hyllus grinned.

Theron laughed. Hyllus was too good-natured to survive court politics for long. He hoped whoever, or whatever, he’d been called upon to destroy was blindingly obvious. Else Theron would soon find himself declared a public enemy, should Orithyia get her claws into the young man.

“No. Present company very much included. All I ask is that you keep an open mind, and pray for good judgement.”

“Only a good man would give such advice, Your Majesty.”

“I am a good king, not a good man. And a man can be only one, for the crown either grinds good men to dust or leads them to an early grave. Only kings who discard their hearts get to keep their heads.”

“I shall keep that in mind.”

Stentor strode over to them, a gleam in his bright eyes. He was certain he’d found wounded prey, and would do all in his power to ensure he retrieved his master’s prize.

“Do you deny it, King Theron? Do you deny that you attacked the avatar of Justice?”

Just as Theron was about to tell the general that he had stepped into Aureum’s territory and invite him to go fuck himself, the world went dark. Theron blinked. The unending darkness remained. There was no sound here, no hint of anything living. He turned around, but there was nothing in every direction. An abyss. He called out, only to find he had no voice. Panic growing, he tried to walk from his current position, but his feet were stuck fast. Was this Justice’s punishment? Would he be trapped in this realm full of nothing for all eternity?

Between one ragged breath and the next, light returned. Screams rang in his ears. Pain exploded all across his body. Blood coated his hands. Hands that gripped his spear. Beneath him, the Viridian general with eyes wide stared up at him in terror, the spear tip a hairsbreadth from his face, the bloodied, broken bodies of Viridian soldiers at his sides.

“King Theron! Please, come back to your senses!”

He raised his head. Hyllus stood before him, terror in his boyish features, the tip of a sword pointed at his neck. One wrong move, and Theron would be dead.

“Don’t make me kill you, Your Majesty!”

Theron raised his hands, stumbling back from the gruesome slaughter. A sense of bone-deep wrongness muddied his thoughts. Stentor scrambled to his feet, face white as a sheet. What had happened?

“King Theron!” his soldiers called from behind.

They stood on his side of the Colonnades, eyes wide with horror. But that meant…

“King Theron, you have slaughtered Viridian soldiers on Viridian soil.”

Beyond the slaughter, a man in Nivean armour, with grey streaking his black hair, surveyed the scene with disappointment. Was that King Enalos riding atop a loper? What was he doing here? No, worse, he’d seen Theron cross into Viridian territory and commit a crime that could mean war.

“It seems I have,” Theron replied, aghast.

Monarchs were sworn to guard their realms and not to trespass on the realms of others unless invited—or urged to by the tangible gods that bestowed their authority on them. His sense of rightness, of belonging, had been torn away the moment he’d stepped across the border in a state of cursed madness. He was without the anchor of Aureum’s innate magics.

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