Page 69 of Storm Front

What roused him from where he sprawled on his throne of flowers was a whisper of a breeze on his face. It was impossible, here in this crypt beneath a lake, for there to be any wind at all—and not one of the others gathered there seemed to feel it.

Azaiah stood and went up and out without a word, much as he’d done the night he’d gone to take Andor’s soul from the Palace of the Moon. But it wasn’t death that was calling to him now.

It was Ares.

War was coming. Azaiah could sense it, feel the warmth of the campfires, hear the clash of steel and the battle chants, feel the war drums thudding like a heartbeat, smell the scents of copper and ash.

He touched the coins at his throat, heard the distant rumble of thunder, and began to walk.

* * *

Nyx returned to the hill country wearing a bloodstained uniform and carrying a sword he’d wrenched from the fingers of one of Lamont’s guards as the man bled out on the stairs of the Crypts. The sentries at the gates to the village at the top of the hill drew back when he approached, and when the villagers started to bow and whisper, Nyx turned around to find Ares walking behind him as the Sun Lord. They smiled to their people, and the sunflowers that lined every house turned to face them as they passed. Then they seemed to vanish, though Nyx could still see them off to the side, hidden in the crowd.

Freja met him at the town square, dressed in a light gown with flowers in her hair. She hesitated when she saw him, then reached out her hands, and Nyx took them.

“If you want the empire off your doorstep,” Nyx said, before she could open her mouth to speak, “you’ll need to be rid of the empire.”

Freja looked over his shoulder, toward the rows of sunflowers bending their way, and nodded to her house at the crest of the hill.

“Come in, General.” She paused, then lowered her voice. “Or is it not General, anymore?”

“I don’t care what you call me,” Nyx said. “The empire will burn either way.”

A few of the watchers in the crowd gasped, and Freja pulled him toward her house, her brows knit with concern.

He bathed there, at last, in a tin tub at the back of the house, while Freja moved about in the other room. She left clothes for him that fit well enough and didn’t look like the uniform of an imperial soldier, and when he found her in her kitchen, there was warm bread and spiced, honeyed fish on a worn table. She was already eating but pushed the plate toward him as he sat.

“I heard what happened,” she said. “With the children, and their mother. All those people sent to die.”

“Will you do it?” Nyx asked, and Freja drew back. She stared at him for a minute, there in the cozy room with embroidered curtains at the window and jars of honey lined up on the sill, and nodded.

“The Sun Lord is with us,” she said slowly. “So we will join you. But you should return here, when it is done. Speak to our healers.”

“I have no need for healers,” Nyx said. “Only your soldiers. When it’s done, you will not see me again, and you will have your hills and your mountains.”

“We could give you a place to rest,” Freja said, but Nyx pushed away from the table, turning for the door. “General. Nyx.”

“Let me know when your people are ready,” Nyx said, and he left her there, frowning to herself in her beautiful house, while her villagers sounded the drums of war.

* * *

Nyx went alone to the imperial camp.

Freja’s people were camped a mile away, singing and planting seeds before every tent, which she explained they did to heal the earth after war fertilized it. Lamont’s army occupied fewer tents than Nyx remembered, and the bonfire was out. Soldiers milled on the grass in groups of two or three. One of them spotted Nyx and froze like a startled deer, and a crowd started to form, though none of them came quite close enough to touch.

When Nyx stopped in front of the dead bonfire, nearly a third of the emperor’s army was gathered before him.

“General.” One of the officers approached: Arne, a man Nyx had always suspected of being in Lamont’s pocket. He’d been promoted and now wore the mark of a commander on his uniform. “We heard you’d been… You were detained, they said, for threatening the emperor.”

“Lamont is no emperor,” Nyx said. “Would you follow a man who killed his own children? His own wife?”

Arne frowned. “His wife was unfaithful. They say his children—his children were yours, and the empress committed treason by lying with you. We cannot protest the emperor’s decision in this matter.”

“Estrid.” Nyx saw her in the crowd, demoted to a common soldier again, it seemed. She approached Arne from behind, and the soldiers around her shifted, making way. “Put him on his knees.”

“What?” Arne twisted round, but Estrid moved too fast, kicking his legs out from under him. Nyx approached him with even, measured steps, drew his sword, and quietly, cleanly, cut his throat.

The only sound in the field was of Arne gasping out his last breaths, choking on blood as he struck the earth. Then there was a roar, and Nyx felt heat strike his back as the bonfire surged to life behind him. The soldiers closest to him retreated, even Estrid, and when Nyx stepped over Arne’s body, they fell before him like a wave on the sand.

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