Page 13 of Flamesworn

Ares lay a hand on Azaiah’s cheek, then patted it. “I’ll see you on the field, brother.”

They made toward Axon again, their footsteps lighter than they’d been the first time. They could feel the call to war thrumming through the sand like a current in the ocean. When this war came, it would bring glory to the woman who was Atreus reborn.

Someone was banging a drum nearby as Ares entered the gates of Axon. A child, sitting on a bench while a group of other children did morning exercises, quietly struck a palm on the drum to keep time. Ares stopped to crouch at her level and tapped the tightly-stretched skin, and the girl’s hands moved reflexively to follow Ares’ pattern. The rhythm took shape, and on the other side of the wall, a man beating a broom against a rug started to match it as well. A group of teenagers walking past slowed their pace to a march they didn’t know.

“Arktos has forgotten how to signal the start of war,” Ares told the little girl, who stared straight ahead, gaze clouded. “But I can remind you. What did the Arkoudai sing, when it was time for battle against the Starian kings?”

“War is come,” the girl sang, in the light accent of the old Arkoudai had who marched from the green islands of Katoikos. The other children in the square started to sing with her, high voices echoing. Their teacher stared at them with an ashen face and shaking hands.

It was the first chant, the oldest chant, sung before Katoikos had becomeArktosin the war songs that spread across the ruined former empire. Ares left the children to their singing, and stepped into the street to find soldiers marching in time, their eyes unfocused, gazing into the distance.

They didn’t all sing the same war song. Some sang songs they already knew. Others wailed the tune that matriarchs sang in the hills before their women went to war. Others sang in a language lost to all but the Lukoi, or the mournful ballads of Staria, some the quick-paced war songs of Mislia. But the songs of the Arkoudai rang above the rest, and Ares danced among them, laughing, stirring them up until the main plaza shook with the stamping of boots and the cry of voices.

“This is Arktos!” Ares shouted, arms upraised toward them. “This is who you are! My Arkoudai. Your hearts have forgotten me, but the blood remembers.” They drank it in, feeling the withered core of their divinity start to swell again, and beneath the drumming they heard the beating of chains and the chanting of low, heavy voices.

Someone else was calling for War.

“Yes.” Ares got to their knees. “Tell me who comes for the Arkoudai.” They closed their eyes, and the beating of chains rose higher, higher, drowning out the voices of the Arkoudai in the square.

The world shifted.

Ares opened their eyes. They were kneeling in the center of a small room with a single shaft of light drifting down from a distant skylight. The air smelled stale and thick with old blood, and there was an Arkoudai soldier kneeling there, hands tied behind his back. To their left, Ares could dimly see through a long stretch of iron bars. There were people on the other side, hooded and cloaked, kneeling around a circle with symbols of war etched in the center.

“Bring out the Beast,” one of them said. “The sacrifice must be made now, before the Strategos declares war.”

Chains clanked in the dark, and there was a crack of a whip and a guttural growl. Someone cried out, and a body fell into the light—another hooded figure, who scrambled to their feet and drew a sword, their grip too tight.

A figure stood in the shadows, a sword hanging loose in their hand.

“I couldn’t hold him,” the hooded man said. “He’s having another one of his fits.”

“It doesn’t matter,” one of the people on the other side said. “Blood is blood. Have the Beast kill them both.”

Ares closed their eyes, and when they opened them again, they were in the plaza, the war songs were ringing, and Kataida Akti was standing at the entrance to the plaza, her eyes wide.

“I’ve returned for you,” Ares said, and got to their feet. They stumbled as, somewhere in a dark room, blood was shed in their name. Pleasure rolled through them—they wanted to hurt, wanted to feel the blade that cut into the sacrifice as they died—and they staggered to their knees at Kataida’s feet. The singing faltered, and hundreds of Arkoudai fell silent as Ares lifted his hands to Kataida in supplication.

“Use me,” they said. “Wield me. War is coming. Take what I am, and I will give you everything.”

Chapter

Four

Kataida stareddown at the god of war on their knees, gazing up at her with such feverish adoration, and oh, she was tempted.

No one had ever looked at her like this before. Her lovers, the few she’d bothered to take, might go under for her and even cry prettily and kneel, but not likethis. Perhaps it was Ares’ overwhelming influencestill hanging in the plaza, not dominance but stilloppressive,like the thick clouds of dust that swept through the desert when the winds were high.

Ares’ adoration was so easily given, but it wasn’t for her, was it? It was for a man long dead, an ancestor who’d taken an army into a desert and founded a country not out of hate and isolation, but love and desperation. She knew the truth. She’d read Atreus’ letters back to Katoikos, private correspondance that was certainly not intended for a hated enemy.

She could see, easily, what would happen if she went with Ares. They would make the world her bloody battlefield, let her cut swathes through towns and villages like some avenging death-spirit in an old story meant to scare children into sleeping. She could hear the echo of drums and the trill of a fife, smell fireand blood andbattlelike a scent in a bottle. Part of her wanted it, yearned for it, had never felt anything more rightthan sayingyesto a god and letting them turn her into some bloodsoaked battle maiden, like the warrior-women from the hills who still planted sunflowers for their Sun God and sang old songs to which the meanings were long forgotten. All her nighttime yearnings and secret, terrible fantasies could be real.

Axon might fall. Arktos might fall. Countries weren’t meant to endure without change. What would have happened to Staria, if a king hadn’t united them? What would have become of Mislia without a rebellion to restore balance? Katoikos endured because the Arkoudai had left to draw their enemies into the desert, but even they weren’t the same as they once were. All that power and influence had been lost when the islands of Diabolos had risen from the sea and rendered their Great Port useless, and now they were, what, a country of idle, wealthy people arguing for fun? Even Lukos, the most isolated of all, was changing--her father visiting was enough to provethat.

Arktos had prospered while their patron slept, that was true, but were they thriving or were they stagnant? Or maybe she was making excuses because she wanted what they were offering her, Ares, with their firebright eyes and wild, enticing grin.

You’re a flame and I’m a storm, and together, I think we could make the world kneel.

But she couldn’t. She might be suffused with more longing than she’d ever felt in her life, but before being Kataida, before being a restless, dissatisfied sadist, before even being anAkti,she was an Ardoukai. And in the worst moments of her life, lying in bed sobbing into her pillow wonderingwhy can’t I just be normal, why won’t itstop, she would remember that she was part of something greater than just herself.

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