Page 57 of Flamesworn

She stood on her toes to kiss Ares’ monstrous, jagged mouth, and Ares sighed. Their wings folded over them, then fell away like smoke, leaving Ares in their smaller, mortal form, with two arms and two eyes and a mouth that didn’t crack their skull. But their true shape lingered just under the surface, and they could almost feel the beating of wings at their back.

“It was worth it,” Ares said. “It was worth all those years alone if it meant finding you.”

Kataida kissed them again. “It was,” she said, and took Ares’ hand.

PART THREE

Justice

Chapter

Thirteen

They tooktwo of the horses from the stable to return to Axon.

They tried three, but the horse balked the second Ares tried to mount it and had refused to come out of its stall after that. Eventually, Ares shifted into their sword form and Kataida wore them on her hip, happy to have Ares close even if it madeherhorse a little nervy in response.

She cast the occasional glance at the other horse, on which her uncle rode grim-faced and silent, seemingly uncaring of his loose, tangled dark hair whipping into his face as they pushed their horses toward the capital.

Other than asking where they were going, Damian hadn’t said a word since they set out. Kataida understood—she, too, spent a lot of time in her own head, and she didn’t have three decades of forced captivity behind her. Maybe it was the prospect of returning to Axon after all these years, seeing his brother again, or maybe Damian didn’t know what to say to her. That was fine, she wasn’t sure shewantedhim to try and talk to her. She didn’t know what to say, either. Whatever it was, shedidn’t take it personally, but she did find herself watching him when she could.

He looked very much like her father, though his years chained and tortured and kept in that dark, dank cell had of course brought changes to his appearance. It was hard to imagine him with freshly-cut hair and a neat beard like her father, and the haunted look in Damian’s night-dark eyes was only familiar because recent events had given Evander Akti the same look.

If he was aware of her watching him, he gave no indication.

When she wasn’t watching Damian, she was thinking about Ares. Every now and then she reached up and touched her chest, above her heart. Even though she hadn’t seen it yet, she knew there was something there now that hadn’t been before—a tattoo, a stylized dagger piercing a heart, inked in red over her own. She could see it in her mind’s eye, and she was looking forward to the moment she could examine it. Thinking of Ares in their true form, winged and terrible and beautiful, made her sigh softly and shift in her saddle.

She felt oddly disconnected from the the events that led to her being here, atop a stolen horse racing for Axon with the night sky stars wheeling above, a god who was now her immortal companion sheathed at her hip in the shape of a sword, her three-decades-missing uncle on another horse, both of them covered in blood and dust and grime. In the bright light of a full moon, she could see the blood staining her hands, feel it drying on her face, matting her short hair into tangles.

There were plenty of reasons for her inability to focus on what happened, but all of them boiled down to what the healers calledbattle-shock.

I had a soldier in my regiment once. She single-handedly took out an entire regiment of the enemy’s best archers while avoiding every one of them like some kind of acrobat, then afterthe battle, I watched her walk into a door without opening it first.

Kataida startled, nearly slipping off her horse. That was not her thought. It came to her, and only her, but she knew very well it hadn’t been hers. She’d never seen that, obviously, and she wasn’t given to flights of imagination—she would have had many more friends as a young girl if she had been. The voice was low and deep, and it was Senex, but with an odd accent that she couldn’t place.

She reached down and drew her fingers over the hilt of the sword, but she knew it wasn’t Ares.

You did well. I’ll be leaving the rest of your soul to you, Daughter.

“I– What did you call me?” She felt crazy speaking out loud to a voice in her own head but Damian didn’t notice and Ares wouldn’t mind.

Daughter. Technically granddaughter, a few generations removed.

“Atreus?” She must have lost her mind. How could Atreus Akti speak to her if hewasher?

I’ve been known to gently bend a few rules.

“This is me,” she said, a little louder. “This is me thinking this.” Maybe battle-shock had given her an imagination, but only enough of one to talk to her ancestor in her own head.

Either way, thank you, daughter of Arktos. I was always meant to be a shield—for Katoikos, my Imperator, and then for Arktos. You were meant for the sword, and while it is a burden few can carry, you are more than capable, Soldier Akti. Farewell.

“Oh,” she whispered, ducking her head to wipe the sudden tears off her face. Her hands smelled like blood. “I definitely made that up. But if not…rest well, Atreus. Thank you for being with me.”

She felt foolish for only moment, but then became aware of a weight in her uniform pocket that had not been there before. She shoved her hand in and closed it around two coins–not hers, those she wore on a chain around her neck like most Arkoudai. These were older, and the face on the coins wasn’t the grinning skull of death, and the picture on the opposite side wasn’t the usual ferry with the robed figure, coins made long ago to represent Azaiah, though only Nyx had a coin with Azaiah’s true likeness.

Instead, the image was a winged creature with a singular eye, and she smiled as she turned it over, seeing a face she recognized at once. “Bright eyes.”

It doesn’t take a special heart to love the fires of war, soldier, but to keep that love from burning your heart to ash, that’s something else. It does what is left of me well to know that someone loves them like they deserve.

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