Page 3 of Flamesworn

“Dad’s going to be so sad,” Theron said, shaking his head, but he grinned at her. “Good for you. I need you not to be perfect so I don’t look like the fuck-up.”

Kataida took in her brother, standing there looking slightly disheveled in his uniform, his hair too long, thickly-lashed dark eyes smoldering, his full mouth curved in a wicked smile. The amount of people who approached her trying to figure out Theron were innumerable. She wondered if he knew what a challenge he was to the Arkoudai, if he’d done it all on purpose, made himself the unattainable submissive son of the Arkoudai Strategos, a prize to be won by a people who valued rules and hierarchy but who prized conflict andcombatabove everything.

She wasn’t going to tell him. He was insufferable enough.

“Stop fishing for compliments and make us dinner,” she demanded, and of course, her dominance only made her brotherstick his tongue out and mimic her with a high-pitched, ridiculous voice, “and maybe I’ll tell you who brought me cinnamon bread and asked how you preferred to take your tea.”

That would focus the conversation on Theron, and that was what she wanted, to spend time with her brother discussing something other than her restlessness, or Atlas’s disappointed face, or the way she’d felt when she’d watched Malik race off toward Aleks…like no one would ever look at her like that again, like she was their whole world, like she was someone they wanted.

Like she couldn’t taste ash, still, in the back of her mouth. Like she didn’t know she was going to go to bed that night, alone and dissatisfied, and dream about a fire hot enough to burn without turning her to cinders.

Not far from Axon, where the sand bristled with the gray-red bushes where fire dragons liked to make their nests, a figure emerged from Atreus Akti’s tomb.

They were lean and lithe as a dancer, with white hair that turned a brilliant orange and red at the ends. Their hair moved strangely, almost as though it were lifted by the heat of a fire, and the air around their shoulders rippled like a mirage over the desert. Their eyes burned a dull, rusty red, and when they reached the top step of the tomb, they stumbled and fell in the sand.

“Azaiah.” Their voice was rough with disuse. They lifted themselves onto their elbows. “Azaiah!”

The land around the tomb was empty and quiet, stirred only by a faint breeze that sent sand whispering over their hands.

Ares, the god of war and patron of Arktos, looked out over a land that was no longer their own.

There was a time that Ares had been the greatest of the gods, here. Before the Arkoudai had come, the dunes had been verdant hills where warriors had planted sunflowers in Ares’ honor and made statues of them in their sun god form, a woman on one side, a man on the other, both heavily pregnant to symbolize the eternal cycle of war, death, and rebirth. The empire that had destroyed the hill nation had worshiped Ares as a bearded figure who tricked the other gods to climb to the mountain where it had been said they’d earned their power. So far as Ares knew, there was no such mountain, but it was an interesting story nevertheless.

And Arktos. Oh, the Arkoudai had needed war like they needed water, marching in perfect formation along the borders of Katoikos, Arktos, and Staria. The Arkoudai had made songs for them, shed blood for them, and Ares—Ares had loved them, but their leader, Atreus Akti, was the one Ares had favored most. When Atreus had wrapped his fingers around the blade Ares allowed themself to become for him, Ares thought they had known at last what it meant to love the mortals who glutted themselves with blood and fear in their name.

But perhaps they hadn’t, in the end. Perhaps they had been wrong, because centuries after Atreus’ death, Ares woke to find no love for War in Arktos.

“Azaiah?” They called their brother’s name one more time. Azaiah, the god of death, always walked in Ares’ shadow. He understood them—had come to them sometimes, while they’d slept in Atreus’ tomb. Ares had never woken for Azaiah when he’d come, but they had felt his gentle touch on the sword in which Ares had slept.

There was no such gentleness now, only sand and wind.

“You said you’d be here when I came back,” Ares said. They tried to call on their power to summon Azaiah, but it was like trying to fill a broken pot with water, and Ares snarled in frustration and got to their feet.

They were naked. They’dneverbeen naked, not in Arktos, not unless they’d stripped their uniform for the one man worthy of it. Wherever they went, Ares wore the clothes of the military force that belonged to the land. They should have emerged from the tomb in an Arkoudai uniform. Surely Arktos still had a military? Surely they still went to war to protect the border? Or had they all been killed while Ares slept?

Ares took a few shaky steps forward, and narrowed their eyes. Yes, there, by another set of ruins nearby—blood had been spilled there not long ago, perhaps a few years at most. It wasn’t conflict in the name of war, but it was close, and Ares got to their knees in the sand and dug through it until they could feel the warmth of battle fever. Someone had been beheaded there, cleanly, efficiently. Ares breathed the memory in, and the sand around them burned so hot that the dragons sleeping in their nests nearby started to rise, drifting toward the fire in Ares’ body.

When they rose to their feet again, the air was swimming with thin, ribbon-like dragons licking at the steam rising from the sand, and Ares was wearing a modern Arkoudai uniform with a line of silver buttons and polished boots.

“I shouldn’t have slept so long,” they said to a gold dragon trying to weave through their hair. They untangled the creature and let it twist around their wrist. It was odd, though—for all Ares knew they couldn’t simply sleep eternity away in Atreus’ tomb, all they wanted was to climb back down and sink into their sword form, just a plain blade on the stone coffin where Atreus lay.

It would be easier to sleep than to wander a country that had forgotten them.

But they couldn’t. Something was stirring inside them—for all that Arktos had forgotten war, someone there was calling for them. Someoneneededthem.

Someone always needed them, somewhere.

Ares staggered into the desert.

Atreus had needed them. Atreus had needed their power to fight back the Starian warrior kings at the border. He’d needed them to favor the Arkoudai troops and shift the current of a battle. He needed Ares’ blade to cut through bone and sinew. He had needed, and oh, how deeply Ares had needed him.

But Atreus Akti was dead. If he had returned, brought back in another body, surely he would have awakened Ares by now. Even without the memory of his past life, he would know enough to find the blade where Ares slept and take it lovingly by the hilt, and Ares would have known him.

Ares didn’t know how long they wandered through the desert of Arktos. The sun fell, but they’d slept enough, and they stared dispassionately at the swell of the dunes and the plants that pushed up toward the sun in defiance of the elements.

Every now and then, they called Azaiah’s name.

Then they felt it—a pulse of their own divinity somewhere close.

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