Page 22 of Flamesworn

“He was mine,” the demon said. “He wasn’t yours to judge or honor or speak about. He was mine, and I loved him, and now I will love no one.”

Ares sighed as she took off, disappearing into the dark to return to the place where all demons went when their time with their mortals was done. Ares drew the sword from Markos’ body and pushed his hair out of his face.

“Burn them quickly,” someone said behind them, and Ares turned to see that fire was already starting to rise from the barracks at the far end of the training facility. Soon, the facility would be a beacon, and there would be no denying that war was coming.

Ares would return to Kataida, then. Kataida needed to know, but she was still upset with Ares, and Ares wasn’t sure what they needed to do to make it right. They stood, and only realized as they were nestling Markos’ head on their shoulder that they were holding him at all.

Something was wrong. Ares had never cared about doomed soldiers before. There were thousands of them, millions, ever since the first time two families fought over the same patch of land ages ago. But as Ares held the lanky body of the seventeen-year-old soldier in their arms, they thought of the way Atreus’body had gone cold so quickly, and the emptiness that had followed, the long years of silence.

“I don’t think I want you to be dead,” Ares said, to the body of the boy in their arms. “Why is that?”

A hot wind blew over the bodies of the young soldiers and what few members of the enemy force they’d managed to kill. Ares looked at the young person who’d died protecting their unarmed friend, and felt something wet and hot roll down their cheek and land in the sand. Blood, which crystallized as it fell, turning into a drop of red glass.

“Why do I not want you to be dead?” they asked the fallen soldiers. “Why….Why don’t I…”

Someone was calling them. No. No, they weren’t ready to be called. Something had gone wrong, it was all wrong. They’d walked away laughing from far worse in their youth, hadn’t they? Hadn’t they?

They were dragged away from the slaughtering grounds with a wrench that took their breath, and they appeared on their knees in Kataida’s bedroom, still holding the body of the young soldier in their arms.

They looked up at Kataida, who was standing back, a hand on the wall as though to steady herself. Predawn light was shining through the window, and Markos lay dead in Ares’ lap, and somehow, despite centuries of watching younger soldiers die in droves, that mattered.

“I’m sorry,” they said. “I don’t know why I brought him with me. His soul is already gone.”

Kataida took a step forward. “Ares.”

“I’m sorry,” Ares said. “I’ll go, after this. But I don’t know where to put him, and I don’t know why it matters.” They took a breath, and it came in too cold, stinging the heat of their internal fires. “I think I need your help.”

Chapter

Six

War had risenwith the sun over Arktos.

Kataida stood at attention with her regiment in the central square in Axon, which was eerily quiet, all sounds of normal, day-to-day life having been silenced by the massacre at the training academy north of Axon. Somewhere in the ranks of soldiers, Markos’ adopted parents, Yannis and Adrastus, stood just as still, waiting for their Strategos’ orders. Their grief in their son’s brutal murder, and their fierce pride in his heroic attempts to save lives were pushed down deep by the stark reality of both what had happened to the trainees, and what they’d found in the square at dawn that morning.

Atreus Akti’s shield, one of their most prized historical relics and of deeply personal meaning to Evander, had been taken from the civic building and shattered into pieces that littered the square. On the bleached white stone of the building itself, the head of a mountain lion had been painted in stark red, with the ominous wordsNot Even One Survives.

Evander’s voice rang out over the assembled soldiers, dominance so strong that several soldiers lowered their gaze and put their hands behind their backs immediately. “Last night,an atrocity was committed at the Koryfi Training Center. Every one of the soldiers in training there were brutally murdered by unknown persons.”

Evander Akti had wept over Markos’s body, had wept when he’d embraced Markos’ adopted parents. He’d listened to Kataida’s horrified recitation of the events as Ares had recounted them, and she’d seen him turn from grief-stricken to incandescent with rage. She’d never seen her father like that, dominance bleeding so strongly that all the submissives near him were on their knees in seconds–including Ares,who’d stood quietly by Kataida’s side, eyes burning as they watched, silent, while Evander pulled Elena to him and shook in her arms while she tried to soothe him. Aleks was in the corner, oblivious, with the blank-eyed look that said he was elsewhere–likely on the river, demanding to know why Azaiah had taken the souls that shouldhave been Aleks’ responsibility. It wasn’t long before he made his way out of the room, saying nothing. No one tried to stop him.

But the god of war stayed silent and the god of death, well, he’d done enough that night in Arktos. When she’d left to put on her uniform for muster, Ares had been nowhere to be found. She saw them again now, standing behind her father as he addressed his soldiers, bright eyes burning, flame-tipped hair neatly braided, and her heart squeezed as she saw the uniform they wore. It was not that of a Strategos, or even a high-ranking officer, but the same one that Markos would have worn, that of a soldier in the barracks who’d earned top marks and was set to become an officer.

She did not know if her father could see Ares, but she had a feeling that he could. She did not think War would be very far from Evander Akti for some time.

The assembled Arkoudai stood in perfect silence as Evander continued. “This was no attack from foreign shores, make nomistake. Those who slaughteredchildrento show the strength of their cowardice were, until that moment, fellow Arkoudai. Then they committed an atrocity so heinous there are no words for me to use to speak of it. They spilled the blood of the future of our nation on the sands near the Soldiers. They defaced our sacred buildings, they destroyed our relics, and they left a missive pinned to my door with a dagger. They did this because of me.”

Even that failed to elicit a single sound from the troops, so Evander kept speaking, voice ringing out loud like a bell, cold and bright. “The letter said it was because I am weak, that I am glorified bureaucrat who does not lead, but who chooses instead to hide. It said that I had weakened the Akti line by marrying a foreign woman and a foreign man, that my son is a submissive, and my daughter too strange, and my youngest too small and only half-Arkoudai by blood. It said that my submissive consorts with strange gods that will curse us.”

Behind him, Kataida saw Ares raise their chin, just a bit, their eyes searching the crowd for her. She met their gaze, only for a moment, and Ares inclined their head like a benediction or a blessing, nothing like the eager masochist pleading to kneel for her, what felt like a lifetime ago.

As for the comments about her and Theron, she’d already heard what was in the letter, since she and Menelaus had been with her father when he’d found it. It wasn’t as though either she or Theron thought they’d ever take over for Evander. Theron being a submissive wasn’t actually an issue--submissives had held the position before, even ones brattier than her brother. It was his detached nature, his reticence to make a name for himself or even show off that he was a gifted swordsman.

And Kataida knew very well that she was strange.

But Malik was the son of a dominant Arkoudai and a dominant Lukoi, the grandson of the Kuvar of Lukos and the son of the Strategos, dominants all. The Lukoi had something of aclaim on Arktos, given they used to live here before the empire had fallen. Elena Akti was a descendant of the last Iperian emperor, at that.

“According to this letter, I am no longer fit to be your Strategos. The Akti line hasweak bloodnow, because I was never meant to lead you. The title was meant for my brother, who fell beneath the ruins of Arktos when we were barely teenagers.” Evander’s face was stony, posture rigid. “They say they knew it was time to depose my rule when they saw me carrying a shield and claiming it was Atreus Akti’s, our founder and my ancestor. Atreus was a sword, so they say. He was not a shield. It is an insult, and that’s why they have broken it. For you see, these cowards who slaughter children and deface buildings in the dead of night, too afraid of what they’ve wrought to look me in the eyes…they say my ancestor Atreus has been reborn, and his soul has found a moresuitable vesselin which to dwell.”

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