I let him drop to the floor again as I stood, fists clenched and chest heaving as the King was on his knees in front of me. There was something terribly satisfying in that, but I couldn’t analyze it through my grief. All I knew was that I had lost the only person in the world who meant anything to me.
I saw him lift one hand to wipe a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth, then he smiled at me, his eyes cold and unyielding.
“And I… I am yourfather!” he roared.
Suddenly I felt a piercing pain ripping through my head, and nausea clamped around my gut. For a moment the maelstrom of anger and pain within me pushed back against that vise, struggling to keep the piercing pain at bay. For a moment, it seemed to lift.
His eyes widened for a moment in surprise, then narrowed in anger, as if sensing my resistance and roared, “I am yourKing!”
I found myself doubled over, unable to see or hear much of anything through the pain in my head. In mere seconds I felt a blessed darkness overtaking me. Then there was nothing.
Chapter 2
Helios
We fought. Goddess knew we fought. But the might of the Alexandrian army was too much, and with so few Mageia on our side, we were losing. Maybe not the battle, but definitely the war.
Ri and I fought back-to-back for what seemed like hours, his Fire and Air magic helping keep a ring of safety around us while my claws cut through armor and flesh. We’d been friends since childhood and he was one of our few natural Dual Mages, an extremely rare form of Mageia who could manage multiple elements without being bonded to a Soma.
Illyria had been fighting to keep its independence for two hundred and fifty years. We had slowly, but steadily, lost ground to the invaders year after year until only a small number of us remained free, but those few remained dedicated to fighting.
My people were primarily Somatophylakes, or “Somas” for short. We Bonded with and defended the Mageia so that they could focus on using their magical abilities. Only Mageia with a Soma Bonded were able to unlock the ability to access multiple elements. Soma had enhanced physical abilities, including shape shifting abilities that gave us claws, teeth, and muscles for days. The link unlocked our other forms: one a giant beast, the other,our most powerful form, merged man and beast. But neither made us invincible.
Our last Tesseris Mageia, Rhea, had been killed protecting an escaping caravan of Mageia kids. When the assassin targeting Rhea had slipped into camp, we had discovered them too late. Her Soma had taken her own life a short time later. It was rare for a Soma to outlive their Mageia but losing them both had taken the heart out of much of the Illyrian resistance. Without Rhea to protect our Mageia, we were losing. Had already lost, if truth be told, but we were too damn stubborn to give up.
“How are you holding up, Hel?” Ri asked, sending a whip of Fire through the air at an attacker. The soldier aimed his firearm at us and pulled the trigger. I didn’t even wince as the bullets skipped off Ri’s shield of Air: I knew he’d protect us.
“Oh, you know,” I growled, leaping forward, and thrusting my claws up under the soldier’s chin, my voice nonchalant. “Okay. Not much is going on. A little bored. You?”
Ri laughed as he rolled the Fire whip in a circle over our heads.
“Same,” he said, before I saw his eyes go distant for a moment. The head of the Fire whip expanded to the size of a cannonball, cutting down soldier after soldier surrounding us before exploding out in a circle, the magical shrapnel cutting down hundreds of soldiers around us. “I think it might be time for us to blow this popsicle stand, though. How about you?”
I grinned at him.
“Yeah, I think the party’s over,” I agreed, looking at the mass of dead and dying soldiers.
“Besides, we’ve got a date tonight,” I reminded him with a grin.
We had been planning our Bonding ceremony for weeks, and I wasn’t going to let anything interfere.
???
Later that night, we stood in our best clothes before our family and friends, hands clasped, the feel of our magics swirling around each other.
“Holy shit, Hel, I can’t believe we’re finally doing this!” Ri whispered, grinning at me, as his unruly mop of blond hair fell across his eyes, as usual.
“Yeah, well, seems past time to me,” I said, grinning at my best friend.
Orion Konstantine (or Ri, as he preferred to be called), Fire Mageia, and the man closer to me than a brother stood next to me as we began the words that would bind our souls together forever.
Hecate
Goddess of the Moon
Goddess of Justice
Maiden, Mother, and Crone
