“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you here before.” I wasn’t able to contain my curiosity.
He turned to me and grinned. “You wouldn’t have. I just arrived last night in the middle of all the chaos.”
“You weren’t involved, were you?” I asked the question, hoping that if Selene did send him, it would throw him off.
He leaned closer. “Nope, I was too busy planning a trip to the Catalina Wine Mixer.”
I blinked. “Excuse me?” Did I hear him right?
He grinned, “I’ll be in touch. Someone I’m close to wants to plan someactivitiesfor later.” Giving me a wink, he left the table.
I was too stunned to move. Only Chloe would useStep Brothersto let me know I could trust someone. Was that crazy redhead here? Did her brothers know?
We weren’t required to train the day after coliseum battles, but I usually did a quick workout, anyway. Today, I really needed to move. I needed the focus. Knowing my guys were here and that Chloe might be had me on edge.
I walked out to the training yard and retrieved my short swords from the armory. The air still smelled of blood and ozone from yesterday’s fights. Every muscle in my body demanded to be stretched—I needed movement.
I took my swords into my hands and began slowly.
Breathe. Step. Pivot.
Each movement bled into the next. My wrists remembered the weight, my shoulders the rhythm of survival. But this morning wasn’t about fighting—it was about listening.
The whispers came softly at first. The same voices that had guided me in dreams the last few days—Ancestors whose names I didn’t yet know. They wove through my mind like threads of smoke.
“Balance is forged, not found.
The blood remembers.”
My blades glimmered faintly as if the steel itself pulsed with their words. I sank into a low stance, exhaling fire. It licked across the edges, not burning but purifying.
Sweat mixed with something else: energy—a hum beneath my skin, answering the call of every soul who came before me. My movements grew sharper, faster, no longer mine alone. I could feel several others add to the precision in my strikes, another Ancestor’s grace in the turn of my wrist.
I felt Pantar watching approvingly from the shadows, his eyes unblinking, tail sweeping slowly. The connection between him and me snapped back into place.
I stopped my movements abruptly, trying to find him with my eyes, not just with my mind.“Pantar, are you here?”
“I never left you, Nexus.”I heard his voice in my head.
Then, I felt him leave abruptly. It seemed like everyone had shown up to rescue me.
Suddenly, the training yard blurred, colors bleeding at the edges. The dawn haze fractured into shards of light and shadow until I wasn’t standing on packed dirt anymore. I was in marble halls.
A throne room.
Marble stretched beneath my feet, white streaked with gold and ash. The throne room was heavy with smoke and ruin. Queen Lilibet, I, stood at its heart—armor split at the shoulder, crown cracked but gleaming through blood and dust.
Before her/me six men knelt. Ambrose, Merritt, Bren, Zenon, Larkin… and Kratos.
Their loyalty was a living thing in the air, electric and fierce. Five of them held their heads bowed, devotion carved in every line of their faces. But one—Kratos—kept his eyes lifted. They burned not with reverence, but with conflict.
“Don’t,” she whispered. “Not you.”
Kratos stood and stepped closer. His expression was raw, almost pleading. His lips moved, but I couldn’t hear the words—only the tremor of them, thick with pain.
Lilibet shook her head once, tears tracing paths through the grime on her cheeks. Then the light around them erupted.
Golden sigils flared across the marble, searing symbols I couldn’t read. A deafening roar split the vision, part grief, part fury—and then everything shattered into shards of sound and light.
