“Like I lost a leg.” A ragged laugh. Then a groan. “Half a leg.”
It wasn’t funny. Not when his father looked so…small.
At least they were together, screaming, crying, vomiting companions through the night as the healers put them back together with their poultices and wraps. In Mettius’s case, a cauterization to halt his bleeding.
Augustus gripped the bench, bracing to push. He had to move, if for no other reason than to get his blood flowing into his frozen limbs. Even using only arm strength, pain lanced across his back. Bile burned the back of his throat, and his head spun. Sweat slicked his brow.
He blinked through the haze of pain. Blood streaked the grout lines in rust-brown trails. The damp, pitted walls closed around him like a fist. Very different from the last time he’d been here, when his biggest mistake was a bottle and someone’s spouse. He’d been damn near nostalgic that night over when he’d successfully picked his first lock in one of these cells.
Not that he’d escaped… The stone building backed up against a cliffside, complete with jagged rocks and a crashing surf.
Across the narrow corridor, Mettius, pale and sweaty, lay on an identical stone bench with his bandaged leg propped on a blanket roll. Thorne’s blade had been clean and true—just below the knee. But someone had hacked the pant leg to mid-thigh, exposing bone-thin skin.
Augustus’s stomach hollowed out. His father used to carry weight, whether in confidence or simple muscle mass. Shirts, jackets, tunics…no matter what he wore, he looked crisp and clean. His beard was always trimmed and full.
Now, his shirt clung to his chest in sweat-stained patches, the fabric yellowed and torn. His beard was a tangled, bloody nest. He looked thinner. Older. His time with Thorne had aged him ten years or more.
He hated seeing his father like this. But, gods help him, he was grateful he’d found him alive.
Thorne hadn’t been as kind with the rest.
“What happened?” Augustus asked, his voice gritty. “What he did aboard theAkias… Had I known it was that bad, I— You should have told me.”
He’d just been sitting around twiddling his thumbs forweeks, living it up in a palace like some high-born lord. All the while, his family was dying slow, painful deaths.
Mettius glared toward the ceiling, and a moment later, he swiped his damp eyes. “You saw them?”
Augustus swallowed the sudden lump in his throat. “Aye. Did you?”
He didn’t answer right away. “He made me watch. Loto… He made him go last. Took five men to hold him down.” Mettius’s voice began to quake and thicken. “I couldn’t?—”
“It’s okay, Dad. I know.”
“Where’s the ship now?”
“I… I burned it. I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking?—”
“Don’t be sorry. It’s what I would have done.”
Augustus released a breath. “How did it come to this? The fleet… You took an entire capital only a few months ago. I don’t understand.”
Mettius scrubbed his face and pushed upright, wincing and grunting, until he was half-supported by the stone wall at his back. “Phya’s been slowly pulling the threads of our purse strings for too long. The crews began dwindling. We couldn’t replenish food, let alone weapons. Thorne had the manpower and strength, and by the time we crossed his path outside Okos…” He shrugged one frail shoulder. “We didn’t make it easy, but we lost in the end.”
“Why were you there? Where’s the rest of the fleet?”
“We were regrouping after we lost Ramón and Quin, then word reached me that he’d taken Selene. I knew you’d follow on theEntia, and I thought…” Mettius met Augustus’s eyes. “I couldn’t let you do this on your own.”
Augustus’s throat tightened. “All this because I lost that steel? I should have listened to you and Mom.”
“Don’t put that on yourself. Phya was a fucking prick, but he was a coward, too. He would have caved eventually. This is all Tristan Thorne.”
“But why? This seems a little extreme, doesn’t it? The fleet’s never been loved, but this feels personal.”
Mettius lay back down and draped an arm across his belly. “I don’t know. He just keeps saying I’ll understand when the time comes.” A chilly silence passed between them, and after a while, his father whispered, “I’m glad your mother isn’t here for this.”
“You can’t mean that.”
Silence thickened the already humid air.
