Everything Leonidas had done on Titos’s order, down to the foolish attack on Yirian soil…all to weaken Dimitrios’s stance. It hadn’t mattered if they won or lost that battle against the Yirians, only that they’d been foolish enough to try. Their remaining allies would halt trade, and they might as well open the mines to every pirate and smuggler in the region to take their fill of the ioprese steel.
“What can we do?” Dimitrios asked. He turned to face his two closest allies. “Tell me there’s a chance.”
Rena shook her head. “I’m afraid I can be of no help here, nephew. My father wants me home. He must intend for us all to shelter in place untilthe dust settles.”
Pateras rose. “I ride at once to the border. We need steel and presence both. I’ll report back as often as I can. Until then, stay put. Be ready.”
Dimitrios remained on the balcony long after they had gone. He’d wanted peace. A chance to rebuild, not to bleed. But Titos Demakis had made his move. And now?
Now he would answer it.
Chapter
Forty-One
Augustus had known death was coming. He just hadn’t known how loud it would be. The surf, the gulls, the creaking of the ship—it all sang like a funeral dirge.
Thorne’s men dragged Augustus and Mettius to the upper decks, hands bound, eyes seared by the sudden sunlight… And waited. They’d been teasing this reveal for weeks.
Tristan Thorne’s moment had finally arrived.
As his vision cleared and focused on the details of the unfamiliar beach, Augustus’s body screamed from the lingering pain. He’d been kicked and punched and spit on and half-drowned more times than he could count.
Mettius had been forced to watch it all—every drowning, every lash, every time they broke him and dragged him back for more.
The drowning had been deliberate—Thorne’s idea. They’d dunked Augustus head-first into a barrel of water and let him thrash until the world went black, then he’d wake up later with seawater bursting from his burning lungs.
All payback for killing Captain Cuza and stealing Thorne’s ship almost a year ago. TheSoriswas at the bottom of Irrinet Gulf now—a home for shedine—and Cuza had long ago been eaten by sharks. Turned out, Thorne was still fucking pissed about it.
Augustus could have fought it, could have clawed his wayto survival and vengeance—an escape, no matter what it looked like—but his father couldn’t. So, he surrendered. Not from fear or desperation, butlove.
This latest torture, however, the scene before them, was for Mettius. Thorne’s purpose had never been about conquest. He was here to burn down the Triarius name, and Augustus was merely an ember. The last of hundreds.
This beach was where Quin and Ramón’s crews had gone. Two hundred men and women, hands nailed to splintered planks, a forest of human grave markers.
The crew of theAkiashad died well by comparison. Even the sea seemed ashamed, hissing against the shore. The evening tide carried monsters to feast on the lowest limbs still within reach.
Mettius slouched heavily in the arms that held him up. His cracked voice reached Augustus as if through water. “You son of a bitch.”
Old Augustus would have lunged, broken or not, teeth bared for blood. The urge still burned in his bones. But he smothered it. Refused to give Thorne the satisfaction.
Selene was likely dead, so what did any of this matter?
In the face of his inevitable end, Augustus did what he’d been doing for days now: he thought about Selene. He dove deep into his mind and lay down in those quiet moments between all the chaos their lives had produced. The sweetest of memories sliced effortlessly through all the noise. Like the day they swam in a cove under a clear sky, and the way her laughter peeled when he chased her through the water. The nights when she lay on his chest, her hair tickling his nose, moonlight painting her skin with its milky glow. The earnest, patient way she listened when he spoke—she had such a unique way of making him feel heard.
Thorne wanted this moment to hurt, but Augustus refused to bite. This time might be hard to experience, and it might be right under his nose, but Selene was more than his past…she was his forever. She was in unlimited lifetimes ahead, and they would be together again soon.
But Mettius… He needed Augustus now.
Thorne’s voice drifted through Augustus’s moment of peace. “Do you see, Triarius? Do you understand now?”
Tears slid from his father’s eyes.
“Gallagher,” Mettius rasped out.
The name struck like a hammer. Sailors still whispered it intaverns—the fleet too cruel to be human, too monstrous to survive. Yet here it was, resurrected in Thorne’s grin.
Tristan Thorne fisted the hair at the back of Mettius’s head and held him steady. Forced him to look at the carnage. “Now, ask yourself a question. Most of those poor bastards are still alive out there—barely. I told my men to leave them just enough strength to scream. Starvation, thirst, worse…”
