“I didn’t think she’d mind.”
Augustus kissed her knuckles, his eyes gleaming. “She’d be honored.”
Several feet away, Thorne’s voice cut through. “The lovers together again. You never give up, do you?”
Selene and Augustus turned in unison, blades raised, bonded in blood and purpose. Their answer was one voice. One vow.
“Never.”
Chapter
Forty-Six
Dimitrios had expected a battle.
What he found was a massacre.
The ridgeline offered him no room for hope. The truth unfolded in grim, blood-soaked strokes. Smoke billowed and steel clashed. Men screamed. Bodies lay scattered in the dust.
The Soterran army pressed without mercy.
The Perean banner still flew, barely, clutched by a boy too young to be on the battlefield. Near him, a soldier took a blade to the gut and fell without a sound. Another was trampled by a horse.
Dimitrios’s horse sidestepped beneath him, sensing the tension.
Nikolas rode up alongside, face grim. “Gods.”
Behind them, the ridge was quiet. His forces watching. Waiting. The trained soldiers in front, helmets donned, greaves and bracers in place. Shields at the ready, spears in hand.
And farther back were his people. Armed with determination and old blades taken from hearths. Sharpened tools of their trade. They were blacksmiths and fishermen. They were too young and too old. They were souls who didn’t know war, and eyes that had seen more than enough. And yet, they’d come anyway.
They’d followed him every step of the way.
Dimitrios dismounted and faced them. The wind tore at the blue cloak draped over the overlapping plates of his silver cuirass.
“They thought they could break us,” he shouted. “That we wouldn’t fight.”
Spears slammed into the dirt in agreement.
“Our fathers built these lands,” he continued. “Your mothers bled for them. So will we. Together.”
Their roar broke through the air, scattering birds from the trees. Weapons stabbed the sky.
Dimitrios swung back into the saddle. He looked to Nikolas, then to his people.
“Nervous?” Nikolas asked quietly.
“Yes.”
“Good.” His horse shifted. “I was beginning to think you were no longer human.”
Dimitrios grinned and kicked his heels into the horse’s side. “Race you there.”
Behind him, swords high, Perean hearts answered Soterran steel with a thundering charge.
The walls groaned. Dust fell in soft spirals from the ceiling.
Kai didn’t slow. Let the mountain threaten and tremble—Fala was somewhere in this ruin, and nothing would stop her.
