He wheeled his horse in a tight circle, searching?—
There.
Dimitrios.
Sixsoldiers closed in.
Nikolas raised his sword high. Sunlight kissed the steel, catching every Perean eye.
“To your king!”
“We’re coming, Augustus,” Blaze whispered to the salt air. “Just hold on.”
A few minutes ago, he’d truly thought Augustus and Mettius were lost. Not because of the elk—Augustus would’ve handled that.
But he hadn’t counted on Augustus falling to Thorne in a fight.
Blaze had started down that sandy slope without hesitation, but Rosyln was a lot stronger than she looked. Then Luc and Xavier joined her, wrestling him to the ground for the sake of “the plan.”
Selene, though, wouldn’t be stopped. She’d run, twisted, ducked, done literallyeverything, including punching Roman in the jaw—a new favorite memory—to reach that beach in time.
Now, all that was left was to focus on the rest.
The aftermath.
The ships were handled. Omar’s family—the sneakier lot—had seen to that. Most of Thorne’s fleet was either on fire or floundering. The rest were caught between cannon fire from six Triarius ships and their own panic.
That battle wouldn’t last long.
The men who stayed behind now darkened the white cove beach, armed and bloodthirsty. A tide of vengeance pushing toward the narrow gap that would soon spill them out in small chunks onto Thorne’s beach. Those sands pocked by hoofprints and littered with the bodies of their crewmen and family. Contorted and silent.
Thorne deserved whatever was coming to him.
Augustus and Selene had more than earned their revenge.
Maybe they all had. For the dead on the beach. The slain inside theAkiasand in Warian Bay.
But Thorne had made it personal. Especially for the two on that beach.Standing shoulder to shoulder in the heart of the chaos, framed by wreckage and sand, locked in a slow, terrible standoff.
Augustus stood bloodied but tall, sword in his hand. Selene, sharp and bright at his side—not unlike seaglass, capable of cutting a man open if he got too close.
From the cliffside beside him, Roslyn met his eyes. “We’re ready.”
Blaze exhaled. Steady. “Let’s go.”
Augustus’s chest filled with warmth—andhope.
He released Selene’s hand, Cassia’s rings flashing on her fingers, right where they belonged. And the Poignard knives…
Cassia had died with those in her hands.
His mother had always sworn she’d draw Thorne’s blood. Even from the Valley, she’d found a way to fulfill one last promise.
Feet away, Thorne tilted his head, smiling faintly. “Let’s end this.”
Something shifted. Not in Thorne, but in the air.
A sound—no, the absence of it. The sharp inhale of a world preparing to roar.
