Dimitrios turned, the tang of blood and the salt of sweat thick on his tongue. Steel screamed. He drove forward, teeth gritted, swinging from the left, right, left. Pounding into the man’s guard until the soldier staggered. Dimitrios swept low and carved across the man’s thigh.
The soldier dropped with a yell, clutching his leg.
Dimitrios stepped back, his breath jagged, then turned toward the next threat without hesitation.
A Soterran soldier broke through the line, blade swinging for a Perean’s throat?—
Dimitrios threw himself between them. The blow met his sword, rattling through his spine. He twisted, disarmed the soldier, and pounded a fist into his throat.
“Keep going!” he yelled to his people. “Push them back!”
A roar from behind brought a moment’s stillness to the chaos.
Dimitrios pivoted?—
Pateras hurled a spear through a charging enemy’s chest. The old man looked half-dead but refused to give over to his exhaustion.
Sudden movement rushed toward Dimitrios.
He looked up?—
And ducked beneath a warhammer.
The brute of a man at the other end snarled.
Dimitrios struck low—metal clanged off greaves. Another swing whistled past, close enough to graze his neck. He kicked hard at the man’s knee, and the joint buckled.
The hammer dropped.
Dimitrios caught it midair and swung wide, burying the hammer’s claw in the man’s chest. Bone cracked. The man dropped, silent and staring.
He panted over the body, sweat stinging his eyes. Blood soaking his sleeves. A burn in his shoulder he would feel for many days to come.
There had been a time when he thought a crown would make him king.
Now he knew better.
This—blood, grit, choice—this was the cost of sovereignty.
Ahead, the Perean banner still flew, raised high by a soldier with one arm bound in a bloodied sling. And beyond, the Soterran army was pulling back.
They were taking the pass back.
They were winning.
But it wasn’t over.
Not until every last Soterran either fled orfell.
Thorne wouldn’t get away that easily.
A jagged trail carved up the dune—footprints, dragging lines, shattered shells.
Augustus followed it up, sword raised, lungs burning. Somewhere back there lay a shattered fishing village. A place where only ghosts remained.
At the crest of the dune, Thorne stood like a king surveying the fall of his empire.
A graveyard comprised of smoke, ash, and blood-soaked sand.
