Selene raised a hand and watched until he was a blur, and the dock shifted under her feet as another came to stand beside her, steady as stone.
“Did you hear any of that?” she asked without looking up.
Oskar nodded once. “I’m ready whenever you are.”
Augustus rolled his tunic sleeves to the elbow as he strode toward Taran Phya’s old office. Cobblestones still bore the soot of torch fires. Shutters hung broken over boarded windows, untouched five weeks later.
People cleared the path ahead, wary, refusing his eye. They didn’t just distrust him. They looked at him like a stranger. And, if he were honest, the feeling was mutual. These same people watched his humiliation in The Crossroads and raised not a finger to help him.
Now, Phya was gone, and Thorne’s head was rotting on a spike in the center of town for everyone to see.
The Triarius Fleet had carved through these streets and took everything Phya built within hours. And Mettius, scarred and disfigured, had stepped into the power vacuum with a viciousness no one dared to resist.
Augustus had stayed out of it. He and Selene had remainedaboard theEntiauntil the smoke had cleared, then found a room on the outskirts of town.
And now he stayed. Not because Warian Bay felt like home, but because his father wasn’t in any physical state to hold it alone.
Augustus paused outside the tavern that housed Phya’s old office. Triarius men guarded the entrance, their eyes tracking every movement with tense shoulders. They stepped aside for him, but moved right back into place the moment he was clear.
Inside, the tavern was quiet. Calm. The few patrons seated inside greeted him with silent nods. Toward the back, Felix and Pavle went a step further and gave a two-fingered salute.
Augustus took the creaking hall floors to the office that hadn’t changed so much as hardened. The same stained-glass windows cast fractured blues and greens across the floor, although the shelves of ledgers were stacked higher than ever and showed no clear organization.
Mettius sat behind the desk in a wheeled chair built from dark oak and iron. His stump of a leg rested on a padded brace, while the other planted firm against the floor.
Lili, hair tied back and ink smudging her hands, was bent over a ledger to Mettius’s right, scribbling across the page.
Guilt wormed through Augustus’s chest. She’d been here for Mettius more than anyone.Heshould be the one running the operation at his father’s side.
Mettius sank into his chair and stroked his length of beard. “Everything all right? I expected you a while ago.”
Augustus dropped onto the old velvet settee and spread his arms across the back. “Fine. Couldn’t be better.”
He’d spent an hour searching for Selene, half-expecting to find her dead… Other than that, he wasgreat.
His father arched a single brow. “You have to stop.”
“Stop what?”
“Expecting another Thorne to come around the corner. The war is over. The city is ours?—”
“Thorne’s mounted head is infuriating anyone who might feel like retaliating.”
The last time Augustus pissed off the wrong people, Thorne and Phya used Selene as bait.
Thorne’s head wasn’t the only thing on display… Augustus’s weakness had paved the damn roads.
“Give it some time,” Mettius said. “It’ll pass. It always does.”
Augustus raised his hands. “Tell that to the seventeen years in Thorne’s wake.”
Mettius’s mouth opened to respond, but Lili drummed a thick stack of paper on the tabletop under the guise of straightening it.
“I have news,” she announced.
“Thank the gods,” Augustus murmured.
Mettius sent him a look that clearly said they weren’t done, but he twisted to give Lili his full attention. “Sounds serious.”
