Council meetings were held in the utmost of secrecy. Even Araes was vetted through a grueling process before that morning’s meeting just to stand paces away by the entrance. He watched the old lord strain against the cork before accepting defeat and settling for the pitcher of water collecting condensation in the too warm space.
“Lord Kalos, I appreciate your concern but send your messengers. Reestablish the trade routes lost in the war,” Tethys snipped.
Araes almost sympathized with the goddess. This panel of ancient, stale men hadn’t responded to her decisions with even the slightest respect or courtesy for their queen. It was clear she was taken as seriously as a child, and they treated her as such. Condescending tones and patronizing glances passed between them with every response or retort.
He couldn’t help but agree with Lord Kalos on this matter, though. The western border was still wildly unstable. Even a messenger risked their life treading too deep into Canissaen territory. The moral maxims that unified the entire continent, although upheld at the highest of honors, wouldn’t protect this Venian emissary. The rebels, with antics aimed for mass destruction, tossed the maxims aside. Times had changed in the most terrifying of ways.
“You are a foolish girl if you think the rebellion has been contained,” Kalos seethed.
Tethys’s small nostrils flared. Araes knew she struggled to contain the rage he witnessed burn in her expression the night before. She’d tried to suppress it, to glamour it with indifference, but those glittering eyes were the clearest of windows. He’d watched a bitter contempt blaze into white hot fury, and something in him softened. Her angerwas a reflection of his own.
The difference, though, was he could control it. To siphon it into the most lethal of weapons. If his basic training taught him anything, it was how to shut that shit down. The most reckless of warriors were those that’d come undone, and against an adversary as deadly as these rebels, recklessness would get you killed.
He prayed to never see the day she was unable to withhold her rage any longer.
“If it’d put the riders at ease, send a request to the 12th battalion. They are back in the city for a supply restock. Perhaps they can provide a soldier or two,” Tethys said, blinking toward Araes.
He grimaced. The 12th battalion had battled alongside the 10th and the 15th during the final months of the war. They’d lost more men and suffered far greater than his own unit. A supply restock wasn’t merely logistical, it allowed for rest and recovery with their families. Most importantly, though, it was an opportunity to rid their minds of trauma before returning to the terrors of war.
Lord Kalos was right. Even with the treaty in place, the rebellion carried on at full force. To reassign those men after just returning would be wrong, but to send them back across the front lines was utterly cruel.
“It will be done, my lady,” Lord Kalos said, bowing his head.
“Now, what next?” Tethys asked, picking at a perfectly manicured fingernail.
“I have intelligence reports from my shades in Serpens. There’s been another disappearance. Another child,” Lord Ophis, the Keeper of Secrets, and only man in the bunch that treated her somewhat justly, interjected.
Ophis’s shades were an incredibly complex, exceptionally discrete, web of spies throughout not just Venia, but the continent entirely. They lurked in back alleys of lowborn districts, such as Serpens, not necessarily watching,but alwayslistening.
“Another child?” Tethys sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “We need to get a hold of whoever is taking these children from their mothers. Lord Drakon, I’d like you to assign a second night patrol throughout Serpens. See if your city guards can catch this criminal.”
Drakon, the withering old blanket of a man, nodded slightly before blowing his nose into a handkerchief equally as ancient as he.
As the discussion carried on, Araes returned to the soldiers of the 12th. He couldn’t help but think of the brothers and sisters he’d left behind. Of the soldiers who’d just arrived, undressing their armor and hanging their weapons.
Tethys was naive. Impressionable. Her time spent locked away in her beautiful manor, reading her novellas, hadn’t prepared her for this reign in the least bit. He simply couldn’t stand on the wayside and let her justify sending a broken soldier back into his nightmare.
“My lady, hate me not for the interjection, but I’ve seen the brutality of the front lines. Lord Kalos is correct in that there are still rebels on the loose. Wreaking havoc on our borderland keeps. The 12th needs time to recover. To see their wives and children. Their parents. You cannot pull them back into the madness after they’ve just returned from it,” Araes said. He’d debated speaking up, knowing it wasn’t his place. His duty to his fellow soldiers, however, was of far greater importance than the etiquette required of him.
“Apologies, Lieutenant, had I known we’d gained a member of the council, I would have requested an extra seat for the table,” Tethys snapped, her full attention drawing beads of sweat down the nape of his neck. He wasn’t sure why the goddess brought on such a physical reaction, but his heart pounded like a doe facing its hunter.
“I mean no disrespect, Goddess. I just think the opinion of one who’d fought alongside the 12th would be beneficial,” he said, dipping his chin.
“Well, you thought wrong. Know your place, Lieutenant Araes.” His name on her tongue sent a shockwave through him. A subtle blush of his cheeks escaped from the lock he’d put around himself, and he backed away slowly from the table in hopes the impervious lords hadn’t noticed it.
“Now, Lord Ophis, tell me of your shades lead on the lowborn disappearances,” Tethys said, steering her attention back to the lords.
Chapter 5
It was clear Lord Kalos was simply a conduit for the council’s lack of confidence in her leadership, but Tethys remained furious at the babbling old imbecile as court thankfully concluded. It wasn’t the utter lack of respect for the crown that bothered her, she expected that. No, it was the statuesque, chestnut-haired soldier with that infuriatingly arrogant expression sculpted across his infuriatingly perfect lips as the public execution of her authority carried on. And, when he’d opened his mouth, toagreewith the rodent of a man, Lord Kalos, she’d nearly exploded entirely. He stood there, smug and satisfied, as the aftermath of his outburst carried out. By the conclusion of council she felt like a soldier returning from the deadliest of battlefields.
It’d been a calculated blood bath of humiliation designed to usurp the smidge of authority gained from her title as queen. She wondered what Polaris would have done, but swiftly realized that the Ursaeans respected their beloved goddess too much to ever question her so publicly.Or privately, for that matter.
Tethys knew the rebellion was far from over. Procyon wouldn’t have been so quick to return to Canissa after their wedding if it wasn’t entirely imperative. She also knew it wasn’t fair or just to send a soldier from the 12th back across the border so soon after they’d returned home.
Unfortunately, if it were one man’s sanity or Venia’s critical trade routes at the chopping block, the choice was an obvious one. Those routes were crucial for her peoples’ welfare. Canissa single-handedly supplied not just grain to the other realms, but also most fruits and vegetables. They weren’t considered the pinnacle of agriculture in the mortal realm for nothing.
Tethys knew Venia starved, and this was one thing shecoulddo for them. What Lieutenant Araes, and Lord Kalos for that matter, failed to realize was that the drought was upon them. There may be a month or so more of the rainy season, and when that shift hit, crops would dwindle more than they already did. There were malnourished and hungry children already in Serpens, but without those trade routes, there would be Antarean children hungry as well.
