“You mean to tell me the city has entirely fallen? No, I won’t accept that.” Araes paced to the windows slowly, careful to test the weight of his body on each foot before taking a step. Unlike Venia’s cliffside coast, Aquilae melted into the ocean gradually in a long strip of white sand. The glistening swells over the horizon gave life to the southern sea as if it were one writhing, wriggling thing, but what should’ve felt peaceful or serene only sent chills through Araes’s core.
“I’m afraid it is. It wasn’t just Ophis who sent a scroll. Otto activated the Aquilaean allied forces just last night to provide aid. I haven’t yet deployed them,” Altair said, twisting a turquoise ring around his index finger. The god joined Araes by the windows and threw him a solemn glance.
“Why not? If Venia requests aid, is it not your duty to provide it, my king?” Araes clenched his fists, thinking of all the innocence spilled and lives stolen. He was at least a few hundred miles from his home, yet the crackle of burning buildings and screams of the dying roared through him like raging rapids. The rebels would hit the lowborn the hardest. Serpens stood between the western border and Antares. They were defenseless.
“I need to ensure I’m aiding the right side, Lieutenant. That’s why I haven’t yet sent them.” Altair’s words brought a rage up Araes’s throat. The bastard truly thought Venian’s the wrong side of this war?
“It doesn’t matter which side is thecorrectside, as you say. We’ll all be fighting a common enemy if Tethys doesn’t wake up,” he hissed, red blurring the corners of hiseyes. The words dissipated in the curtain of tension between the males before Araes realized his slip up.
“What do you mean acommon enemy?” Altair prodded, watching the soldier with unflinching focus. Araes met the immortal’s eyes. He’d said too much, but the gravity of their situation needed to be known.
“If you know of the prism key’s power, then I assume you already know,” he offered the bluff, praying Altair couldn’t see through it. The immortal took in a breath, watching the lieutenant scrutinize his every movement.
“You mean the fifth primordial, Vorthal. Yes, I’m aware of the histories.” Altair’s response was disarmingly casual, as if the hidden passages of the Theogony weren’t kept secret over the course of millennia. “All of my siblings know the truth of the realms’ creation.”
“All but Tethys, you mean,” Araes said, treading uncomfortably close to unveiling the truth of their hand. “There are children going missing in Venia—lowborn children. Our investigation into their disappearances led us here: to the key, to Vorthal, and now to Aquilae, it would seem. But why keep the truth from her?”
Altair bit his lip and said nothing.
Instead, he laced his hands behind his back and padded to the windows. The sea below swirled and bent in his direction, as if the god’s presence itself controlled its behavior.
“My king, Tethys has placed her trust in your hands, just as I have, but she must know why. If there’s more to the Theogony, she needs to know. Vorthal intends on returning to the realms, we’ll all be dead if we can’t prevent that from happening.” Araes, cautious, but steady in his resolve, met Altair’s side.
“Some things are better left to fade with time, Lieutenant,” was all the god offered in response.
Araes stiffened, watching Altair’s collected demeanoralter to one of stern apprehension.
“If Vorthal truly does intend on breaking out of the Rift, and these Venian disappearances are linked to his return as you suspect, then my sister’s fate is already sealed.”
Chapter 54
Three more weeks passed and still, Tethys didn’t stir. Physically her body healed, but her mind drifted somewhere far from the continent. Far from the mortal realm itself, perhaps.
Araes stayed by her side with each sunrise. Plates from dinner service were left untouched and cold by the bedchamber door. He was never the praying type, the war ripped that piece away a long time ago, but Araes found himself whispering quiet pleas to Eos. Return his queen. Guide her back to herself safely.
Had he just pushed harder, ran faster, when the cavern fell to rubble. They wouldn’t be here in this gilded castle by the sea. He didn’t deserve silken, sun-warmed sheets or breathtaking beachside views while she battled for recovery. He should be the one laying there unconscious, melting into the goose feather mattress. In the end, he couldn’t protect her, couldn’t guard her. He’d broken the oath he’d made so many months ago.
Sunlight whispered through the room, sending dustparticles and honeyed light beams scattering along the walls. She must wake up. Venia needed their queen. The realm declined into darkness without their bright morning light. More so, however, she needed to recover because Araes couldn’t imagine a world where he existed without her. She filled a void left behind after Enyo’s death—so large, so all-encompassing, it nearly swallowed him whole.
“Please, Goddess,” he whispered, brushing a thumb along the back of her delicate hand. It was so frail, solifeless. “Venia needs you to wake up. I need you…” He trailed off, refusing to allow that heartbreak to well in his eyes. He wouldn’t mourn someone he hadn’t yet lost.
Tethys’s finger twitched against his.
“Come back to me, Goddess,” he breathed. Hope was a fickle, selfish thing, however. Her face still drooped. Her body didn’t swell with life. Araes sighed and rose from his seat, his eyes catching on the cerulean blue beads laced through Altair’s braids. The immortal stood in the corner, his features grim and heavy.
“Why don’t you go for a walk, Lieutenant? I’ll stay until you return,” he whispered. The god’s personal healers cared for Tethys well, but Araes couldn’t find the strength to move. Crossing the threshold was a betrayal—leaving her unguarded and alone. He wouldn’t break his promise. Not again.
“I can’t leave her. Not like this,” Araes replied, keeping is gaze fixed on the slumbering goddess. He was forced to trust Altair, and while the king had welcomed them into his home with the highest of discretion, Araes couldn’t help but linger on the truths the summer king refused to disclose.Tethys’s fate is already sealed…he didn’t know what the immortal meant, but it terrified him, nonetheless.
“Alright, Lieutenant. If you change your mind, I’ll be just downstairs,” Altair said, taking his leave.
Arched windows overlooked the shoreline below, flooding the room in natural warmth. Araes placed a handon the glass, feeling it shiver against the southerly winds. Aquilae was quite beautiful. It was no wonder why its people didn’t venture too far from their coastline. The southern sea’s beauty was a tether, keeping the southerners connected to its rolling swells.
Once Tethys woke up, Araes would insist they explore the beach, maybe bask in the tropical sunlight and collect purple mollusks at low tide. They both needed some peace before facing the future’s hardships.
He sighed and glanced back at his queen. This woman, this goddess, pulled him from the pits when the darkness took over. She’d offered a hand when he felt so fucking angry, so tired of fighting. She truly was the quiet he desperately sought for since before the war. Now, without her, his mind was too damn loud.
When he enlisted, Araes never intended to make it off of the battlefield. Now, the future he’d face, the life he’d build with her, was clearer than freshly polished glass. Even if he would grow old and withered while she stayed timeless. It didn’t matter that his body would age and decay while she remained just as she was now, so long as he held a place at her side.
