She had always hated those vicious boars, but Alanna had seen something in them that she had captured for Lucilla. A sense of determination and grit. Nobility, even. And for the first time, she felt some kind of kinship with the boars that had stared at her for her entire life. They were fighting for survival.
And she would fight too. For survival—hers and her people’s. For her crown. To be the queen her kingdom deserved.
And, when the time came, for the man she loved.
Chapter Twenty
Mathos stoodin a dark pool of shadow beside the fore-topmast, still close enough to see her clearly in the pool of golden lamplight. To see how she looked out across the deck, searching for him. Even after his goodbye.
She wanted him to join her in her final push to Kaerlud—to stand beside her as she took her throne—but there was no way that he could. If he rode into Kaerlud beside her, she would see it as a sign. As some sort of confirmation of their continuing… liaison? Affair? He didn’t know what the word was for the mess of emotions churning through him.
This was better for everyone. Start as you mean to go on, his father used to say.
This is not what you started. And you hardly knew the man.
He took a step closer to her, driven by his beast, just in time to hear Nim speak in a gentle voice. “Mathos isn’t coming back.”
The words stopped him. It was done. She knew that they were over.
A piercing agony skewered through him, and he almost fell to his knees. It took everything he had to stand still as his beast howled and roared in his belly.
Lucilla stared into the darkness, her chest heaving with repressed emotion, her denials still hovering in the air as his beast went into a frenzy of anguished violence within him.
Don’t do this. Don’t. Just… Go to her.
Mathos didn’t want to hear any more. Couldn’t bear to hear any more. Not from Lucy, not from Nim, and definitely not from his beast. He had to get away before he did something irrevocably stupid.
This is irrevocably stupid.
No. This was the only option he had.
He turned and walked away, following the shadows into the thick mass of warriors preparing for the coming confrontation, allowing himself to be swallowed up in the whooshing of the waves against the ship and the swift thudding of booted feet, in the rushing blood and excitement of battle.
“Hard-a-port! Evasive maneuvers!” Cassiel bellowed from the quarterdeck. “Keep them with us!”
Yes. This was what he needed. The one thing he was good at. The one thing that could take his mind off the look on Lucy’s face.
He strode forward resolutely, past the rows of grim warriors and up the wooden steps to the quarterdeck to stand beside the captain and first mate at the helm.
Only then did he give in and turn to check. The rowboat was gone. Swallowed into the darkness.
Good. Now he could focus on keeping Dornar’s attention and giving her a chance to escape. He had promised her protection, and he would provide it. And then he could go somewhere far away, whether as a mercenary or wherever the Hawks would be deployed next, holding tight to his last vision of her, asleep and beautiful. That was how he would remember her. Not this last, pale glimpse as he said goodbye.
You’re just lying to yourself. Anyway, the Hawks—
No—he cut off the beast’s complaints—he wasn’t lying to himself; everything was exactly as it should be.
It was bleak and terrible and exactly as it should be.
The pain in his belly burned as his beast thrashed and his scales hardened. He forced himself to ignore it all and focus on the battle ahead.
He stood with the ship’s senior commanders as they flew through the dark sea, always keeping ahead of their pursuers, but not so far ahead that the ship following them might give up.
It was a long, tense wait as the darkness dissolved into gray. Lamps were doused, and the details of the deck grew clearer with every passing second. And then the sun peeped over the horizon, a fiery ball between the dark slate of the water and the vibrant peach-and-gold outlining the clouds above.
Tendrils of light spread out from the magnificent golden sunrise as Cassiel faced the deck and bellowed, “Raise the colors!”
A member of the crew leaped forward to haul the flag up the mainmast. The snowy white banner adorned with the gleaming golden outline of the Nephilim warrior angel whipped and fluttered in the dawn light. And then a second flag was raised. The Royal Standard—the queen’s colors of midnight blue and silver—flying proudly beside the gold and white. Tangible demonstration of the newly reaffirmed alliance between the crown and the Nephilim.
