"If we hold here," I, or me as Thane, interrupted, my voice flat, devoid of the compassion that usually defined me, "we draw their center. We expose their flank for the main host."
It was a lie. A cold, calculating lie. There was no primary host coming. I knew it. The messenger had arrived an hour ago, dissolving into mist after delivering the scroll. The main host had been rerouted to protect a supply line regarding the importation of nectar for a feast on Olympus.
These men were not bait for a trap. They were a distraction. A speed bump. A "feint" designed to look busy while the generals drank wine in the command tent miles away. Their lives were being spent to buy time for a party.
Tell them,a small, frantic part of Thane’s soul screamed in the back of my mind, rattling the bars of his discipline.Tell them to run. Tell them to live. Throw down the shield.
But the conditioning, the absolute, iron-clad imperative of duty clamped down on his throat like a vice. The Defender does not run. He obeys. The Defender is the wall, and the wall does not ask why it stands.
"We hold here," I ordered.
The boy stared at me. He looked past me, up at the ridge, where the silver armor of Athena’s vanguard was cresting like a wave of death, glittering under the grey sky. He knew. He looked into my eyes, and he saw the math. He saw that I had weighed his life against a line on a map, and the map had won.
"Yes, sir," the boy whispered. The light in his eyes died before the spear even touched him.
"Charge," I bellowed, the word tearing my throat.
I led them up the hill. I ran first, my shield raised, roaring to drown out the sound of their screaming. I felt the impact as the enemy line hit us, a solid wall of divine bronze. I felt the vibration of three hundred lives being extinguished in the mud behind me, a symphony of breaking bones and final breaths.
I didn't die. I was a Prince. I was immortal. My skin turned blades; my bones broke hammers. I stood in the pile of their bodies, swinging my hammer, protecting a patch of dirt that grew nothing but corpses. I was the last thing standing in a field of red.
Suicide feint,Hera whispered, her voice blending with the sound of the rain and the dying, twisting the knife in the wound.Three hundred sons. Three hundred fathers. And you spentthem all like copper coins to buy an hour of silence for a border that didn't matter. You didn't defend them, Thane. You spent them.
The guilt washed over me like a landslide.
It wasn't a sharp pain. It was a crushing, suffocating weight, like the entire mountain had collapsed onto my chest, crushing the air from my lungs. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. The sorrow was so absolute, so dense, it warped the gravity of my soul. It was a black hole of self-loathing.
You aren't a protector, Thane,Hera murmured, her voice sweet with malice.You are just the wall against which they break. You are the butcher's block.
"NO!"
The scream tore me out of the memory.
I slammed back into my own body in the Forge. The transition was so violent I fell to my hands and knees; the impact jarring my teeth. My metal leg scraped sparks against the iron floor as I scrambled for purchase. I retched, my stomach heaving, but nothing came up except a dry, hacking cough and a cloud of glittering gold dust.
The bond was screaming.
It wasn't just Thane’s pain anymore. It was everywhere. The Hive Mind had absorbed the blow, but the filter, me, was clogging. The guilt was a poison circulating through our shared veins, dragging us all down into the mud of that forgotten ridge.
TWELVE
Aria
I felt Flynn’s nausea first, a rolling, feral sickness that wasn't about a weak stomach, but the unique, distinct scent of old carnage. It was the smell of a pack lost to a trap he hadn't sniffed out in time. Then came Kaelen’s rage, hot and bright as molten gold, turning inward to incinerate his own heart for every logistical failure, every life he had failed to maneuver off the board. Beneath it all was Elias, a crushing, suffocating blanket of despair, the weight of a prophet who had seen the avalanche coming a thousand years ago and had been powerless to stop the snow from falling.
But at the violent, chaotic center of this psychic storm was Thane.
The Bear Prince was on his knees. He had released his grip on the chain that held Hephaestus, his connection to the physical world severed by the sheer gravity of his mind. His massive hands were pressed flat into the floor, fingers digging into the reinforced iron plating as if he were trying to bury himself, to dig a grave through the foundation and disappear into the rock. He wasn't moving. He wasn't breathing. He waseffectively catatonic, his consciousness trapped in the freezing rain on a ridge that had ceased to exist millennia ago.
"Thane!" Kaelen’s voice cracked like a whip, desperate and commanding. The Dragon Prince grabbed Thane’s shoulder, his fingers digging into the pauldron. "Wake up! I command you to wake up! The battle is over! That failure is dust!"
Thane didn't even flinch. He was a statue carved from grief, immovable and deaf to orders.
"He cannot hear you," Elias gasped, clutching his temples. Blood, dark and rich, trickled from his nose, staining his pale lips. His turquoise eyes were wide, seeing patterns I couldn't comprehend. "The resonance, she found the loose thread in his tapestry and pulled. She amplified the guilt loop. He is reliving the moment of inevitable loss, over and over, moment by agonizing moment. He is drowning in the loop."
"Then pull him out!" Flynn yelled, abandoning his post on the catwalk. He landed in a fluid, predatory crouch beside us, his boots skidding on the stone. He looked pale, his pupils blown wide, shaking from the aftershocks of a memory that wasn't his. The smell of rain and wet fur rolled off him in waves of distress. "Don't just watch him sink!"
"I can't!" Elias cried, his voice breaking. "He has locked the door from the inside! He believes the punishment is just!"
