Page 4 of Commanding Scythe and Sky

He was sad, too.

Almost as sad as I felt.

He glanced over his shoulder at the closed door, then lifted one big, gloved hand to his face. He pressed his pointer finger to his lips, telling me to stay quiet. Then he held out his hand like a stop sign.

That was what we did to make Auntie’s dogs stay.

Was that what he was telling me?

Tears burned my eyes as the man in the mask stared at me through the gap for what felt like a very long time.

His mask must have been old. There was a dent beneath one eye and a deep gouge across the other.

Slowly, he drew in a long breath. His shoulders dropped.

Then he turned toward the door and left without looking back.

The house went quiet. And I sat there, shaking inside the armoire.

The room was bright with sunshine before I finally let myself cry.

PART 1

EARTH

ONE

THE BURNING OF THE BOATS

CYRUS

March 24, 7:02PM

Death brings with him an eerie kind of stillness. The kind that sticks to your ribs. Stiffens your spine.

But death on the scale of a massacred city? That’s the shit that haunts a man.

Alvara—hallowed be her name—had successfully corralled the worst of the battle into the inner city, but hundreds of thousands couldn’t evacuate in the time provided.

The Battle of the Somme looked like a summer fucking vacation compared to this.

Worse yet? Not every city had warriors within it. The Siege of Santa Bloom would be one of our few ‘victories’—if anyone lived long enough to write it into history books.

My throat ached, raw and hoarse from barking orders, and my head throbbed—either from the stress of it all or the heavy blanket of smoke still lingering over the city.

Over every major city.

The mortals were under strict instructions to burn the bodies to prevent reanimation, and the stench of charred flesh filled every ragged breath, even through my mask.

Blowing out a long plume of smoke, I looked skyward toward the rolling thunder.

His thunder.

The wrath of The Great Commander, so entirely unleashed, had fortified our defenses after Magnolia… detonated.

The sun had yet to pierce his grief any more than the rest of us had.

He’d appeared on his knees as I found my feet and made it to Freya, where she sobbed, entirely broken.