91 | ACT VII, SCENE II

P R E V I O U S L Y

They charged right at once.

HEWE, STEFFITH.

TRISTAN

IMPOSSIBLE.

THE ARMY WAS IMPOSSIBLE.

We hit first, and hit hard. And that made no difference. None at all.

I was careful not to use up my powers at the very beginning itself. So I fought with the rest, arm to arm, foot to foot, striking down man after man with an assortment of blades. Those acts were swift, requiring hardly a thought from me. It wasn't the skill of the opponent that worried me.

It was their numbers.

And even without counting, I knew that we were greatly outnumbered.

They wrecked apart tree after tree, building after building, tower after tower as our forces damaged and fought against them in return. Smoke had already begun to drift towards the sky - the clear blue of the morning now washed out, stained with thick black smoke that clouded our vision. Deimos and I took the lead, tearing apart the army - me with two swords, him with a morningstar - as we left a trail of carnage in our wake. He ripped through the sea of blood, determination shining in his eyes. Helios and Atherton fought back to back with mace and sword. I could not see Rowan, but her loud voice could be heard even above the din - unlike Apollo, who was nowhere to be found.

Our men fought as one. I had to give them that.

But that made no difference to the enemy.

They were impenetrable.

Impossible to breach.

No matter how many of those soldiers fell, no matter how many of them we cut apart - they never seemed to stop coming.

And the Titans...

...they were meandering throughout the battlefield as if it were a garden, leaving a trail of blood behind them. Our men were falling like flies as the two of them wrecked and crushed our forces. On and on they went, loitering about the ground as it slowly turned into a slaughterhouse. The bloodbath was accompanied by the slash of Quintus's sword, or the hysterical laughter of Celicca as the sound raked on my nerves. Someone had to stop them - someone had to stop them before the siblings ate our army whole.

I attacked the left flank, hammering hard as fire boiled up in me.

"There are too many!" Rowan shouted over the din, trying to join me as she cut her way through the obedient lines of Titan soldiers. Her lip was already split, her nose was bleeding, but her spirit was unbroken as she looked at me with fire in her eyes.

"Try to get to Everard if you can - we need help!" I roared back at her, nodding gravely before slashing off another man, shredding him to ribbons.

These men... they were hardly living things, they were dead things - more like decaying pieces of flesh brought up and called to do the Titans' bidding. They moved and marched across the field in a sea of pure black, steel weapons and armor glimmering. Under those helms were grim, detached faces that were emotionless and cold, precisely concentrating on their task. One kill after the other, kill upon kill, death upon death.

Pandora had created them all - from her own blood.

And it was only a matter of time before she got here.

Only a matter of time before we lost.

• • • • •

ARCTON FORTRESS, RIMEBAY, VERTGATE.

EDWINA

Shit. Shit. Shit.

"That bastard - that bastard betrayed us-" I gasped, drawing myself up to climb on the outpost, ignoring the men's cries to come down. I squinted my eyes, watching the thin line grow thicker and thicker, until the white flags were clearly visible. The rotting black unicorn fluttered on the white background, its mere sight a looming omen of death.

"Maybe he changed his mind-" Rosalva whispered, her voice faint as she tried to make out the approaching foe from here they came up the horizon. "Maybe he decided we needed his help here."

"Emerick was supposed to be at the Stormholt - Ellesmere boundary. He's miles away from it!" I snapped, pushing myself off the brick and landing back on the battlement. "No - no, no, no - fuck. Send a message for help, right now!"

"Quintus and Celicca have struck Steffith," Lunette said worriedly, holding a scroll in her hands, a raven perched on her shoulder. "And Normount and Dracnesse have been attacked as well. Romulus and Noire have laid siege to the west - Aidon, Edmund and Drusilla are already on the front lines-"

Fuck.

"That leaves Aries and Leora - if they decide to strike Vertgate instead, we're fucked. Send a message to Eric and tell him to send his men here. Right now!"

"He left for Steffith with twenty thousand more men - Everard passed the message-"

"Get Aeneas. Get Alaric. Get someone here right now."

"They are both at Ellesmere with Nyx, to prevent it from falling if the Titans decide to attack there," she breathed faintly, her eyes wide as I furiously blinked, rubbing my temples and wracking my brain.

"Ask my father to send five thousand Tremayne men here."

"Thirty thousand Rotavelles are coming to kill us!" Vivian snapped, furrowing his brow.

"We have no other alternative. Get the men," I barked, turning back to the battlements. Panic was surging through my blood. There were thousands of innocents in this Fortress and I was solely responsible for their lives.

She did not move.

"We do not have time. SEND THE DAMN MESSAGE, LUNETTE!" I roared, making her run off with the letter clutched in her hands. "We rain fire on them. Until they are half a league away. Then I burn them alive before the start scaling the Fortress."

"That will drain your strength," Halette said quietly, her voice thick with tears. "You won't be able to fight. Not for a very, very long time."

"We could make a run for it," Amphitrite suggested tentatively. "They're still far away."

"No," I cut her off. "We'll be caught."

They all gulped, nodding.

"How much time do we have?" Vivian demanded.

"Let's say it goes badly - an hour. Two at most. Send a message to all six kingdoms. We need every last man we can get," I replied, my heart pounding wildly. They departed as I turned back to watch the line of advancing white and green, slow but steady in its pace. Emerick had known all our plans. He had attended the war camps, the councils. He knew all our strategies. And he had a dangerous daughter.

A daughter who would have taught him exactly how to breach the binding spell on the Fortress, how to find the blind spots and chinks in it. How to bring down our defences and ensure that every last bit of it had turned to rubble.

And if she had put some other sort of spell in place...

"Prepare to fight!" I called out, changing my mind. "She might have cursed the Fortress to crumble to dust or burn up. It's too risky to stay inside."

I was going to kill Sarette.

We had barely two thousand armed men here, and more than ten times that number were unarmed. Emerick had thirty thousand soldiers. We had to make landfall and get out before Sarette's spells were triggered. And I was going to have to use every ounce of my power to hold off the approaching army. Thirty thousand men, with only me separating them from the innocent lives in the Fortress.

I wouldn't be able to walk after, let alone join the fray at Steffith.

'We're surrounded,' I reached out to Tristan, motioning for the archers to take up their positions. 'Emerick - he betrayed us.'

'Sarette might have rigged the Fortress,' he hissed back. 'Get everyone out.'

I did.

I managed to get them all, despite the chattering and protesting as they clung to my arms. I had to firmly push each one off, gathering the remaining immortals as they coaxed the people to come out of their safety.

"Arm those who can fight. Gather the men," I said quietly, my voice low. Vivian nodded wordlessly, his amber eyes darkening at the hopelessness in my voice. We both knew that hundreds were going to die today - even when help arrived.

If it arrived.

The Rotavelle army was just a few hundred metres away as the fighters trooped out behind me, spreading out in neat lines. Barely a couple thousand of them were experienced with a sword. I ordered them into positions as powerful flames stirred and swirled under my skin.

I mustered up all my might, and cast a huge chunk of it towards the approaching force.

The screaming began a few seconds later.

My blow had been clean and well placed, an infernal wisp of Hellfyre that had struck the very heart of the army. That would likely be where Emerick stood - unlike Tristan, who led the battles himself at the front lines, Rotavelle was nothing but a mere coward. Green flames rose up as the fires spread, skewering both man and beast alive. I could sense their pace slow down a bit as the heat roasted the middle lines.

"Hold!" I barked, motioning the men behind me to attention, gathering another burst of Hellfyre and flinging it right at the front lines.

Too close - they were too close.

We held our breath as the fires ate up the lines of soldiers, but they did not stop - instead, they came faster and quicker with double their pace. There were still too many - too many for me to hold off.

"Draw your weapons!"

Metal clicked into place behind me as we stood rigid, alert, ready to charge any second now. I panted as I released yet another swirl of Hellfyre in a last, desperate attempt, before gripping my own sword tightly.

And then-

-chaos.

A mighty force of soldiers in midnight blue and gold cleaved the approaching foe into two, slicing through it like a knife through butter.

Tristan.

A blast of bright light knocked off half the men, blinding them all with the intensity of the brilliance as they dropped to the ground. Cutting the Rotavelle army to a manageable amount, the lines rounded to the back, and there, in that ocean of blue and gold, there he was.

"You're hurt, Valmont!"

"It's nothing," he muttered, dismounting off his stallion to run to me. His face was flecked with blood, hair flicked back as he cleaned his sword on the grass. I could see exhaustion dimming his eyes, recognizing the drawn look his face always bore after a severe headache. "It's a fucking bloodbath out there."

"Any casualties?' I asked quietly.

"Not yet. But there will be. Soon," Tristan said silently, with danger and the darkness of death guttering in the depths of his eyes. "It's impossible to win this fight."

We both stood there, our eyes grave as our gazes met. We both knew it. This wasn't as easy as we'd thought, and the promises of last night came back drifting into my mind. Fate was cruel, so, so cruel. The hideous face of death loomed right in front of our eyes, dangling like an axe over our neck.

The time to go - it came nearer and near with every passing second of the raging battle around us.

Who would be the first to go?

"Edwina," he said at last, his face whiter than ever, eyes ashen. "Promise me you won't give up. No matter what happens to me."

"You don't get to say that!" I shouted at him, my fists balling up tightly, emotion clouding my words. "You don't get to fucking say that, Tristan Valmont!"

"You don't understand!" he hissed, drawing me close to him, the scent of blood lingering on him, his eyes desperate. "Edwina, promise me," his voice was pleading, holding me tightly. "I can feel it - I can hear it - promise me, woman. Promise me."

"Stay here," I begged him, trying to stop the tears from rolling down my cheeks. "Stay with me."

His jaw tightened, and there was only pain in his eyes.

"You know I can't."

Death comes for us all one day. And in the end, the only thing you can do is face it. Walk into it. Greet it like the morning breeze warm on our face. Embrace it like a mortal lover or weep while it drags you unto itself, sinking into oblivion.

But in the end, death always comes.

"If you give up, I will come and haunt you," he sternly put a finger under his chin, his palm warm on my cheek, slowly wiping away the tear that lingered there. Despite the aching in my chest, I managed to break into a smile.

"You have my leave to do so, Valmont."

And then he kissed me. There was such pain, such horrible, horrible pain in it that the only thing to be heard was the empty beating of my broken heart in the hollowness of my chest. All those treasured moments we had shared lingered between us like a winter breath, and I could not fathom the thought that one of us might lose what the both of us once shared.

Suddenly, an agonizing cascade of pain hit my lower back, and I stood rooted to the spot, unable to speak. My fingers went to touch the wound, and came back stained with crimson.

The lord of thunder at my side lowered his gaze to the river of bleeding red, the warmth stale on my fingertips. He stood there for a second, his gaze furious.

There was a spear of Ekrite protruding through my chest.

I would never forget the way the suppressed rage made his eyes gleam black.

"Come and fight me, you coward!" Apollo jeered, spinning another spear deftly in his hands, his voice a mocking taunt. He deftly swung himself down the bannisters of the Fortress, his every move dextrous, like poisoned water.

The leash on Tristan Valmont's temper snapped.

Primal instinct took him over as I noticed the way his jaw tightened, and he picked up his sword with such deadly calm that it chilled my insides.

"You never understand, do you?" his voice was frightfully soft, sharp like poisoned ice - and even I wouldn't have dared to come between him and his foes in a hundred thousand years.

The breath I sucked in was painful, and I only nodded quietly at Tristan as the two gathered their weapons, attacking at once.

My fingers pulled at the shaft of the metal spear as I slowly began to tug it out, knowing that I would have to keep my torn skin held together in order for it to heal.

In between the sharp tugs, I only saw a flicker of the fight between the two, between Tristan's blinding flashes of light and Apollo's deadly strikes. Father and son were too dangerously matched, lethal and even as they were in their skills.

My lips pressed to avoid screaming as I hacked off the front end of the spear before trying to get it out. I tried to wave off help as the rest of them caught sight of me, running over at once. Rosalva was the first to reach, holding me down with quick fingers before tearing the weapon out with a firm nod from me.

I doubled over on the grass, panting and heaving. My body was on fire, searing the reserves of power in it and sapping it out slowly.

"Don't move," she cautiously warned me, cutting through the leathers to find my torn, jagged flesh, her hands deftly wrapping a piece of linen to keep me in one piece. A few more moments passed as I caught my breath, the skin sewing itself together.

Tristan and Apollo were engaged in a deadly dance, spinning and fighting in a battlefield of their own. Eyes dark, faces taut, they fought, neither yielding to the other. Only pure rage gleamed in my husband's eyes - this had been the last straw for him. He would tolerate no more.

His eyes met mine in a quick, meaningful moment.

It travelled to a spear of Bloodstone strewn beside me on the grass, where some soldier had carelessly dropped it.

He nodded.

I picked up the spear and tossed it to him with all my might.

And in a swift, nimble moment, he caught it and buried it right in Apollo's chest.

The moment lay frozen in time.

I could have sworn that even Emerick paused on the other side of the field as he made his move. Could have sworn that all the Rotavelle and Valmont soldiers stopped, all the people behind us too.

The dead god dropped to the grass, his face still an image of bitterness, eyes like obsidian.

My heart caught in my throat as I saw Tristan break the spear into two pieces and fling them both away, before dropping to the ground too. He pressed his blood stained arms to his temples, inhaling deeply, eyes gone so dark that only night skies swirled in them.

His father. He had killed his father with his bare hands.

"Take him away," he uttered hoarsely.

The men did it at once.

I reached for him, my breath coming in short gasps, still so shocked from what I had seen that I could barely speak. "I'm sorry. I should have let you do it," he said silently, drawing me into his arms. "To avenge your mother-"

"-don't," I said, my voice soft and tender. "It's... it's alright."

"I had no choice," Tristan breathed. "He drove me to it."

All colour had left his cheeks, leaving only a pale, distant face behind. True, I had wanted Apollo dead for what he did to my mother... but having Tristan to do it - I could not imagine the guilt. The dread. The feeling of emptiness. I wrapped my warmth around him, trying to thaw the cold locking his emotions. Eric had warned me about this - about how distant Tristan got in battle, and now I saw it for myself. He had locked himself into his own mind, and only his eyes showed me how distant he was, how far, far away he was.

It was terrifying to witness it.

"You okay?" he asked gently, touching my wounds, the linen already stained with blood that had leaked out before my skin patched itself up.

"I'll manage," I whispered. "Go."

"Really?"

My throat closed up tightly as we managed to stand, heart aching at the thought of being parted from him again. I had wanted to be beside him, fight back to back as we always did, but the Fates had decided to have some different plans for us.

"Really," my voice was hoarse.

"Edwina," Tristan turned to me before going, hoisting up his sword. "If... if we don't make it -"

"Don't say it," I said firmly, emotion colouring my voice. "No."

"You have to run," his face was pale, "you run. Run until you can't run anymore. And don't... don't look back. Promise me."

A minute passed in silence.

"I'll see you on the other side, Tristan Valmont," my voice hitched, breaking and cracking at the end.

He smiled a heartbreaking smile, shattering me to pieces as our lips met one final, last time. I didn't know if it was premonition. I didn't know if it was just the pain. I just knew that my heart belonged to him. I belonged to him - and I loved him so much I thought I would die from the pain alone.

Emerick was only a few yards away, brandishing his sword.

"Send him my fucking regards, Edwina Tremayne," Tristan whispered, before vanishing away into the air.

I watched him disappear right in front of my eyes, strengthening and steeling my resolve. My heart was aching so much as I stood up on my feet, gripping my spear in a silent death promise to Emerick. He drew himself up on the other end of the battlefield, ready to strike as we both approached each other with a vengeance.

We fell on each other for the last time, unforgiving and brutal.

I raised my spear as he struck, aiming straight for his chest as he slid away at the last moment. Another swipe as he harshly landed a blow to my injury, which I deftly avoided. Sword rang against sword, the metal ringing in the air. No words - no emotions - only unforgiving violence as we spun around in deadly circles.

Far off in the distance, I could hear Leora laugh.

Laugh as she broke someone's back, laughed as she crushed a spine under her boots. On and on she went, the sounds cutting me like a knife as I plunged my spear right in Emerick's calf.

"You wait," he seethed, voice a deadly hiss, eyes glazed with anger as he scanned the field behind me.

I took advantage of the moment to pull out my dagger and sink it in his side, suddenly stopping to see him still, motionless, gaze focused solely on what was behind me.

I wrapped my fist around his throat, holding Hellfyre to it, as I turned around silently.

Leora had crushed Justaline's neck, snapping it cleanly into two before moving on to Olinda, trembling on the other side. The goddess lay unmoving on the grass, bleeding out from injuries that stained the stones and rocks under her. I turned around to watch Emerick, his eyes slowly filling with tears.

Which was when I saw something glimmer at Leora's white throat, shining like a necklace filled with endless diamonds. It took me half a minute to recognize what the piece of metal actually was.

The ring.

She was wearing the three rings around her neck.

The rings - she had the rings.

I carefully averted my eyes from the folds of velvet nestled around her neck, the rings shining like a star against the fabric. She couldn't know - she couldn't know that I had seen it. I had to get them.

Rotavelle had turned to a statue across from me, tense as a crouched tiger even with my sword at his neck, his miserable gaze only on his sister lying dead on the ground.

"Emerick," I said quietly. "Emerick."

He did not look at me.

"She has the rings," I whispered, my voice faint, careful to not let the Titaness see or hear me. "If we can get the rings - if we could get to them - we might have the slimmest chance of winning this war."

He gulped.

"Emerick!" I shook his shoulders, voice desperate. "We need the rings!"

She was still wrecking havoc on the other side of the battlefield, tossing aside our men like vermin. Her laughs were like war cries and warning bells, ominous and alert. My heart was pounding in my chest like a wild animal begging to be let out. I tried to calm it down - to see past the darkness and into the little light of hope shining bleakly.

"Look at me!" I snapped at Emerick, who was so distant that I might as well have been shouting at him from across the other side of the field. "The rings. We need the fucking rings before she kills off the rest of your family as well!"

That broke him out of the trance.

"I'll... distract her," he breathed, his voice ragged.

And for the first time in my life, I felt something like pity for him.

For the first time, we both rose as one, having lost such a big part of ourselves that we would never find it again.

"Hide," he said quietly, as I grimly nodded to him,  ducking behind a huge mound of bodies that were slowly decaying. His face was drawn and tense as he stepped out from beside me, into the dim sunlight filtering in through the clouds in the sky.

"Wench!" he called out, his voice ringing with hurt and anger as he brandished his sword.

Leora turned on him like a snake rearing on its prey.

"My dear, dear Emerick," she purred softly, turning her dreadful head to face him, her eyes like endless pits of disdain. "What a delightful way to greet your niece!"

I did not tear my eyes away as she fell on him.

On and on they both circled, his cries echoing in the empty air as she casually broke his sword into two. He backed further and further and further, as she gave him another sugar coated smile before flicking back her hair and breaking his ankle.

"Hmm... it's going to be wonderful tearing you apart piece by piece," she mused, advancing further as I watched, holding my breath sharply, waiting for the right moment, until-

-I whirled myself right next to her, tearing off the rings from her neck.

"Stop!" she hissed, turning around to catch hold of me, her cold white fingers catching my ear by the thumb as I made to run with the pieces of metal in my hands. I mustered up all my mind as the Titaness tried to grip me by the hair, letting out a cry of desperation as I skipped off, turning in the darkness to reappear on the peripheries of the Derwentwater.

The skies here were black with rain clouds, mud squelching under my feet as I looked for a spot of running water in the nearly dried up river. Plumes of smoke were travelling upwards, the battle here was almost lost, with heaps of corpses meeting my eye wherever I looked.

Water - I had to dip the Logogram in the Derwent so that it reversed its nature, then I had to get the third piece and join it so that the Titans died.

"Edwina!" Aidon's voice was lined with danger as he saw me on the river bank, pulling out the golden instrument from the confines of one of my many pockets. "To your left!"

She had followed me here.

Her steps were heavy on the mud as I fumbled with the Logogram, almost dropping it into the water before my trembling fingers managed to pick it up. My father appeared right across from me, sweating at the very sound of her footsteps as the ground rumbled underneath.

"You won't get too far, my dear," Leora sang, her fingers pulling my hair, dragging me away as alarm bells went off in my head.

I heard a dull thud as my brother hurled a weapon at her, which bounced off as if her body were made of metal. My shaking hands refused to stay still as I tucked the newly anointed Logogram into my sleeves. My teeth clattered harder as I wildly searched for the rings I had stuffed into a pocket, heart beating so hard that I thought it would explode.

"Let's see how many pieces I can cut you into, darling," Leora hummed in my ear, ready to twist the ring out of my grip as I heaved on the mud, struggling to get the ring onto my finger. "I bet I can make good use of my new weapo-" she leered, before I vanished into nothing, hurled right into Seattoria.

• • • • •

This chapter was crazy. Enough said.

Are you crying yet?