85 | ACT VI, SCENE II

P R E V I O U S L Y

Apollo.

CALCHESTER CITADEL, STEFFITH.

EDWINA

THE ONLY SOUND WAS THAT of Tristan's sharp, ragged breathing.

His eyes slowly turned to a soulless, pitch black - fixed as they were on his father.

The wine filled glass decanters were the first to shatter. A quiet rumble cracked in the air as the High King's power worked against the shield's locks. Yet it refused to yield, remaining in place. The ground shook as the excess power swirled and thundered, just like the storm flickering in his eyes.

"Who called him here?"

No one said a single word.

"Now, now. Is that any way to welcome your father?" Apollo merely held out his arms with a malicious smile, his muscles rippling in the dim light.

"I asked," Tristan growled, his voice the deadly silence before the storm, "WHO CALLED HIM HERE?"

Helios flinched slightly, his glow dimming as he sighed heavily, slowly taking a wary step forward.

"I did."

Tristan drew out his sword with a ring of steel, his face rippling with gleaming fury, a detached mask of livid ferocity. Apollo pulled out his own sword as father and son both looked at each other with only disdain. My husband was furious - not just furious, he was livid - they would have to invent a new word for killing when he was done with Apollo.

They fell on each other, brutal and bloodthirsty.

"No! Stop!"

It took the combined efforts of Helios, Atherton, Eric, Llewellyn and my father to haul the two of them away from each other, their eyes flashing with fury and blood. I pulled Tristan back, coaxing him, pleading him, begging him to stop - but there was only anger in his eyes, only a harsh, brutal, raw need for revenge.

"Get out of my fucking sight," he spat.

"No," Helios panted, "no. We need him, we need his men-"

"Get lost."

"No - please. He has men, they can fight - he can fight as well - he is my son."

"I will throw you both out of the fucking Citadel," my husband growled.

"You cannot do that," Apollo looked at him, malicious.

"You forget who is the lord of this country. I run the fucking kingdom - this is my fucking land and you've set your fucking foot in my fucking Citadel - now get out before I plunge my sword into your fucking throat!"

"Tristan, please," Helios pleaded, his voice desperate. "We need every last sword - every last man, you said it yourself. I swear it - I swear it on my life - he won't come anywhere near her, he won't, I swear it," he begged. "He has a force of five hundred Valmont warriors, you know that could make a huge difference - please - I beg you."

"He is right," I said softly into my husband's ear, feeling the tight knot of corded muscles on the back of his neck, taut with tension. I would have killed Apollo with my bare hands, but this was war. This was sacrifice - what kind of Queen of Endollon was I if I could not follow my own word?

The voice that came out was not his. It was unnatural, a low hiss laced only with pure venom, threatening promise of death.

"You will not touch her. You will not look at her. You will not speak to her. You stay out of my sight, and out of hers. You will not be under one roof with her. And I swear it to the fucking heavens - if I find you so much as within fifty feet of my wife, I will hurt you so badly that you will wish you had never been born."

"Fine," Apollo said coolly, a smirk resting on his full lips. There was malice in that smile. Pure cunning gleaming in those features - this was a predator only waiting for the right time to strike.

"Looks like your family reunions are far from being cozy," Leonard said slyly, his voice a caress of disdain. His eyes had gone cold, frigid.

"Do not test his patience," I challenged, not straying from my husband's side.

"I will not do so. Not any longer," he got up, his fists curled tightly. "We're leaving," he barked, nodding to his younger brother and sister in law. "I've had enough of this hospitality."

"Leonard, please," Eric whispered. "We need you."

"We're all going to die anyway. I will not do so fighting beside the man who robbed us of our livelihood," the Grendel brother snapped, glaring right at Deimos.

"I did not burn your river, you idiot," the Everly lord refused, his brow furrowed. "Someone else did it!"

"You were supposed to protect it!" he swore. "And did you, huh? Come," he hissed at his family, holding out his hand. "I will stay here no longer."

Theodore did not move.

Neither did his wife.

"I told you to come," the Grendel snapped at his brother, his already pale face turning stark white with unconcealed anger.

"We will stay," Emeline said softly, her voice slightly shaken, her delicate fingers clenching and unclenching at the armrest.

"Do not leave, brother," Theodore stood up, quietly placing a hand on his brother's shoulder. "They need help."

"You want to help an Everly traitor?" he screeched, eyes gleaming with thunder. "Then be it on your head!" he shouted, turning on his heel and making for the door. He paused right before Deimos, who only watched him warily. "I hope you burn in hell," Leonard cursed.

Then he walked right out, slamming the doors of the private chamber.

My heart had already begun to sink.

Leonard had the larger of the two Grendel armies - and he was a tried and tested commander. What were the odds that we would wake tomorrow morning to find the other brother gone as well?

"And you?" Eric looked at Theodore, his gaze gone cold. "Will you be joining your traitorous brother as well?"

The young man only raised an eyebrow at his King, expectant and cool. This man was nothing like the rest of us - this man was calculative, this man was cold - already figuring out his next move and carefully picking out his words before they left his mouth.

"I may be his brother in blood, but I am nothing like him in heart. You may find that politeness may go a long way before you start to insult me as well, your Grace," he said finally. His speech was smoother than silk. A calmer man than Everard, it would seem - but dangerous all the same.

"You are ready to ally with us?" I asked.

"We have no quarrel with the Tremaynes. You have always been gracious enough to us."

Thank the heavens.

"And you?" I jerked my chin to Reynald, the lethal Dessari casually resting a hand on his sister's knee, eyes hungry with bloodlust.

"What makes you think we would be interested?" he demanded, his tone dropping an octave.

"Pandora bound you to that Island for life. Perhaps it is time to return her curse of imprisonment with a gift of your own," Helios offered, his face hopeful.

If we could get them on our side, it could offer even the slimmest chance of countering all the demon soldiers that the Titans could bring with them. What with them snapping necks as easily as twigs and feasting on the flesh of their enemies...

"You think of us as some pet that you can unleash on your foes?" Remora screeched, ripping her silk fan and tossing the scraps on the floor as she got up. "Do not forget," she let out a cackle that beckoned to death itself. "Do not forget that I could break all of your necks in an instant - without so much as a breath." Her eyes glowed with an eerie, hollow incandescence, stained lips curling.

"We ask you to-"

"We are not your slaves," she sneered, flinging a wine glass at the tapestries and raising her hands to the ceiling, to the intricately crafted chandelier above us.

The lights in the chandelier died out with a wisp of her breath.

And then the flames in the sconces as well, with a flick of her wrist.

And when we were only shrouded in the darkness with the dancing fire in the grate casting the barest light into the shadows, her silhouette rose into a deadly stance, her eyes an invitation to death himself.

"The only thing this war will give you," she intoned, blazing, "will be blood. Blood which even all great Uranus's oceans will not wash away."

Her very tone filled my veins with ice water, making my blood run cold.

Then the darkness swirled away with her, drifting around her like a great mist that finally vanished out of the doors.

Light flooded the room once more, as did the gasps and shudders of the immortals.

Remora was not just a Ghail - she was a terrible, terrible thing - one that was not of this world. She was darkness herself, a fate even more terrible than Thanatos. And Reynald...

...I did not even know what sort of creature he was.

Pandora had created two terrifying creatures - crafted them with her own hands and let them lose into this world. And if all of her soldiers were like this-

-we were doomed.

"What was that thing?" Aidon was the first to find his voice, one that was badly shaken.

"Just one of Pandora's many playthings," Rowan answered, unperturbed. "She likes surprises," she muttered, busily inspecting a speck of dust on her boots.

"Plaything?" Deimos sputtered, nearly choking on his wine. "That thing could kill us - you mean to say there are more like her?"

"Oh, certainly," Everard said with a grin, playfully nudging his mate.

"Many more, and even worse than her," Nyx replied with a glare at her friends.

"You see what is coming for us," Eric added with a wave of his hand. "You saw Remora. You saw Leora. You saw easily she could dispose of us if she wished," tilted his head to Deimos, who scowled. "I'm not asking you to forget the blood between us. There is bad blood, true. I lost my mother the night she left to go to Vezort. I lost my children when Celestina decided to use them for revenge. But I'm asking you - begging you - to reconsider now. If you back out now to think about the future, there will be no future. There is no future if they come for us. You can't stop them. The High King can't stop them. The Elder gods can't stop them. The Great Houses can't stop them. Only if we band together - only if we are one - only then can we consider even the slimmest chance of survival. Because in the end, even after all the fights, even after all the deaths, we might share good blood or bad, but we share blood. We are family. And family sticks together in times of peril. The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of mortal crisis, Deimos."

Only silence greeted us.

"I have a price," Deimos said at last, his tone dropping.

"This is not some bargain, Everly," Tristan growled, speaking out after a long time. I put a soothing hand on his shoulder, pulling his stiff body to me, softly rubbing his back.

"I have a price," he only said again, his voice quieter than ever.

"Name it," I spat.

He looked at Fayette, and she locked her gaze on him, something strange shimmering in her deep purple eyes as she twirled a curl of golden hair around her finger.

"My children," Deimos said. "I want full custody of them - with immunity."

"Never," Tristan snarled, his lip twitching.

"Give my children back to me and all my men are yours," Everly repeated again.

I nearly reeled from the truth in his voice - the desperation in it, the dire, raw need in his words. The elusive lord of Normount never begged - I had never seen him like this. Not once in the three hundred and eighty six years of my life. This man only served himself first, a treacherous, ambitious immortal who spun lies and took what he wanted by hook or crook.

And yet, here he was.

"A force of twenty thousand Everly men," he said it again. "All trained in the brutal hills of Normount. All yours. Give my children back, and they belong to you."

"No," was all Tristan said, his voice flat, unmoving.

This was going to end badly, this was going to end very, very badly - he had the men we needed, and it was not everyday that the head of House Everly himself offered the full might of his skilled, lethal army.

"Very well," Deimos snapped right in our faces, getting up with a snarl. "We have nothing left to discuss then." His eyes flashed like daggers, slowly darkening in anger as he held out a hand for his wife, both of them stalking towards the doors.

If we let them leave, if we let such a good chance slip past our hands...

"Wait!" I called out, blood boiling.

He turned around, face expectant.

"They are yours," I tried to keep my voice from shaking. "I give you my word."

Tristan looked at me, aghast with the sheer fury shining on his face, anger rippling off him in lethal waves.

"You can't be fucking serious-"

"We need the men," I said softly, shaking him. My voice was so brutally heavy with desperation, strangled, barely holding back my tears to keep them from falling. It was so fucking ironic, and so badly bitter - having to give up the very prisoners who had tortured me to near death.

"You can't - Edwina... they nearly killed you-"

"Please," I begged quietly, my words cracking into little pieces as I saw his pale, pale face. I could not bear the sorrow, the misery that shone in his crestfallen eyes, eyes that had trusted me with every heart and inch of his soul. Eyes that now glimmered with the raw sting of betrayal, breaking me into tiny little pieces that crumbled to the ground.

"Well, then?" Deimos asked, a cruel, wicked smile curling up his lips. He had known - the bastard had known that I would let him have them back, taunting me with his very gaze as they gleamed with cold delight.

"Take them back," I nodded, distant and frigid. I would have throttled Drusilla's pale white and squeezed every last drop of her blood as my blood boiled at the very sight of the plump smirk on her face - and that of her brothers. I grabbed a fistful of Deimos's robes, glaring right into those vile, mirthful eyes of his. "You set one foot out of fucking line," I spat in his face, "I will wipe your House off the fucking map."

He slid his eyes down to my throat. I could sense the dangerous line he walked here - sense the elation yet the caution he was exercising.

"As you wish... your Grace."

Even the air seemed to stop moving.

It could possibly be the first time he must have ever addressed me with something other than wench.

Fury poured out of my eyes, fury that could have burnt and crumbled every living being on land to ash. I only jerked my chin to Llewellyn, and he returned my look with a meaningful nod, ready to free the three.

"And you," I snapped at Emerick, my anger unparalleled and unrestrained, "what will it take to get you on our side?"

"Do you intend to bribe me?"

"I am done with your fucking excuses, Emerick. We stand here at the end of the world contemplating how much longer it is until we jump into the unending abyss. I will not listen to your corrupt lies while time runs out. So this is the last time I ask you - name your price."

I was tired of fighting. Tired of doing this day after day, week after week. We did not have the strength to fight these bastards in the war. Even if it took every last drop of the Derwentwater to get these Houses on our side, it was a risk I was willing to take. Emerick had a larger army than us all, Deimos had men that were skilled in blood. We needed every last sword, every last man - and even if I needed to give my own life to have these all work together, so be it.

"You put up wards at Allington after the Black Wedding. Take them down," Emerick demanded.

"Done," I said at once, curling my fists.

Tristan looked as if he had seen a ghost.

I could not bear to meet his gaze. I could not stand the guilt in me, the heavy, aching guilt. These were all his prisoners, all men he was going to kill - to mete out justice for the way they had treated me. To avenge the innocence, the happiness they had stolen from me.

And I had taken that vengeance away from him.

I didn't know how he would forgive me for that.

If he would forgive me.

"We will take down the wards tonight," Eric sighed, his face fallen. He liked this no more than I did. Liked it no more - setting free the powers of the very House that had killed his children.

Emerick looked at both of us for a moment. Looked for any malice lurking under our words, any deceit in our voices. Eric had given up any chance of revenge. Tristan had reduced to a hollow shell with miserable eyes.

And I? I had given up. I would have fallen to his feet.

"You have my men," he said finally, his voice quiet. He got up, emerald eyes glinting. Behind him stood up the rest of his House, all pledged to us.

"And you have mine," Theodore got up too, and so did Emeline beside him.

"We did not fail you all these years ago," Rowan declared, getting to her feet with Everard. "We will not fail you this time."

"House Tremayne is yours," my father spoke, raising his head.

"So is House Valmont," Llewellyn nodded.

"The Emmersons will stand with you," Vivian said, his voice grave.

"As will the LeVanes," Eros said at last, his words ringing in the silent air of the hall.

And that was how the six Houses of Endollon united for the first time in the history of the world.

• • • • •

I suppose this chapter would get first place for having the most explicit language in the whole book :(

That just goes to show just how serious the situation is. In what a huge mess we find ourselves. This might literally be the first time ever that our merry band of traitors have been civil to the Triarchy. Like, jeez. It wouldn't have happened in my wildest dreams, but here we are... all together. Sailing in the same boat as it begins to sink.

And Tristan... I can't even imagine just how furious he might be. He was an angry young man for the most part of the beginning... guess what, that side of him is going to make a reappearance!! And you better brace yourselves - because it's gonna be unpleasant. He killed Favian without a second thought and imprisoned to others so that he could kill them later (torturing them the same way they hurt Edwina.) And now she took that all from him. Let's remember that they are both entitled to be angry, though Edwina was certainly wiser as took an impossible amount of strength to let her (near) killers escape.

How many of you think this group of ours is going to survive the war? And if they do, who might make it and who might not?

Find out soon!! Love, xx.