86 | ACT VI, SCENE III

P R E V I O U S L Y

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

CALCHESTER CITADEL, STEFFITH.

EDWINA

IT HAD BEEN HELIOS WHO had suggested that the immortals all stay in the neutral territory of Steffith, at Calchester Citadel. Having everyone in one place would be easier while forming the backbone of this cold, uneasy alliance. An alliance built on mistrust and blood and death, the tensions sliced the air, sharper than a knife.

As everyone had rustled and stood up to arrange for their belongings to be brought here, Tristan had been the first to rise, his face still cold, eyes emotionless.

"My wife and I will be staying at Bellhaven. Do not send the attendants. We can look after ourselves," he said frigidly, before turning on his heel and storming the door open, vanishing into thin air.

My heart sunk. A horrible wave of misery washed over me. Eric slumped into a vacant chair as the room began to empty, his eyes hollow. He warily watched me as I seethed at the smile on Drusilla's face, nearly ready to throttle her and tear her heart out. I tried to reign in my temper as I stormed to the doors, and Llewellyn held me back.

"Don't," he murmured quietly.

"He's mad at me."

"He'll come around-"

"-no. I have to go to him," my feet approached the doors of the chamber, pushing them open as I whirled myself into the darkness.

The room melted away.

Bellhaven was one of the quieter districts of Steffith, just a two minute walk from the Citadel. It had its own mansion, large enough to house more than fifty. Yet now it stood lifeless, empty in the glowing twilight.

I painfully trudged up the steps.

He was already perched on a stool at the mini bar, eyeing the labels on the very old bottles, a glass of scotch already in one hand. His hair was messed, his sleeves rolled to the forearms. The muscles in his arms tightened as my footsteps rang in the air.

"You're angry."

He took a sip of the scotch, slowly turning around.

"I'm not angry. I'm pissed," he spat.

His eyes were flickering with pitch black fire, blazing and thunderous. They gleamed like pits of obsidian in the darkness, frightfully contrasting against how white his face had become.

"Tristan..." I whispered slowly, closing the door behind me. "Look - we needed the men. I'm sorry... I - I don't like this business any more than you do, but at least you could act mature-"

"Fuck maturity!" he snapped, his voice poisoned with anger. "Those people tortured you - you don't even know how my heart stopped beating when I saw what they did to you - chopped you up into pieces! You don't even know how it felt to hear your cries, your screams - don't you fucking dare tell me to act mature!"

"Tristan... please."

He set the glass down on the counter, resting his tired head in his palms. I had nearly broken into tears. If there was anything I hated, it was hurting him - because he deserved better.

"Please. I don't want to fight," I croaked. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for taking that revenge from you. I know - that you planned to kill them, and I'm sorry."

"Revenge," he hoarsely let out a dry, bitter laugh. "I wasn't going to kill them at once, no. I was going to kill them for a very, very long time."

I felt miserable. There was no other word for it. I wanted to weep at the irony of fate, how it had forced me to fight beside the same families who had so utterly ruined us both. I wished I could take it back. I wished I could take it all back. He mattered more to me than my own life. I would have gladly killed myself for him.

Tristan sighed, draining the glass of scotch in one sip.

"Gods," he said hoarsely, loosening his tie with one hand. "Come here, Edwina."

I tossed off my heels and silently walked right to him, my bare feet padding on the thick carpet. He relaxed his body, shifting his legs to let me curl up against him, hooking my legs on either side of his body. His eyes slowly returned to blue as I rested my head on his warm chest, feeling his fingers idly stroke my hair.

"I love you," I breathed into his welcoming warmth, inhaling his familiar, crisp scent. "And I'm so, so sorry, love."

"I love you too," he murmured into my hair, idly rubbing my back in soothing circles. "And I don't want to fight with you - not over an insignificant little bastard like Deimos. I have much more important people in my life."

He managed a soft smile, cupping my cheek and kissing away the unfallen tears glimmering in my eyes. I shifted closer to him, even though our bodies were so curled and wrapped around each other, every inch of visible skin pressed in loving embrace. We made no move to take things further, content only with each other's presence - safe in it, satisfied in it.

"You make me feel safe," I said silently, wrapping my arms around his shoulders, gently kissing him on the cheek.

Tristan smiled.

And seeing him smile, it was like seeing the sun after centuries of eternal winter.

"I want you to feel safe," he whispered, "I don't want you to live in fear - always insecure, always hurting. I want you to be happy, Edwina. I love you too much, and I don't want you to suffer anymore."

An explosion of love and affection thrummed in my chest. I loved him so much, I wondered how my heart would hold the weight.

"We'll make it through this," I promised, squeezing his hand. "We'll make it through. Together. And if we die," my voice cracked, "we'll die toge-"

He pressed a finger to my lips, cutting me off mid sentence.

"If we die, we die," Tristan murmured gently, "but first, we'll live."

• • • • •

It seemed that no one's moods had improved when we both entered the Citadel again next morning.

Alaric was nursing a goblet of red wine, face drawn with something that looked like exhaustion. I knew how Tristan had put a Bloodstone knife right through his lungs just days ago.

And yet I felt not even a morsel of remorse.

Eric was already leaning over a map of Endollon, rubbing his temples. He and his Everly cousin kept on shooting sour looks at the other every few seconds. Emerick was barking something at Everard, and the Valkyrie male only flicked his protests away with a hearty laugh, enraging the god further. We had passed Rowan who had been perched on the footsteps in the early morning light, sharpening a wicked knife with a gleam in her bright eyes. She'd curiously look at Theodore sitting beside her, asking the Grendel questions about how their races survived.

"I've reviewed the figures and accounts over the night," Eric mulled as we approached, his eyes grey and tired.

"And?"

"We might not have as many men as we'd hoped."

"The Valmonts can muster up a force of twenty five thousand," Tristan said tersely - still cold. No House ever revealed the strength of their forces, for fear of being attacked by enemies. Yet today, we had no choice.

"Deimos has twenty," I added, "which he so generously offered us yesterday."

"I would advise you to watch your dear tongue before my father takes back his generosity," Alaric hissed, draining his sangria in a single sip.

Tristan swore and leaned over the table, locking his blue eyes right into those purple ones.

"I dare you, Everly," his voice rang with warning. "One foot out of line, and I will make sure you do not live to see another day."

Both males looked at each other furiously, a pulse throbbing hard in their temples.

Then Alaric flung the wine glass in the corner, gritting his teeth and baring them in a low, dangerous growl.

This was how it was going to go, then.

"How many can you spare?" I asked Eric.

"Not more than fifteen thousand."

"And the Emmersons?" Tristan raised an eyebrow.

"Five thousand. Seven at most," Vivian muttered quietly, brow furrowed as he suspiciously regarded the map.

"That's all?" Everard looked at him, shock on his face as he studied the god with his golden eyes.

"We are not uncivilized mongrels like the rest of you," the lord Emmerson spat at him. "A smaller army keeps us safe all the same."

"And you? How many from the House of Tremayne?" the Valkyrie asked me with interest.

"Fifteen thousand by last count," I said. "But one Tremayne man is as skilled as five Everly warriors."

"Why don't we test that theory?" Deimos's voice drifted in through the doors as he walked in, still in the black robes from last night, eyes blazing. "Let's see how many pieces my warriors can chop your man into," he hissed at me, poisonous.

"You-"

"-this is not a fucking competition, Everly," Tristan brusquely snarled at him, gaze darkening. He quietly placed a warning palm on mine, making me shut my mouth as he whipped his head to Emerick. "How many Rotavelles can we expect?"

"Thirty thousand," his lips were pressed in a thin line, twitching with disdain.

"I thought you had more," I demanded. "Your House is twice as large as any other House of Endollon."

"Oh, I did," he snapped, curling his fists. "Before you snuck into my palace and decided to burn more than half my forces to the ground!"

"We have five thousand," Everard offered with a cock of his brow. "But we fought that first Titanomachy with less than half that number - and we won."

"And the Grendel army totaled twenty thousand. But now that Leonard is gone, only Theodore remains with ten thousand."

"So that puts us at one hundred and twenty thousand," I declared, quietly doing the math in my head.

"That is nothing compared to the might of the Titans," Rowan strolled in, a bitter smile on her face. Nyx and Helios entered behind her as well, having no doubt heard the disappointing conversation. "You cannot win this war. You have a million men? They might as well have billions." She tossed her tightly braided hair behind her, studying the map, her eyes lingering on a particular spot. "You will need supernatural help to win this war."

"So we take orders from a woman now," Emerick mocked her quietly, glaring at her from where he stood.

"A woman who fought beside your brother while you hid away like a coward," she shot him a lethal, feline smile, stalking to her mate like a lioness. Everard grinned at her, wrapping an arm around her.

"Our men are skilled," Theodore muttered, his voice smooth yet lined with hurt. "Grendel are hard to kill."

He was right. Even a blade of Bloodstone to the heart could not kill them. The only thing that could kill them would be depriving them of the waters of the Derwentwater. They could survive a week at most without a drop of it.

"They might be skilled, boy - but a few thousand men make no difference against billions," Deimos hissed at him, eyeing the Grendel male's silver hair, his sturdy, quiet face.

I saw Theodore's eyes flick to the god, cold and furious. He could have broken into an immature fit the way Emerick did, but he did not - the man only curled his lip, replacing his face with a mask of patience, smoothly calculating his next move.

"Well then, I suppose I will have to ask my armies to turn around and go back home. After all, a few thousand don't make a difference, correct?"

No one in the room moved. Even Deimos did not retort back.

"Pandora will strike right at the heart of Endollon," Helios broke the silence softly, the room filling with golden light emanating from him. "She could take down the capital first - Steffith itself. Or even the kingdoms of the Triarchy. Dracnesse, Stormholt or Ellesmere."

"She's a... vile creature," Nyx said, quietly closing her eyes. "She'll play with you first - like a lion stalking its prey. If she's feeling generous, she might even let you win for a minute. And when you lose her interest..." she shuddered, "...she'll finish you off."

Someone who could even make a powerful goddess like Nyx shudder...

"And the fact remains that we just aren't going to face Pandora. Her husband Zadicus is the Titan of war. And her six children are terrors from another realm," Helios muttered, knotting his brows. "You saw what Leora was. What she did," he threw a look at Deimos, who glared at him, drawing his cloak closer to cover his pale white neck, the neck which had been snapped so brutally not even two days ago. "We cannot face eight Titans and a fully armed Titan force on our own might."

"Who was the one who made the rings?" Theodore asked quietly. "If that person could tell us how to make another one - we could get to Seattoria and kill them before they come for us. You said that Cosmo remembered his previous life-"

"That does not matter," Emerick interrupted him. "Because Cosmo did not make those rings. It was Zadicus himself who made it. And whatever you try, my blasted brother will get around it."

"Can't you ask your pretty witch to do something?" Rowan inquired with curiosity.

"Pretty witch?"

"The one who put the binding spell on the Citadel yesterday."

Sarette. She meant Sarette.

Emerick's face turned purple with anger, curling his fists around the table as a splinter cracked in the surface.

"My daughter is not a witch-"

"Nor is she pretty," Everard let out a chuckle, eyes twinkling as he laughed beside his mate.

"Watch your tongue, half breed," the Rotavelle lord growled, infuriated as he already was with the two cheeky Valkyrie. "When I'm done with your mate, she won't look pretty either-"

"That's enough," Eric stopped them both, irritation etched on his face. "I swear to Uranus, can you stop?"

"You're getting tedious, Emerick. Take your spat somewhere else," Tristan drawled coldly, returning his attention to the map. He traced his fingers over the painted fabric, and I tried not to think of those same fingers which had been teasing and tantalizing me today morning, dancing across my skin as we had moved under the sheets.

"She's less likely to go for Steffith first," Theodore mused. "Both Steffith and Normount lie on the peripheries of Endollon, and Normount is brutally cold."

"Dracnesse lies just below Normount," I said. "It's warmer and closer to the center."

"Dracnesse is landlocked," Deimos interjected, glaring at me. "Even a fool would know that the enemy will lay siege closer to a water body."

"That leaves us with Ellesmere and Stormholt," Helios concluded. "They border the Ocemond Sea. But we forget the fact that both Dracnesse and Normount have the Derwentwater running between them. Zadicus would know that we need the waters of the river to reverse the spell on the Logogram."

"So that leaves Vertgate and Allington to be the last place we expect her to attack?" Vivian asked.

"If that is what you least expect, she'll strike there first," Rowan butted in.

"So you're saying she'll attack outside Endollon? Vezort?" I asked.

"They have no quarrel with the Dessari. Pandora created them, for fuck's sake," Tristan said with a dark mutter, his lip twitching. "We have practically no way to sense where they might send their armies first."

"Which is why I said - you'll need supernatural help to win this war. There are a set of people who could help us," the dark skinned Valkyrie continued. "A skill set coveted by all of us, but possessed only by them."

It took us a moment to register what she was saying.

"The Halflings?"

"The ones who loaned you their three rebel states during the Monarch Trials," she nodded gravely. "They let Cosmo have their land for three hundred years - twenty each for each of the fifteen cousins, from which the people chose their top three and formed the Triarchy."

Nearly everyone in the room had paled.

Because the Halflings were mind readers.

"They are tricksters," Deimos hissed after a while. "Dangerous soldiers who fight with poison and mind tricks. We do not need their meddlesome bodies in this."

"They are dangerous," Eric nodded. "That is the very reason Cosmo held the Monarch Trials there. To test us. To see how well each cousin could handle such dangerous, lethal people."

But even his face had drained of all colour, and with good reason.

Because the rebels were dangerous. Because they could read minds as easily as reading a page of a book. Because they had poisons, such deadly poisons that looked and smelled sweeter than sin - poisons that would slowly leach out your life and leave you in eternal agony. Cosmo had allotted each of us cousins twenty years to rule on those states. Being alone in the foreign islands, with strange people, and stuck there for twenty years - most of the cousins had loathed going.

I had been the very last one to go. In the two hundred and eighty years in which the cousins before me had ruled, the land had been ruined and torn. Each of the cousins had made mistakes. Drusilla had tried, but the Halflings had foiled her plans in the last five years of her rule. Llewellyn had nearly burned down an island by mistake. Favian had increased taxes to ten times, hoarding all the gold. There had been brief spells of peace too. Tristan had settled an efficient system in place. Eric often walked through the streets and talked to the people. But in general, when I had been sent there, the three states had been so badly broken and drained that they were ready to kill me.

But I had spent two hundred and eighty years observing all those mistakes. I had two hundred and eighty years to draw up my strategies.

"The Halflings are savage. Wild. Beasts in immortal skins. Not all of us are blessed negotiators like that damned Cosmo. Consider it your best interests to stay away from their cursed states if you wish to stay alive," Emerick repeated, eyes wide.

My first goal had been to instill fear in those people. And the second had been to cultivate respect from it.

When I had set foot into the states for the first time with the procession of immortals behind me, I had knelt and touched my palm to the ground, feeling the foreign sand slip through my fingers.

That was when a weary Halfling man had spat on my hand.

And when I rose from the ground, I burned him alive.

There had been more than fifteen attempts to assassinate me in the first month itself.

I still remembered that procession to the palace, the strangers behind me both angry and scared. I had burned the blazing farms, the dried lakes, the wasted cities.

And after destroying the ruins, I built them back.

More beautiful than ever before.

It had taken me three years of constant fight. I had burned the rivers and shaped it to steam. I had used that steam and powered mills and factories, and I had built back the states from destroyed ground, one brick at a time.

At the end of the three years I had won my battle. The people no longer despised me. They began to grow a grudging respect, a loyalty only furthered by the next seventeen years I had spent there in utter peace.

And when I had come home to Steffith at the end of those twenty years, victorious - my loyal people had followed me right to the doors of the Citadel.

"True," Helios breathed softly. "We may not have Cosmo or his diplomacy. We have someone even better to convince the Halflings to join our cause."

"Those beasts listen to no one," Deimos barked. "No god, no immortal."

"There still remains one person in the world who holds that kind of power," Eric said quietly, turning his gaze to me as did the rest of the room. "Edwina herself."

• • • • •

IF WE DIE, WE DIE. BUT FIRST, WE LIVE. Ygritte, we love you, and for those that haven't watched Game Of Thrones, please do so that you can enjoy those little references!!

The Tredwina angst... slay me!! Gosh, the entire story is turning out so angsty, what with the thick, boiling tension in the air - it's like raindrops made of blood. Stifling. Angry. Hot. And very, very angsty!!