Page 4 of The Curse of Gods (The Curse of Saints #3)

Aidon had spent many long nights in his youth envisioning his future, vacillating between yearning to lead and crumbling beneath the weight of his birthright, all while suffocating slowly beneath the secret he had been desperate to keep.

He’d imagined a thousand different scenarios, all laid out like chess pieces on a board that he attempted to strategize his way through, so none could take him by surprise.

And yet the future had anyway. Because in all of those scenarios he’d run through, in all of his battle plans and contingencies, he’d never imagined this .

Fleeing.

Hiding.

“Run,” Aleissande had said as soon as his flame had ceased.

The Diaforaté’s charred corpse hadn’t even hit the ground yet.

But Aidon had already registered the look of horror on Josie’s face as she realized what he’d done to save her—as his troops realized what their king had just revealed in the heat of battle.

Aleissande’s hand had curled around his forearm and tugged . “Run, Aidon!”

He’d never heard fear in his general’s voice before.

And so he’d done exactly as she commanded: he’d let the chaos of the battle hide him, and he’d run.

His cowardice had driven him through the city, up the steep paths toward the palace.

He’d thought, if nothing else, he could lend himself to his friends one final time.

But he’d been too late.

Tova was dead. Aya was gone. And Will…

Will had been standing over Gianna’s body, a vacant look in his eyes that still hadn’t vanished, even now. It had been enough to snap Aidon out of his own daze, enough to have his instincts come roaring back to life.

“We can’t be here,” he’d gritted out, bodily tugging Will away from the carnage. If they were found in the room with a dead monarch and her general and a member of her Dyminara, people would assume the worst.

At least, that’s what logic had whispered in his ear.

He’d chosen to see it as just that: his battle sense rearing its head in the midst of a fight the two of them would not be able to win. But tonight, he wondered, not for the first time, if it had been fear. Fear was, after all, the master of deception. It paraded as logic. As reason. As justice.

Even as love.

“We’re a few days’ ride from the Druswood,” Will muttered from where he knelt before a meager fire, picking up on a conversation—or perhaps argument was a better word for it—they’d been weaving in and out of for days.

Will’s eyes narrowed as he scanned the stolen map he’d spread on the floor of the cave.

Aidon didn’t fail to notice that he hadn’t bothered to wash the blood from his skin.

Aidon tipped his head back, the rock rough against his spine as he sat against the cave wall.

He shut his eyes and exhaled slowly. The pressure in his head was getting worse.

It had started a prickle of pain between his eyes, but now, it was sharp enough to make his jaw clench as it pulsed in time with his heartbeat.

It was almost enough to distract from the way he shivered in the cold. Damn the northern climate’s refusal to bend to summer.

“I still think we’d be better off going to Cullway to secure a skiff,” he managed to mutter. “The mountains have provided us generous cover. Without it, we’d be dead by now.”

The Talan port sat to the north. It would be backtracking in a way, but Aidon liked their chances of approaching the Midlands by boat rather than on horseback. Will, on the other hand, preferred to be thorough. Aidon suspected he might search every damn crevice of the realm if he could.

But even Will had come to terms with the impossibility of such a thing. He had sent Akeeta ahead of them to scour the peaks and valleys of the Malas they could not reach—not without wasting precious time.

There’d been no sign of his bonded in over a week.

“Cullway is a four-day journey in the wrong direction,” Will argued as he frowned at the map. “It’s faster to cross through the Druswood and head further east to Colmur. It’s inland enough that there’s a good chance it hasn’t been overrun by Kakos.”

A good chance, but not a certainty.

Kakos had invaded Sitya, the southernmost Midlands port, weeks ago.

From what Aidon could garner, the port was functioning as a base of sorts for the Kakos forces.

It had been Midlands’ ships they’d sailed to Milsaio, to Tala, too, entering somewhere south of Dunmeaden to maintain the element of surprise as they marched on the city.

As Gianna let them march on the city.

And yet, there was still so much they didn’t know, even now that they’d found lone contingents of the Kakos army.

Found, questioned, and killed.

They’d hardly gotten any answers.

How large were their forces? Where had they retreated to when they left Dunmeaden? He and Will hadn’t seen a trace of a Kakos soldier until they’d reached the southern part of Tala, and even then, the platoons had been far and few between, as if they’d been miscellaneously placed in the region.

It didn’t make any sense. If Kakos was planning to continue to wage this war, why scatter their forces like this? Why not attack as a united front?

It rankled Aidon, not having all the pieces to this puzzle.

His mind was crafted for strategy, for looking at the pieces on the board and calculating the next move.

But he didn’t know how to play the game like this—how to strategize when he couldn’t even see the available spaces.

It was why he’d insisted on keeping every scrap of parchment they found in the camps they’d raided.

He’d hoped one would give him an inkling of an idea of what Kakos had planned.

So far, he’d found nothing.

“There’s no indication that she’s in Colmur,” Aidon reasoned, exhaustion seeping into his tone as he braced his elbows on his knees. The pressure in his head gave a particularly sharp pulse, and he just barely managed to control his wince before Will jerked his head toward him with a glare.

“There’s no indication she’s fucking anywhere , which is exactly why we need to be in Colmur.

I have a resource there who can help us.

” He turned back to the map, poring over it as if it had the answers, the firelight sending flickering shadows across his gaunt face.

“They have her,” he added quietly. “I know they have her.”

It was entirely possible. And if Kakos did in fact have Aya, then they needed every resource they could get. Especially if they’d taken her beyond the Midlands border and into the Southern Kingdom itself.

No one had crossed the Kakos border in years. And they’d already seen firsthand the destruction Kakos forces could bring. Rescuing Aya from their clutches would be no easy task.

And yet there was another possibility, one Aidon had tried to push from his mind because merely considering it felt like the worst sort of betrayal to his friend. It rushed forward now, the taste of his guilt bitter on his tongue, and—

Wait. No, that wasn’t his guilt he was tasting. It was blood.

Godsdammit.

Aidon drew a hand to his nose, pinching the space hard. It was the second bleed this week, and he had no disillusions as to what was causing it.

He hadn’t taken his tonic since he fled Dunmeaden over two weeks ago.

Using his power was supposed to help ease the damage the long-term use of the tonic had caused. That’s what Natali had hypothesized at least, that he could learn to use what was within him and potentially stave off the death that would come if he continued to ignore his power.

It was terribly inconvenient that this should be the first time the Saj was wrong.

He’d tested their theory a mere two days after he’d burned that Diaforaté to a crisp in Dunmeaden.

He’d used his Incend affinity to burn the first camp of Kakos soldiers they found, and the effort of it had nearly rendered him unconscious.

He wasn’t sure why he’d been able to save Josie’s life in Dunmeaden with his power.

Perhaps his adrenaline had simply muted whatever physiological toll had followed the use of his affinity.

Either way…

He set fires the old-fashioned way, now. Not that it mattered, if his nose bleed was any indication. It seemed his affinity was intent on destroying him one way or another.

If Will noticed the way he was slowly deteriorating, he hadn’t said a word. Sometimes, Aidon wondered if he saw anything other than maps and plans and vengeance.

But Tyr…Tyr was ever watching, and his gaze fell heavily on him now, his brown eyes tracking Aidon as he tried to staunch the bleed.

The Athatis unsettled him. He had a knowing sort of look about him, as if he could read Aidon’s thoughts, even the ones he tried to ignore.

Especially the ones he tried to ignore.

“So it’s settled then?” Will muttered after several minutes of heavy silence. The bleeding had stopped, but Tyr still watched Aidon as he scrubbed the dried tracks from his upper lip.

The wolf blinked at him expectantly.

No. It wasn’t settled.

“Have you considered…?” Aidon trailed off, his jaw shifting as he turned over how to best phrase the words so they wouldn’t carry such a large sting of betrayal.

Will turned his attention from the map, his brow furrowing as he clocked Aidon’s clear discomfort. “Say whatever it is you need to say, Aidon.”

It wasn’t an encouragement, but a goad, perhaps even a threat, given Will parted with those as easily as an exhale. Aidon responded accordingly, his shoulders squaring as he sat up and met Will’s narrowed gaze head on.

“She didn’t know your friends in the Dyminara escaped the fire. She didn’t know Liam freed the Athatis. She doesn’t know Tyr lives. And whatever happened in that throne room…it took one of the most important people in her life from her.”