Page 60 of The Curse of Gods (The Curse of Saints #3)

“Unconscious?” Cole supplied helpfully as he crossed his legs, his brow furrowing as he stared at the pot, as if he could make it boil.

Liam raised an amused brow. “Right.” He sighed as he let his head fall back, exhaustion heavy in his voice as he said, “I don’t think we’ll get Will to move anytime soon.”

“We can’t stay here long,” Aidon objected. “Even with Akeeta and Azul keeping watch outside, we’re too exposed.”

Silence fell over them, weighed down by exhaustion and grief and fear. They may have left the horrors of Sitya behind, but the ghosts of them lingered in the room, cold and haunting and bleak.

“Did you see the women go over the edge of the wall?” Dauphine finally asked them all, her voice uncharacteristically soft.

Liam let out a long breath, his gaze fixed on the ceiling. “For a moment, I thought one of them was Aya,” he admitted to the plaster.

Aidon’s stomach twisted, a mere shadow of the feeling that had wrenched through him when he’d caught sight of those bodies falling through the air.

He had thought one was Aya, too. That is until he’d seen them hanging there, one holding on to seemingly nothing but a divot created by her own hand in the wall.

Evie, he assumed.

The other had dangled from Evie’s leg for no more than a breath before the saint flicked her hand and sent the woman careening to her death, as if she was no more than a bothersome fly.

“I’ve never seen anyone catch themselves like that,” Cole remarked.

“She didn’t catch herself. She gouged a hole in the wall of the fortress with one hand,” Dauphine replied. “I’ve seen Zeluus break through cement like it was paper, but never like that. That looked like…”

“A god?” Aidon offered up.

Another full silence enveloped them. The demigod , Aya had called her. Aidon did not want to think what awaited them if Evie was, in fact, part god. The war’s devastation already seemed insurmountable without adding the immeasurable power of the Divine.

Cole sighed heavily, his body shifting as he crossed his legs.

“Maybe the fortress crushed her when it fell,” he reasoned.

For a fleeting moment, Aidon found comfort in the raw, and perhaps naive, hope that danced throughout Cole’s tone.

But a quick look around the room confirmed what Aidon already knew to be true:

If Evie had been able to stop her fall, then certainly she had a way to protect herself from the citadel’s wreckage.

“Could a Caeli have constructed a shield of air to withstand that much pressure?” Aidon asked Dauphine.

“An ordinary Caeli?” Dauphine twisted her hands in her lap. “No. But we’re not dealing with typical Visya, are we?” She paused, her lips pursed. “There’s also the possibility that she managed to get herself clear of it before it truly fell.”

“So either way… she survived,” Aidon muttered.

“Can gods even be killed?” Liam asked, his brow furrowed with skepticism as he slumped back in his chair.

“Anything can be killed if one tries hard enough,” Cole answered. He gave a small shrug as he hugged his knees to his chest. “Why else would the gods warn against the Decachiré if not to protect themselves from the possibility of death?”

“Greed?” Dauphine offered.

Cole hummed in contemplation. “Perhaps,” he allowed, “but what is greed if not a result of desperate self-preservation?”

Dauphine chuckled, her elbow digging into Aidon’s side as she nudged him. “Your sister has good judgment in friends,” she remarked.

Guilt hit Aidon with brutal force. He knew how singularly focused a battle could make him.

Even petty border skirmishes or brief interactions with pirates used to have a way of consuming his mind entirely until the confrontation was over.

But the fact that he hadn’t even asked Cole for his story—the fact that he hadn’t pressed for information about his family or his soldiers—as soon as they made it clear of Sitya’s hills…

His shame must have shown on his face, because Cole’s expression softened as he said, “There was plenty to distract us.”

His reassurance did nothing to ease the weight bearing down on Aidon’s shoulders. He swallowed roughly to free the questions lodged behind the lump in his throat.

“Did the Visya force make it to Trahir?” he asked.

Cole nodded gravely. “We did. And we were ambushed immediately by the Bellare.”

Aidon straightened. “The Bellare? But they hardly have the numbers—”

“They do now,” Cole interrupted. “I suspect they’ve been planning this for a while, but the news of your power threw kerosene on an already existing fire.”

Aidon felt Dauphine shift next to him. She made a soft, pained noise as she leaned forward, her brow set in concentration. “When you say this …”

“They staged a coup. Avis Lavigne now sits on your throne.”

It took a moment for the words to settle in Aidon’s mind. When they did, they had him pushing off the couch, his jaw locking as he tried to bite back his anger.

He could distantly make out Liam asking Cole about the Bellare, but Aidon was too lost to his own indignation to keep up with their conversation.

He should have banished Lavigne immediately. Instead, he’d waited—not just for a trial, but for a chance to weigh the pros and cons. He was so afraid of being his uncle, of wielding his position like a weapon, that he’d let someone else steal it and do just that.

Aidon rubbed a hand across the back of his neck as he paced the short width of the sitting room. He could feel Dauphine’s gaze on him, and it only made the heat crawling up his spine worse. He kept his fixed on a molded spot on the gaudy rug that lay on the floor.

“You said Josie is safe,” he said to Cole, his voice as clipped as his boots on the thin rug.

“Yes. When I left, she was hidden in the Maraciana. Natali felt it was the safest place. Aleissande was taken there as well.”

Alive. His sister and his general were alive.

Aidon stilled, his back to Cole. “They’re dead, aren’t they?” he asked. “My parents.”

“They’re missing,” Cole corrected. Aidon pivoted to face him, his heart hammering in his chest. “Which makes me think they’re alive,” he continued as he took the pot of water off the fire, setting it aside to cool. “If the Bellare had killed them, I’m sure they would have bragged about it.”

They certainly would have.

That vise grip around Aidon’s heart loosened just the slightest bit. Yet Cole shifted uneasily on the floor, his eyes flicking away from Aidon’s face as his hands tangled together in his lap.

“What aren’t you saying, Cole?” Aidon pressed.

Cole fidgeted again, but he finally met Aidon’s gaze. “Josie plans to retake the throne in your name.”

Of course she did. He should have known that the instant Cole uttered the word coup. Josie would not sit idly by; she never had. Especially not with her history with the Bellare.

Aidon closed his eyes and counted to three in his head.

Duty. Responsibility. Loyalty.

“You came to bring me home,” he finally muttered. He rubbed the back of his neck again, but the tension there was unyielding. “The people do not want a Visya king.”

“The people have no idea what’s coming for them,” Cole responded, vehemence sharpening his tone. “And when Kakos does come, it certainly won’t be the Bellare who protect them.”

“How can I ?” Aidon exclaimed. “I have only ever caused division in Trahir, first with the death of my uncle and now with, with— this !” Aidon motioned down his body, as if the evidence of his affinity was there for all to see. He supposed now it was.

Wasn’t he supposed to feel relief? Nearly twenty-some-odd years he’d kept this secret, and finally, he could clear the space it occupied in his mind. In his soul . He should feel lighter. Freer. But all he felt was anger, and irritation, and guilt.

“You underestimate what you could do should you choose to lead,” Cole replied.

“I did choose to lead,” Aidon shot back as he took a step in Cole’s direction. “I made that choice the moment I plunged a dagger into my uncle’s back, and look where it got me.”

Cole pushed himself off the floor, his hands dusting uselessly down his dirt-and-blood slicked pants. “It got you here . You’ve rescued the Second Saint. Your people need you now.”

Aidon shook his head. Pressure was building behind his eyes, that same stabbing pain that had haunted him his first few weeks on the run. But now, it was accompanied by the stretching sensation beneath his skin of his affinity, begging for an outlet along with his rage.

“You’ve fought against Kakos three times now,” Cole was saying, but his words sounded buried beneath the rushing in Aidon’s ears. “You know what we’re facing; you know—”

“Cole,” Dauphine warned, but Cole kept talking, even as Aidon took a step back, that pressure in his head building, and building, and building.

“You can unite the Visya and the humans and—”

“Stop!” Aidon yelled as that tension inside him snapped.

It happened in the blink of an eye. One moment he was standing there, head near full to bursting, and the next, a ball of fire was bursting from the center of his chest, as if Cole had tugged it straight from the rage holding together his shattered heart.

Cole’s eyes went wide, and Aidon lunged, arms outstretched, as if he could catch it, stop it, do something —

Dauphine leapt to her feet, her arms twisting as she swept the oxygen out of the space between them, the fireball extinguishing instantly. She stood for a moment more before her face blanched, her body swaying dangerously as she lowered herself onto the couch.

Aidon took a step toward her, but she held out a hand. “I’m fine,” she assured him. He ducked his chin, his jaw aching as he clenched his teeth against his shame. He had to get out of this room. Now.

He turned on his heel, his gaze fixed pointedly on the ground to avoid Liam’s stare as he stalked to the door.

“Where are you going?” the Persi asked.

Aidon’s hand curled around the knob, and he wrenched the door open with more force than necessary.

“I need some air.”