Page 30

T heron sat in the courtyard of the temple of Justice with his eyes closed and his face raised towards the sun. At midday, the temple was at rest for meal time, but every cleric was seated in the dining hall, conforming mindlessly lest their convictions be questioned. Theron couldn’t stomach the thought of food. In just a few days, he would be married. Not in Aureum, amongst his court with the streets lined by well-wishers. Not to a woman he liked or could even tolerate. Not because it would benefit Aureum or him politically.

Theron cursed his choices.

Trading his safety for purification had been the coward’s choice. He should have had the resolve to be patient, no matter the consequences. But no, he’d let his panicked courtiers lead him by the nose. He knew he should have just trusted Batea to handle it, knew he should have told his people to get Aurora out of Boreas immediately. Theron had panicked—erred, and now he reaped the consequences.

What did it matter if he returned home in a timely fashion if his wife managed to murder him before he could set his court to rights, or found a way to steal the Dragon’s Flank for her foul mother? What did it matter if he managed to keep Aurora close at hand if her stubborn refusal to yield to their passion kept her heart out of his reach and thus his control?

Flora might have agreed to his reasonable terms of restitution, Orithyia might have purified him, but he’d still fallen into another trap. The queen was already making noises about sending an entire legion of Viridian soldiers along with her daughter ‘for safety.’ Orithyia had insinuated that she would also be making plans to visit Aureum in the near future—now that he’d allied himself to Viridis through marriage. Theron had managed to keep Viridis at bay his whole life, and now the most pernicious women in this cursed queendom would finally get their claws into his kingdom.

He’d failed Aureum. Chosen to act selfishly out of fear, and now his kingdom would pay. Unless he could find a way to convince Epicasta to deny the need for soldiers and rebuff Orithyia’s intrusion without her telling Flora the exact wording of his sacred vow, he was going to lose ground. Already, he was on unstable footing, and Viridis was pushing him into a corner.

When he sighed and opened his eyes, he caught sight of Aurora. She was across the courtyard. Her eyes widened a fraction. He’d caught her staring. Theron smiled and stood. She turned to dart away. His heart raced.

Not again. Not today. He was sick of her running from him, from the connection between them. Theron gave chase, his longer legs closing the distance in moments. Aurora squeaked when he grabbed her around the waist and tackled her to the floor with him, landing on his shoulder to spare her any pain.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she accused him.

She writhed in his arms. He chuckled, turning to flip and pin her to the temple floor, her arms above her head. The moment he flipped her, Aurora stopped struggling, her gaze flitting between his eyes and lips. Did she know the way she was looking at him, full of lust and longing? Did she know that even as she rebuked him with words, she shifted, rising to meet him as he closed the space between them?

“I could ask the same. Have you become a shameless voyeur in our time apart?”

“I—”

“I could punish you if you like,” he purred, rubbing his nose along her slender neck, taking pleasure in her hitched breath. “I would use my teeth to make you confess,” he whispered, nibbling on her long, pointed ear as she gasped. “I would use my lips to make you repent,” he said, kissing a trail down her neck. “I would use my tongue to teach you a lesson,” he said, pressing his tongue and teasing her nipple as it pebbled against the fabric of her gown. Aurora groaned, arching her back for more. “And only when I use my fingers would you know that you were forgiven,” he whispered, trailing his hand up the side of her gown. “Tell me you want to be punished.”

Did she realise that he’d stopped pinning her wrists, that she held them above her head exactly where he’d first grabbed them? Colour rose up her neck, her breath coming hard and fast, her gaze full of desire. She was beautiful like this, his fairy. He could see she wanted to surrender as much as he wanted to conquer.

Slowly, she raised her hands to his face, as if a sudden move might make him bolt. Didn’t she know he’d captured her, and not the other way around? Her soft hands memorized the planes of his face, her fingers threading into his hair as she urged his lips to hers. Theron let her lead the kiss, let her tell him how she wished to be savoured in that moment.

Her lips were soft as she caressed his in a series of light kisses. She kissed his upper lip, the bottom, the side of his mouth, unexpectedly tender. When her tongue bid him to open his mouth for hers, he obliged, drinking her in slowly, reverently. Her leisurely exploration made the world around them fade away, until all he could taste was her, until his every breath was filled with her, until he imagined himself falling into her and never emerging.

Aurora pulled away, her gaze as tender as her kisses had been.

“I want you to be mine. Only mine,” Aurora whispered.

“You already have me, Aurora,” he said.

She shook her head.

“I want everything. All of you.”

He sighed, his thumb caressing her lip. Theron finally had her wrapped around his finger, and now he would have to convince her to stay. Her possessiveness pleased him, but now that same trait posed a problem.

“I would give you everything if I could.”

“Don’t marry her, please. She doesn’t even want it.”

His heart warmed at the sound of her pleading. Her jealousy.

“Then the feeling is mutual. But if it’s not her, it’ll be another of Flora’s daughters. I made a vow I can’t escape.”

And if he balked at marrying Epicasta, Orithyia would tell Flora exactly what he’d said and he’d be a prisoner in Boreas for the rest of his days.

“She’ll be forced by the queen to kill you.”

He chuckled.

“I know, and I have countermeasures ready. Is that what you fear, that she’ll take me from you?”

Aurora blushed, nodding. Theron pressed a kiss to her forehead.

“The marriage will be in name only, a political necessity so that I can return to Aureum. She’ll have no power to harm me, to vex you, to rule—nothing. What we have together won’t change. My attention, affection, respect, devotion, all of it is already yours. And if you want an official place at my side, then the very moment I’m finished that farce of a ceremony, I’ll make you my one and only concubine. When we return to Aureum, our binding ceremony will be a hundred times more lavish than any wedding ever held. You will be my wife in every way that matters.”

He could see that she wanted what he offered, that she craved to own a piece of him no one else could touch. But her brows pinched and tears gathered in her eyes.

“I can’t,” she whispered.

“Yes, you can,” he replied.

She covered her face with her hands as her breath hitched with sorrow.

“No, I can’t. I can’t do that to her. I can’t be another reason she’s forced to suffer. It’s not right.”

Another reason? Had Epicasta spoken with Aurora? What had she poisoned his little fairy’s mind with? Theron pried her hands from her face.

“What did she tell you?”

“That she loves another. That if she doesn’t do as she’s told, he’ll die, and the only way he’ll be free is if Flora gains control of the Dragon’s Flank. I can’t let that happen to her.”

So she had a lethal weakness and Flora had decided to ruthlessly exploit it? Normally, he would put all his resources into acquiring that weakness for his own purpose. But the look in Aurora’s eye, determination mixed with something else, made his blood run cold.

“What have you done?”

Aurora sympathised with Epicasta, and was cunning in her own way. She knew of dozens of ways to sneak out of the vivarium. Who’s to say she hadn’t ferreted out countless more snaking through the main palace? If she’d helped Epicasta flee the capital, Orithyia would blame him, accuse him of causing trouble. He would never return to Aureum.

Aurora pressed her lips in a mulish line, defiant.

His gut sank.

“If I’ve succeeded? Changed her fate.”

An explosion shook the ground. Theron grabbed Aurora and lunged into the relative safety of the courtyard as the columns swayed and cracks raced up the walls. His eyes widened in shock.

“Did you just…was that your doing?”

But her eyes were as wide as his. She shook her head.

Theron got to his feet and hauled her up as the people of the temple rushed outside to see what had happened. When the doors of the temple were flung open, the plaza was shrouded in a cloud of dust. Screams rang out as paladins and priestesses rushed in. Amidst the clamour, one voice, a man’s, rose above it all.

“Justice and Vengeance, Knowledge and Lies, Passion and Death! They are two sides of the same goddesses! One cannot exist without the other! The Second Sundering was heresy, and your temples are an insult! Now the trove of ancient treasures hoarded by the heretic Orithyia belongs to the true believers! Cower and atone! Embrace the truth of dualism!”

“The hoard,” Aurora gasped.

Theron tightened his grip on her hand.

The dualists had gone and stolen the lot, no doubt. He cursed his horrid luck. If they’d waited just a few more days, it might have all been his—Aureum’s.

As the dust settled, palace soldiers rushed into the plaza, headed by General Stentor, adding more bodies to the confused mess. If Theron and Aurora went into the plaza, they risked getting caught between the furious paladins and soldiers. But if they stayed within the temple, there was a good chance it would come crumbling down on their heads. Who knew what other attacks the dualists had planned? Anyone not associated with either the temples or the palace was quickly fleeing the scene, ordinary citizens and likely some of the dualists mixed in.

“There, on the roof!” a paladin cried.

On top of the splintered entrance lintel of Knowledge’s temple stood a lone figure. With a blast of wind, he sailed from the wreckage of one temple onto the roof of another. Passion’s paladins raised a war cry as he touched down on their temple, scrambling to climb the temple or shoot him full of arrows. Just before he was overrun, another blast of air allowed him to land on Justice’s temple roof.

“Shit,” Theron cursed, dragging Aurora away from the temple entrance, covering her with his body as soldiers and paladins streamed back into the temple.

The dualist played with the enraged paladins and soldiers a few more times, leading them by their noses, expertly dodging every missile sent his way. This was a distraction, plain and simple, but the paladins and soldiers were too angry to realise. It still wasn’t safe to flee the temple, and so he shielded Aurora against one of the entrance pillars of the temple of Justice. When at last the dualist began blasting himself away from the temple plaza and across the roofs of nearby homes, Stentor seemed to regain the barest hint of sense.

“Secure the gates! Archers to the walls! Don’t let him escape!”

Anyone with a modicum of strategic thinking could see the dualist was the bait. No doubt his comrades were headed in the opposite direction, fleeing the city from one of the lesser gates, where soldiers were less likely to care about thorough inspections. If they hadn’t already left, treasure in tow, hours prior.

But like an angry bee’s nest, the paladins and soldiers followed the dualist, never considering that the real thieves might have been less brash than the man pirouetting across the roofs of the city towards the main gate. He had another sinking feeling in his gut.

“Aurora?”

“Yes?”

“Which gate is the princess escaping through?”

Her eyes widened with alarm as she realised the path the mob had taken. She swallowed nervously and looked away. He gripped her jaw in his hand and forced her to face him, his temper barely repressed. If Epicasta died in the brawl to come, he might be saddled with an even worse bride who wasn’t wise enough to know she should stay quiet and out of sight. One who might foolishly demand he lay with her, one who would be inclined to meddle in his affairs more than strictly necessary—one whose weakness he didn’t know. Or worse, Orithyia would take out her fury on him. It was her temple that had been attacked, after all.

“Which. Gate.”

“The main gate.”

“Stay here,” he ordered her, about to race after the mob.

“Theron, wait!”

She grabbed for his robe. He snatched it from her grip, levelling her with an accusatory glare.

“Pray your foolish pity hasn’t gotten the woman killed!”

She glared in return.

“Follow the West wall. It’s faster. Help her escape if you can.”

Theron took off at a sprint. He made it to the West wall and followed it without hindrance to the main gate. The mob had chased the dualist through the busiest thoroughfare, trampling carts and stalls and citizens alike. They were finally closing in as the dualist landed from the nearest roof onto the ground just inside the city gate, landing on top of a group of travellers. Stentor was screaming for the guards to close the gate, to no avail. Panicked citizens raced to and fro, desperate to escape being caught between the half-closed gate and the weapons wielded by the paladins and soldiers alike. Inside the gate, travellers dispersed as the dualist was surrounded by the guards and a familiar group—soldiers wearing the colours of Aureum and paladins wearing the reds of Passion.

His people were cut in half, some trapped outside, some inside. In the din, they wouldn’t hear his orders, wouldn’t know Epicasta’s face even if he ordered them to protect her. No one but him knew she was likely to be here.

In every frightened face, he sought the princess’ but she was nowhere to be seen in the melee. Theron pushed passed the fleeing people and the soldier manning the staircase to the top of the defensive wall. Racing to the top in spite of the shouts, he surveyed the scene from above. Then, as his eyes met those of his people inside and outside the gate, he caught sight of the princess, crawling away from the dualist who had used her as a cushion to break his fall. If he didn’t move quickly, she was likely to be trampled in the fighting. His people would follow him wherever he went, hopefully providing the protection they would need from the mob.

From his position on the top of the wall, he jumped, bracing for an impact that would break his bones. Severing his sensation of pain just before he hit the ground, his landing pushed fractured bones through skin and burst organs. He willed his magic to make him whole and was on his feet, blood soaking his clothes as he rushed into the tightening knot of soldiers and paladins. As the mob closed in, the dualist kept them at bay with powerful blasts and whips of air made into razor-sharp blades. Blood, limbs and soldiers went flying, but more and more rushed into the fray, replacing the fallen.

“Your Majesty!”

“His Majesty is injured!”

“Kill the dualist!”

“Tear him to pieces!”