The Dawn of the End

by Kristen Ashley

  Tedrey nodded.

  “And any crusade such as this needs funding,” Lorenz continued. “Not to mention, for the most part, soldiers expect to be paid. Since learning Carrington was embezzling, we suspected it was for these reasons.”

  “Of course,” Tedrey muttered.

  “This is good, Teddy,” Lorenz noted. “I can send communication to True. He can focus efforts. This mention means there’s coin left. If he finds it before they do, he can return it to his realm’s reserves. He can then start his reign with a success that will be popular and make him appear crafty, wise, resourceful and strong. Not to mention, not having coin, especially the vastness of what they had, will significantly weaken their cause.”

  Tedrey felt a thrill at this, a thrill that settled as warmth in his stomach.

  He did not know Prince…no, King True. But Tedrey was Dellish from birth, and he was surprised that it meant something to him that his country and its ruler could grow stronger in some part because of what Tedrey had learned.

  And if that coinage was found, it would be a blow to The Rising, possibly a grave one.

  Yes, that warmth settled in his stomach.

  “Faunus has requested to come visit,” Lorenz drawled, overly casually.

  His friend was very good at a great number of things.

  He was very bad at matchmaking.

  So bad, Tedrey nearly smiled.

  Knowing he had to say what he had to say next, he did not.

  “It is not safe. I’m being watched. You know this.”

  “I do,” Lorenz agreed. “However, I am a general and he is a soldier. It would not be unusual he was to attend me at my home.”

  “Lorenz—”

  His friend lifted his hand and dropped it. “If you feel it is a risk you cannot take, then I understand. But Faunus worries about you. I tell him repeatedly you are doing well, but he is deaf to the words. He wishes to see with his own eyes you’re handling this as you are handling it.” His voice dipped. “He cares for you, amico, greatly. You did not ask my advice, but I share it with you regardless. I would give him that.”

  Tedrey wanted to give Faunus that.

  He wanted it very much.

  But he needed to do what he was doing.

  He had wrongs to right and doing something solely for himself was not the road to take to achieve that aim.

  That said, if Faunus was worried…

  “Perhaps, when I feel I have won over more than Fenn. I am not trusted by them, Lorenz. With the way Fenn stopped discussion about this treasury, I see I do not even have his full trust. They follow me. They watch me. They are not comfortable speaking in front of me. They are in disarray. There is discord and not a small amount of anxiety around the capture and execution of Carrington and the defeat at The Enchantments. Seph moved forward with a great amount of hubris, but it was Fenn’s plot to assassinate the Dellish queen and attack The Enchantments as it was done. If I can ingratiate myself in this cadre in Fire City, as they plan for future campaigns, the information I would be privy to could be crucial in thwarting them.”

  “And if that should happen, you would be the first suspected,” Lorenz pointed out.

  “This is the risk I knew I took from the beginning.”

  “And it causes no harm to remind you that you’re taking it, and further, that you can abandon it at any time and you still would have my protection, a place in my home, my family and my heart.”

  Tedrey felt his eyes get itchy.

  In order to give him privacy to control his emotion, Lorenz looked away, bringing his wineglass to his lips, and muttering into it, “Just know that.”

  Tedrey had to clear his throat before he replied, “I do.”

  Lorenz took a drink, swallowed, turned again to Tedrey and inquired, “I wonder what that father of yours would think of you now?”

  Tedrey’s entire body strung tight.

  “It is not the manner of a man what he does with his cock,” Lorenz stated, finishing with, “No?”

  “No,” Tedrey whispered.

  “You are more man than many men I know, Teddy. And most the men I know are soldiers.”

  To hide his increasing emotion, it was then Tedrey looked away.

  “Let us see if we can find some food,” Lorenz suggested. “I grow hungry and intend to end this enmity with my wife tonight and do it in a way we both will be most fatigued. I need sustenance.”

  With that, he got up, and raised his brows to Tedrey until Tedrey also rose.

  And even if they both were not needed to perform this task, they both went to find a servant to order some dinner.

  It would be much later, when Tedrey was abed, and he did not hear the noises of passion emanating from his friends’ chamber down the hall, that he lit a lantern and did what he often did, what Lorenz had, some weeks ago, suggested he do.

  Something, with the things he was doing now, he did nearly every night.

  He opened the beautiful, leather-bound journal Lorenz had given him. He took up the lovely, silver pen Lorenz had also given him.

  And he shared his fretful thoughts with the page.

  93

  The Citadel

  Princess Elena

  On the Seil Sea Outside Sky Bay

  AIREN

  “I think it’s over,” I noted when the deafening blast of cannon fire stopped and did not start again.

  “I hope it’s over,” Finnie muttered.

  “I do too,” Circe said, shaking her head in such a manner it looked like she was trying to clear water from her ears.

  Circe being Dahksahna Circe, the Golden Warrior Queen of the Korwahk nation of the Southlands.

  We’d met just hours before we’d all boarded one of Aramus’s ships and headed right back from where she and her husband Lahn had come from.

  King Noctorno and Queen Cora remained in Wodell.

  Lahn was, right then, where all the men were.

  Up on the deck with swords at the ready in case we were boarded.

  As far as I could tell, we had not been boarded.

  The air was acrid with the scent of cannon powder. I could hear faraway shouts that I suspected were the cries of men who were aboard the ships we had (I hoped) sunk that were blockading Sky Bay by means of its only wharf, Twilight Harbor.

  But there were no cries of men closer to (say, on our deck) that would make me believe anything but that we were safe, and we’d been triumphant.

  I did not look through a porthole to ascertain if I was correct in this assumption, for we were in a cabin that did not have a view to the action (I’d already checked).

  I also did not look because I was fuming due to the fact we were in a cabin at all.

  I could use a sword, very well.

  Finnie, I’d learned, was also proficient.

  And Circe was known as the Golden Warrior Queen, for the goddess’s sake.

  That said, from the ferocious scowl her husband sent my way when I was arguing the need for the women to stay belowdecks (which I had to admit, was a scowl of a level of ferocity that caused a trill of trepidation to skim over my skin, and I didn’t not feel such a sensation often), I did not fight Circe’s quarter.

  Or Finnie’s.

  Just my own.

  I also lost.

  “From what you’ve told us,” Circe said, and I stopped lounging on the daybed in the cabin, fuming, and instead lounged on the daybed and looked to her (still fuming), “you face many battles. Perhaps it’s best you conserve your energy for ones that are worth it.”

  “I’m sorry?” I asked.

  Circe cast her gaze to Finnie, who took over.

  “They are…I mean, the men in this world are…” She faltered as I adjusted my thinking to take into account these two had long been of this world, but they were not of this world. They were of an entirely different one that, along our journey, they’d shared much about.

  Including fantastical stories about things called “cars,” “computers,” “smartphon
es,” “sushi” and “fluffernutter sandwiches.”

  All of which they very much missed.

  But love kept them here.

  Love for their husbands and then love for the families they had made with said husbands.

  And I was thinking, in my present mood, that was the most fantastical part by far of any of their tales.

  “Well…men,” Finnie finished weakly.

  “They are men,” I agreed.

  “That is to say, they’re more men than most men,” she went on. “Yours included.”

  I stared at her.

  She, also lounging on the daybed (as was Circe—Jasmine and Hera were outside the door, guarding it, and at least they were allowed to perform duties they’d trained since girls to do), leaned my way to reach out a hand to circle my wrist. She left it there, squeezing what I suspected she thought was reassuringly.

  “You will, as the years pass, get super freaking pissed at him,” she said.

  To this, I blinked at her.

  “As in, angry,” she explained her strange vernacular, something she’d needed to do quite often during the few short days of our voyage.

  “Right,” I bit off, not surprised about that in the slightest.

  “And you will, as the years pass, need to decide what is important and what is not. What he is simply being bull-headed about, and what actually means something to him. And you will come to understand something that is very difficult to come to terms with,” she said.

  “What’s that?” I asked, curious even if I did not wish to be.

  “That you will on a regular, but hopefully not frequent, occasion do things that will make him super freaking pissed…at you,” she educated. “And he’ll have a right.”

  “That’s the worst,” Circe mumbled.

  I’d already, in a way, discovered this.

  I said nothing.

  “I don’t know Cassius very well,” Finnie went on. “But I’ve noticed the closer we get to his homeland, the more tense he becomes.” She shrugged. “This might be that his capital city is under siege. It might be that dissidence is brewing across his land. It might be all that happened in Wodell. The way things are going in this place, it could be a hundred different things. But I get the sense he’s tense…for you.”

  Now that surprised me.

  “For me?” I asked.

  “This country he’s taking you to, his country, from what I understand it’s not only not at all what you’re used to. But much more, especially to him, you’re in danger here,” Finnie stated.

  Oh dear.

  This was very true.

  “And he doesn’t like it,” Circe put in.

  I looked to her.

  This was true as well.

  “I mean, like…he doesn’t like it doesn’t like it, as in, he’d go just about anywhere else happily, including knocking on the fiery gates of hell and asking if they’d let you two in to have lunch, instead of coming home. Coming here. But mostly, bringing you here,” she carried on.

  Completely true.

  “And since he’s in love with you—” Finnie began.

  Wait a second.

  “Hold on,” I interrupted. “He’s not in love with me.”

  This time, Finnie stared at me.

  She then cast a glance to Circe, who was also staring at me.

  Circe felt her gaze, looked her way, and they both stretched their mouths in expressions that were not lost on me.

  “He’s not in love with me,” I reiterated.

  “Um…okay,” Circe muttered.

  “Okay” meant “all right,” I’d learned.

  And in this instance, she didn’t mean it at all.

  “He really isn’t,” I said quietly. “He was married before. He lost her in childbirth. He loved her dearly and he still does.”

  “No doubt,” Finnie agreed. “He’s still fallen in love with you.”

  I felt my lips part.

  “And knowing this, knowing he’s lost someone before you, would explain a good part of why he does not wish to take you somewhere he thinks is dangerous for you,” Finnie concluded.

  “But,” I whispered. “He’s not in love with me.”

  They looked to each other again and seemed to come to some accord that I did not understand, and not simply because I was reeling due to the fact they thought Cassius had fallen in love with me.

  Not to mention feeling equal measures of terrified and experiencing the bubbling of sheer glee at this possibility.

  Finnie took my mind from these thoughts when she squeezed my wrist a bit tighter but held on.

  “After we explained it to Aramus and Ha-Lah, we discussed this. Frey, Apollo, Lahn, Tor and among us women, all decided that the best thing we should do was to keep it from you.” Another wrist squeeze. “All of you. Too much pressure, and you’re all already under too much. More would not be good. But right now, I wonder if that’s wise.”

  “I always wondered if it was wise,” Circe stated. “I mean, I haven’t been around them as long as you, but anyone can see it’s already happening, or has happened, so what’s the big deal?”

  “I know, right?” Finnie said to her.

  “Right,” Circe agreed.

  My voice pitched higher when I asked, “What are you two talking about?”

  “The prophecy,” Finnie answered on yet another squeeze, but this time she let my wrist go and sat back.

  “The prophecy of us defeating the Beast?” I queried.

  “That very one,” she said on a nod.

  “What about it?”

  “It’s not about alliances,” Finnie said.

  “It’s about love,” Circe said.

  Love?

  “It’s always about love,” Finnie noted.

  “Always. People need to get that. It’d make every world I know, and I know more than most, a better place,” Circe added.

  At that, they both burst out laughing.

  I wasn’t quite sure I knew what they found so amusing.

  Because…

  Love?

  “What do you mean…love?” I asked.

  However, I would receive no answer.

  The door flew open and we all jumped.

  Cassius prowled through, looking in a record-setting foul mood.

  Frey then came through, appearing relieved (yes, we had been triumphant).

  Lahn came after Frey, and even though all the men were tall, he had to tuck his chin in his neck and even bend a bit at the waist to get in the door, that was how large the man was.

  He definitely looked like he could be Firenz (or Airenzian). Dark. Forbidding. Big.

  But he was all that multiplied by about fifty.

  I was not surprised he was known as the most powerful warrior in the Southlands and the Northlands. Indeed, I would imagine many wet themselves before turning to run just being confronted by the idea of battling with him.

  That said, he was ridiculously attractive.

  Not as good-looking as Cassius (my prince’s tattoos, shorn hair, those blue eyes, there was no compare).

  But Lahn was not hard to look at.

  Then again, neither was Frey.

  “We dock,” Cassius veritably barked, making me jump again at his tone and tear my eyes from my assessment of Frey to look at him. “The men will deal with distributing the supplies. We’re away to the Citadel. Prepare yourself but do not concern yourself with your belongings. They will be fetched.”

  And with that, he stalked out.

  I stared at his back and then at the open doorway he’d disappeared through.

  Both Jasmine and Hera filled that doorway, Jazz with her head turned, undoubtedly glaring in the direction of the departing Cassius. Hera had eyes to me.

  “Quickly, for I’m getting that if there are delays, his mood will deteriorate,” Finnie said, and I looked to her, wondering how Cassius’s mood could possibly deteriorate from where it was now. “Woman to woman, long-time wife to a sister who’s learning the ropes.”r />
  The ropes?

  “Have a mind,” she continued. “This is not a question of your skill or abilities and what he feels about them or how you disagree about you using them. This is about where his head is at and that is not a good place. In other words, my friend,” she leaned closer, “in choosing battles, this is one to set aside and instead channel your energies into looking after your man.”

  I studied her.

  Then I looked to Circe, who nodded.

  My eyes moved to Hera, who dipped her chin.

  Jazz’s attention was now in the cabin and even she indicated her assent, which was a shock (then again, her ongoing affair with Mac was getting serious, I’d noted, not to mention Cassius was not a man to dislike, when he wasn’t being an ass, and she’d learned that).

  I then took in Frey and Lahn.

  Lahn just stared at me with his dark, intense eyes.

  But I sensed he agreed.

  Frey was the only one who spoke.

  “My wife is no fool and our marriage remains strong over decades solely because of it.”

  “That’s not true, my handsome husband,” Finnie replied. “You’ve nurtured our marriage too.”

  “Only as taught by you,” he returned.

  Well then…

  That was sweet.

  “We best vacate the premises before they jump each other,” Circe suggested to me, and it was then I felt the current between The Drakkar and his Ice Princess, not to mention saw the heat of his gaze on his wife, and I moved to exit the daybed, considering it was their bunk.

  As I left the room, Jasmine and Hera positioned close to my sides.

  “That doesn’t mean going forth into that wasteland not fully armed,” Jazz muttered under breath.

  “Absolutely,” Hera agreed.

  I drew in a good deal of air.

  And we all headed to Cassius and my cabin so I could prepare myself to meet this part of my destiny.

  Fully armed.

  But with a focus on the needs of “my man.”

  Dear goddess, help me.

  Sky Bay was not a wasteland.

  I noticed this immediately when I came up to the deck.