Instead the spark’s power was trapped inside his son. It could kill him at any moment; in Galvia’s own two thousand-year history, the transition of power from one monarch to another had claimed the lives of a dozen prospective heirs, and these were individuals who had spent months or even years preparing for the experience. Jason had nothing to protect him but his own wits. He had never felt the warmth of the Aether coursing through his veins. He had no concept of what it was like to touch the mind of another being or to remove the pain and suffering from a withering body. He had never been able to perceive anything beyond his own limited human senses, and now he was being assaulted with lifetimes of memories from a god-like creature whose power was almost impossible to fathom.
If he did die, the spark would re-form and the battle for its power would start again. The Crell—or more specifically, the Zarul—wouldn’t give up the chase after one failed attempt, but right now Ethan was actually more worried about his people’s reaction. After last night, they were more desperate than ever—some of them would invariably make a move on it. The Resistance might very well destroy itself without the Zarul’s help.
And of course, his only child would be dead.
The thought bothered him, just as he knew it should. Even when he remembered the times when he and Jason had argued for hours about the war, the Resistance, or even his mother, it didn’t quell the ache in his heart. Jason was still his son. As much as Ethan had tried to ignore that fact over the years, as much as he had tried to bury away all memories of his family behind layers and layers of rage, it had never worked. He could forget them for a day or maybe even a week, but eventually their faces would haunt him again, and he would think back to the days when they had all been together.
Before his homeland had been conquered. Before his king had been slain. Before he had traded his body and soul for a chance to vindicate his people.
Before Elissa had left him.
He closed his eyes and clenched his fist around his silver goblet. Elissa’s last moments seared into his mind: her body half-crushed in the rubble at Ashenfel, her soft, tear-streaked face begging Ethan to keep Jason safe. And next to her, Selvhara telling him she was too far gone to save. Worst of all, he remembered the relief he had felt despite the pain. Elissa’s death had been his liberation. He’d no longer been forced to expend effort and worry about protecting a helpless family; he could throw himself fully into battle because he no longer had anything to lose. A week later he had suited Jason up and sent him into real combat for the first time. Father and son, fighting together in a lost cause against an unstoppable enemy…and alongside them both, the outsider who understood them better than their wife and mother.
Ethan slammed his fist into the table hard enough to send its contents crashing to the floor. He turned to face the woman half-sitting in the window frame as she eyed him with a combination of concern and confusion.
“It could be a lot worse,” Ria Magran soothed. “Selvhara seems convinced that Jason will survive. She just expects that it will take him a few days. We can hide until then.”
Ethan sighed and leaned back, once more sealing away the past into the deep recesses of his mind. “Jason will manage.”
“Then this is a victory, if a costly one. The Last Dawn and Solarian reinforcements should be here in three days, and with the vaeyn on full-time healing duty, you should be able to use your minions to protect us.”
“Once the reinforcements are here, we won’t need demons anymore,” Ethan told her. “Our battle is now their battle.”
Ria nodded. “Right. So then what are you concerned about?”
He couldn’t tell her everything, of course. Subordinates didn’t need to be sandbagged with unnecessary information, especially not her. Fifteen years ago, Ria Magran had served as a sharpshooter in the king’s army, but she had never been a Hand of Whitestone like Ethan and Aidan. They had never touched the Aether or felt the power of an Ascendant bond. She and the rest of the rebels were useful soldiers and loyal Galvians, and he respected their sacrifice…but they could never truly understand what they were fighting for. Thankfully, they didn’t have to in order to win this war.
“It’s possible that Jason won’t be willing to help us,” Ethan said after a moment. “He has never completely understood why I chose to continue fighting.”
“Yes,” she murmured. “I don’t mean to offend you, sir, but if Jason really wanted to help us, he would have been here these last few years.”
“If he had been with us, then he probably would have died at Tibel along with almost everyone else,” he replied bitterly. He grunted and waved a hand. “But you’re right, of course. He used the spark to save his friends, not to save us.”
Ria nodded. “Still, it was an honorable enough act. He could have easily run and didn’t.”
“Jason has always been loyal to his friends, and he does what he believes is right,” Ethan said. “We just tend to disagree on the latter.”
“So if he doesn’t wish to help us…what do we do about it?”
“We have to rely on our original plan either way. There’s no reason to change anything.”
“You still think you can convince this priestess to assassinate her own king?”
Ethan smiled tightly. “Krystia is Galvian by blood, even if she doesn’t acknowledge it. She has as much reason to hate the Crell as anyone else; it destroyed her life and family not so long ago. She’s also starting to realize how much of an outcast she really is inside Solaria—and how unwilling Areekan is to do anything about it. Soon enough that bitterness will fester, and she’ll realize that destroying him is the only way out.”
“There’s a pretty thick line between resenting someone and murdering them,” Ria reminded him. “And to be honest, I have no idea how you plan to get demons inside the capital, let alone reach the king in a time of war.”
“I have a few ideas,” Ethan said noncommittally. “Her position at the temple will go a long way. She also has her legs wrapped around one of the Legion Generals—I’m not worried about our options.”
Ria studied him impassively for a long moment. “Even if everything works the way you plan, you do realize you won’t have any reliable way to control her?”
“I neither want nor need to; the war will do that for us. By the time it’s over, there will be a very thick, very bloody scar across Torsia. Much will change.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“The alternative bothers me more,” Ethan rasped. “We’re living in it.”
Ria lifted herself from the windowsill and leaned against the wall instead, arms folded. “Are you sure you don’t want to wait on Jason? If you’re wrong about him…”
“I want to,” he murmured, “but we can’t. No matter what happens with Jason, the bottom line is we can’t win this war without the Alliance military—and the Alliance military can’t win this war with a dying old man on the throne.”
She sighed and turned her head for a while, but eventually she nodded with grudging acceptance. “All right. So what are you going to do with your minions?”
Ethan gave the woman a once-over. Like him, Ria was a pragmatist through and through. She didn’t question his minions or their motives, and she didn’t care if he possessed every Crell soldier in the city and had them eat each other alive. What mattered to her was victory—everything else was secondary. Her family had been entirely wiped out during the war, and she was probably too old and too hardened to carry another child. At this point, she had nothing left to live for besides revenge. The two of them were a generation removed but very similar regardless. If not for Jason still being alive, they might have been identical.
But despite that, Kyle Adar was still his preferred confidant. He was a patriot, a loyal citizen of a proud nation. He fought for his people and their way of life, not for blind revenge. He barely accepted the sacrifices Ethan had made, and some day that acceptance might stop altogether. But until then, Ethan recognized the value of a
man driven by ideals. It separated them from the soulless tyrants they sought to destroy. Troops followed idealistic men driven by principle, not bitter ones consumed by rage.
“I’m going to release the demons here,” Ethan said. “Without direct control, they’ll run amuck in the heart of the city and force the watch to deal with them directly. I’ll summon more when I reach Solaria.”
“I see,” Ria replied. She didn’t speak the words, but her concern was obvious. Each summon damaged his body more and more, and replacing the arsenal he had here was going to take a serious toll on his already waning body.
“I’ll be fine,” he assured her. “Now get back to base and keep everyone moving. We need the compound completely evacuated by nightfall.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ria did a half salute and then left the room. Ethan took a deep breath and sighed. The faces of his family once again rose to the surface of his thoughts, but this time he allowed himself to remember what he had lost. Revenge might have ultimately been a hollow, soul-consuming pursuit, but it did warm the blood and focus the mind.
And right now, that was more than enough.
***
Sarina Zharrs experimentally stretched her shoulder and tried her best not to wince. The pain was a fraction of what it was even an hour ago, and their resident vaeyn nursemaid assured her it would be gone by the end of the day. The pain in her head, sadly, wasn’t going anywhere, at least not for a while. Her assailant had apparently fractured her skull when he had hurled her into the wall. Sarina was lucky to be alive, let alone conscious, and the lingering soreness seemed a small price to pay. Still, she silently wished Selvhara and her more pronounced healing abilities weren’t lying unconscious on a cot.
“Are you well yet?” Gor asked from behind her. “Or are you planning on lounging around for a few more hours?”
Sarina turned. The chagari had been helping load supplies onto carts outside in preparation for their move to a new compound. Normally he groused every time they assigned him to handle all the physical labor, but right now there wasn’t any other choice; he was one of precious few people who hadn’t suffered any crippling injuries during the attack.
“Your concern is touching, but I’m fine,” she told him, not bothering to hide her sarcasm. “I’d ask you the same, but your fur doesn’t even seem ruffled.”
“Crell are easy prey,” he replied with a shrug. His lower fangs peeked out from his lips in the chagari equivalent of a smile.
“I’m glad you think so. I doubt anyone else here would agree.”
Sarina glanced back into the infirmary where Elade was still busily flitting from patient to patient. Ten rebels had died in total—the biggest loss in months—and another two dozen had suffered severe injuries, including Selvhara and Highlord Dracian. Worse, the two Bound had even been stripped of their power by one of the Crell Imperators, and Sarina had no idea if anyone in the world could possibly treat that wound.
The most frustrating part of all, however, might have been the fact that almost no one here appreciated the importance of the sacrifice they had just made. In their eyes, friends and family had just died in defense of a man who had deserted them years ago and who might not even wish to help them now. And Sarina, of course, was the one who’d brought Jason back here to Lyebel in the first place. She could already feel the resentment flowing off the others.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she said after a moment. “What happened to the guards Adar sent to follow you around the city?”
“They’re dead,” Gor replied flatly.
“I know, but how?” she pressed. During the evening’s skirmish, she had managed to stalk and kill several of the Crell assassins, and in the process she had stumbled across Gor inside one of the taverns. He had vanished off into the night, leaving his bodyguards behind…and she had yet to learn why. “You never elaborated on the details.”
“They were ambushed by Zarul agents, what do you think?”
“They were ambushed in the back room of a tavern bustling with people? Then why did the Zarul let you walk out of there when they knew you were working with us?”
His orange eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. “They probably knew better than to antagonize a chagari.”
“The Zarul aren’t scared of anyone,” Sarina reminded him. “I want to know how you managed to walk out the front door of that place without the Crell following you. There’s no way they just let you go.”
“Apparently they did. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have cargo to haul—unless you would finally like to get up off your ass and help.”
He started to step past her, but Sarina placed herself in his way. He was far stronger, of course, especially in her current state, but she doubted he would toss her aside. If he did…well, that would answer her question just the same.
“They had one man tracking you, but he wasn’t taking any great pains to stay close. When he found me, I had to kill him.” She folded her arms across her chest. “How much did they pay you?”
Gor bared his fangs dangerously for a moment before his lips twisted into a smile. “Jason likes to think he’s very clever, but I’ve always said he underestimates you.”
“Most people do,” she said tartly. “Now answer the question.”
His smile faded. “Several bricks. Not much compared to our last haul, I admit, but it was still flattering of them.”
“So they did pay you off,” she hissed.
“Like you said, they weren’t just going to allow me to leave that tavern without making a deal. If I had fought back, the Crell would have just killed me along with Adar’s goons.”
“Instead you sold them out and tried to make a clean getaway?”
“It was them or me,” Gor replied matter-of-factly. “I gave them the compound’s location, then took the money and left. Frankly I’m surprised they held up their end of the bargain.”
Sarina felt her jaw clench, and her hand instinctively dropped to the axes on her belt. “So you sold us out, too.”
“No, I made the best of an unwinnable situation,” he corrected. “If I resisted, the Crell had the resources to get what they needed, even if it meant torturing Adar’s people or ripping the location from their thoughts directly. You could say I gave them a quick death instead of a brutal one.”
“How noble of you.”
He grunted. “Please. I’d expect that useless banter from one of the others, but not you. You’re a survivor just like me, Asgardian, and you would have made exactly the same choice in my place.”
Sarina stepped in close enough that she could feel his breath. “I don’t betray my friends. That’s always been the difference between our people.”
“No, you probably would have lost your temper and entered a fight you couldn’t win,” Gor chided. “Then again, that’s what you ended up doing anyway, isn’t it? One of these days you’ll have to learn to pick and choose your battles.”
“I could kill you right here and no one would stop me.”
He shrugged. “Perhaps, but you’re more likely to end up a permanent stain on this road. Not that it matters—as angry as you want to be, you know I came back and saved dozens of lives at the compound. Without me, this pitiful ‘resistance’ would probably be dead.”
“That wasn’t your plan,” Sarina growled. “I’m guessing you felt guilty and changed your mind, or maybe you realized that without us, you were likely to end up as part of the nearest slave gang before you left the city.”
“There’s no way for you to know what I did or didn’t decide, ka’chek,” he hissed, using the old chagari racial slur for her people. “And all this bluster is irrelevant. You know what happened, and you believe that knowledge gives you leverage over me. You believe you can manipulate me later, and that’s why you aren’t going to attack me now. So why don’t you stop pretending and get out of my way?”
Sarina stood her ground for a long moment, her eyes boring into his, before finally stepping aside. As tempting as i
t was to hurl her axe into his back, it wouldn’t serve any purpose. He was right: she had leverage on him now, and she wasn’t about to forget it. In any case, as much as she wanted to blame him for everything, in reality she knew this wasn’t all his fault. And at the end of the day, he wasn’t the one who had brought this whirlwind of death to the Resistance in the first place.
Sighing, she turned back to the infirmary. Virtually every person she cared about in the world was in that room. Adar was walking around now, if cautiously. His armor had saved his life several times over, but the crossbow wounds had still nearly finished him. Tam sat up in his bed speaking to the old loremaster, Aidan. Tam had suffered some nasty burns to his chest as well as several piercing wounds from crossbows and debris. Aidan, for his part, had been safely away from the battle, but his experience as a healer—even without his former channeling ability—made him a useful nurse.
Two beds to the right, Jason lay prone and unconscious, lost in some mental struggle induced by the spark he had taken into himself. Sarina couldn’t even begin to imagine what it must have felt like; she barely understood Dracian’s description of the process when he had gone over it yesterday. Jason’s very identity was grappling with the memories and personality of a god...
Distantly, she wondered if that ultimately might have been the easier of the two battles looming before him. Assuming he did wake up, he would have to acknowledge that his two best friends had nearly died due to his decision to come to Lyebel, and one of them—a woman as close to family as he had left in this world—had lost her ability to channel, possibly forever.
Then, of course, there was Sarina herself, the one whose wounded body had inspired Jason to open the damn cube in the first place. She wasn’t even sure where the two of them stood anymore. They had always been more than friends, and even though it felt like ages since they had been together, she couldn’t deny that some trace of their connection remained. Whether she wanted to admit it at the time or not, that was the reason she had tracked him across Taig, and the reason she had brought him here. It might not have been love, exactly, but it was real, whatever it was.
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