The Last Winter (The Circle War Book 2)

by Matt King

  What’s happening to me?

  Something snapped her head backward. She reached behind her, betrayed by weakened muscles, and too slow to stop the Phaelix from picking her up by a handful of hair. His fire seared her skin. He slammed his fist into her midsection again and again, robbing her of any remaining fight.

  When she was nothing more than a wilted body in his grasp, he threw her to the ground. Uproarious cheers from the Garoult urged him to finish her. She tried to move. The Phaelix backhanded her across the jaw.

  “See her now!” he shouted above the cheering soldiers. “See now the strength of the Garoult!”

  He brought a raised foot down square across her chest.

  Her snapping bones were like explosions to her ears. He kept pressing, crushing her armor. His laughter rang through her head.

  The pressure eventually came to an end, but not the pain. She could only feel a ghost of life below her neck. Her arms and legs were a memory.

  “Do not worry, little Aeris,” the Phaelix said as he bent down to whisper in her ear. “Your people will not suffer long. I will make sure they die a quick death.”

  No.

  Her inner flame stoked a fire that roiled hot in her chest. She channeled it, frantically collecting every ounce of energy still left inside until it threatened to explode.

  And then, with a furious scream, she opened her eyes to let it free.

  Dual streams of white fire shot from her eyes, hitting the Phaelix’s helmet with enough heat to melt holes through the metal. He cried out in pain. With his hands slapping at the molten flows of metal leaking into his mask, he fell backward, releasing her from his hold. He tossed his mask into the sand.

  Slowly, her body mended itself. The healing warmth started in her spine and radiated out toward her hands and feet. As soon as she was able, she lifted herself out of the depression in the sand and clawed her way over to the Phaelix, who was writhing on the beach, pleading for someone to throw water on his eyes. His mask lay beside him, still smoking from the holes.

  She took hold of the crack in his armor and pulled with all her strength. The metal gave way with a dull snap, exposing the scaly hide of his chest.

  She put one hand under him and held the other above his heart, forming a vice around his torso.

  “No,” he said. His one functioning eye rolled around in its socket, trying to find her. “Mercy.”

  She lifted him up until he was facing his troops.

  “Tell them what you did to my father.”

  His nostrils flared. He closed his mouth, his breath rumbling through gritted teeth.

  She shook him. “Tell them!”

  “I killed him,” he said in a weak voice.

  “Tell them how.”

  “A sickness.”

  “Louder!”

  “A sickness!” he called out.

  “From where?” she thundered.

  “From him,” the Phaelix said weakly. “He gave it. A gift of trust. Gave to the Garoult so that he would not use it against us.”

  A low grumble rolled through the ranks of Garoult as each looked to the other to assess the news. Shouts of “Shame!” erupted from the back of his troops.

  “I did this for you!” he cried over the building discontent. “For the Garoult!”

  “And I do this for my father,” she whispered in his ear. “Eldoran.”

  She drew on every spark of energy in her body and channeled it all to her hands, creating a brilliant bolt of white fire that hollowed the chest of the Phaelix. She let it burn until she had nothing left, and then they both collapsed to the sand.

  Tears formed in her eyes as her hands fell away from the Phaelix’s lifeless corpse. Behind her, the Vontani were cheering.

  “Look out!” Colliere shouted.

  Aeris looked up to see Khyris wielding August’s sword. The blade sang as it cut through the air. She felt the wind on her neck but didn’t have the energy to move from its path.

  Before it found its mark, August grabbed Khyris from behind and severed the raised arms of the Garoult lieutenant. In the same stroke, he rammed his own blade through the lieutenant’s back, knocking him to the sand and pinning his dying body in place.

  “That’s for ruining my no-deaths streak!” he said.

  He took back his sword and sheathed both over his shoulder after wiping away the blood. When he was done, he extended a hand to her.

  “You’re alive,” she said.

  “That makes two of us.”

  She let him lift her up to standing. He put his arm around her waist to steady her.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “I’m fine.” She moved away, finally gaining enough strength to stand on her own. She turned to face the Garoult, who looked at her with silent, anxious stares.

  “You have a choice this night,” she said. “Go home and leave this war behind you, never to fear retaliation by the Vontani.” She took a breath to fill her tired lungs. “Or stay, and offer up your lives as payment for the crimes of others.”

  The soldiers looked around at one another. Confusion and fear wafted off of them, mixed with the collective shame of hearing the truth of what their once-proud race had done.

  “Do we have your oath?” one of the Garoult called out.

  She found him in the crowd and moved closer to him. “I swear on the names of my fallen that if you leave here in peace, no Vontani will ever harm you again.”

  The soldier walked slowly away from the group. Watched by both sides, he bent down next to the Phaelix’s body and took hold of the torch burning nearby on the sand. He nodded once at her as he rose before turning to face his troops.

  He raised the torch for all his soldiers to see, and then doused the flame in a wave rolling past his feet.

  One by one, the Garoult began to filter back into the ocean, filling the hoverdisks that would take them back to the ships anchored offshore.

  Dondannarin walked to the Phaelix’s body and picked up a dart lying next to him in the sand. She sniffed the end. “Poison,” she said, looking to Aeris. She tossed it away in disgust.

  As soon as the last boat of Garoult soldiers floated into the waves, the Vontani erupted into cheers. Their voices merged into a single melodic note that carried across the night, filling the jungle with their song of victory.

  Aeris closed her eyes, letting the song surround her. She dropped to one knee, greedily embracing the memories that ran forward in her thoughts.

  Aposthe, I’lanyo, Severine, Ollayne.

  Cestia, my mother.

  Eldoran, my father.

  For you. Always for you.

  CHAPTER NINE

  It was true what the old god said. Change would not soothe Velawrath’s pain. Only time could do that, or the end of it.

  The pain was not physical—he was long beyond feeling. Instead, it was a pain of eternal frustration, pent up energy with no avenue for release, ever-growing but with no room to grow. He’d tried burying it, running from it, facing it, and accepting it. All roads led to the same bottomless pit. He was doomed to suffer. Until, that is, the day the old god appeared.

  He came with promises, promises that Velawrath felt were more torture than truth. Nothing opened his wounds wider than hope. Hope was the taunting light in his darkness, the false reward for the mistake of seeking an end.

  “You are cruel to offer me this,” he’d replied when the old god made his pledge.

  “It is only cruel if it is not true.”

  “How can it be?”

  “I have no reason to lie.”

  “And I have no reason to believe you.”

  And that was when the old god asked the question whose answer should have been so simple: What do you want? What he wanted was impossible—to turn back time. To live in the world of his memories. To feel again.

  But there was desire and there was reality, and in reality his desires were irrelevant because they could not come true.

  The old god had pressed him for a
n answer, so he gave the only answer he thought was possible.

  “Change.”

  It seemed like the only solution not confined to his dreams. If he could break the cycle of monotony, wouldn’t that bring back the feeling of what it was like to live again?

  “Change will not satisfy you,” the old god replied. “You doubt me, but I will prove it to you, and then give you what you truly desire.”

  And so he did, and as Velawrath sped through the emptiness of space, he realized that the old god was right. Breaking the cycle would not sate his frustration, it would only provide a different arena for it.

  Still blind, still deaf, still mute, still with only the basic consciousness that separated life from death, but all the memories of life that made him pine for an end to his pain.

  “Now you understand,” the old god said.

  The voice was an uninvited guest in his mind. A faceless phantom.

  “Yes,” he answered. “Now I understand.”

  “And are you ready to be released from your prison?”

  Velawrath saw the light of hope in front of him, as he had so many times before. It looked no different. Seemed no more real.

  But what harm in pretending?

  “I am ready.”

  “Your time is close,” the old god said. “Soon, now, you will be relieved of your anger, your frustration. You will have what you truly desire.”

  “Death,” Velawrath said.

  “Yes,” Paralos answered. “Death.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  The bonfires still burned bright when the first shades of dawn appeared over the ocean.

  August found himself alone for the first time since the party had begun. He’d been carried on shoulders, held in too many hugs to count, and placed on a makeshift dune stage as the Vontani made up song after song about his exploits. The attention didn’t stop there, as every woman who came within arm’s reach tried to fill his cup with more of the oily frille, which tasted like pickling juice and had enough kick to make him nearly black out after each swig. Everyone wanted to ask him about the fight to stop the Silence. What had it looked like? How many Garoult had he defeated? How did he survive the blast?

  He had the story on auto-play after a while. He usually left out the part about the Garoult finding him near death in the weeds and taking turns using him for a punching bag while they waited for the Phaelix to arrive and claim his prisoner. Even if Khyris hadn’t gone after Aeris, August would’ve made sure to kill the lieutenant before he ever made it back to the boat. Some dogs just needed to be put down.

  One of the dancing Vontani drifted over to him. She raised her glass and toasted his name, meaning he had to take yet another swig of the frille. He smiled with his cheeks full of the stuff and held it until she looked away. He quickly spit the rest into the grass.

  “Dis banyu!” she called back as she returned to the crowd.

  “Dis banyu…too.”

  He looked through the hundreds of Vontani still partying on the beach, hoping to find Aeris in the mob. Aside from a short speech after the Garoult left, Her Revenentness hadn’t been seen since the festivities began. Looking back, she hadn’t seemed to be in the partying mood when she walked off. Something told him she wouldn’t be in the mood to start planning their trip to Earth, either, but something also told him Paralos wouldn’t wait around for them to enjoy a break.

  With his name still being chanted in drunken songs behind him, he set off through the jungle to find her.

  The solemirs were gathered in the naked section of plains where the Vontani army had charged through the Departes only a few hours earlier. The mangled remains of the train split in half by the portal leaned on its side behind the others. The rest looked as though someone had taken black markers to their hulls. Some were missing whole sections of their sides where the Garoult’s cannons had ripped through the outer shields.

  Aeris’s domed solemir was easy to spot in the crowd. Its center was dark, looking as empty as the others. He considered turning around until he saw a single red light pulsing on one of the hull’s panels. He climbed the footholds leading to the door. Inside, the solemir was lifeless and cold, with only a faint hum of air moving through the ventilation system. A light flickered on the floor outside of Aeris’s room.

  “Anyone home?” he asked. When he got to her open door, he started to raise his hand to knock on the wall, then stopped.

  She sat on the floor with her back against the console in the center of the room. She was still wearing her armor, scuffed and scraped from the fight. The same scene he’d witnessed by accident the night before was playing on the walls. Her mother and father were with her on the beach, playing and laughing in the sand. The scene grew dim, then came back to loop around from the beginning.

  “Are they happy out there?” she asked without turning to look at him.

  “Seems like it,” he replied.

  “Good.”

  She stood slowly and pressed a button on the console, sending it melting back into the table and dissolving the scene on the walls. The white light from the controls cast shadows on her face.

  “You should be out there,” he said. “It’s quite a party.”

  “I thought it would be best to leave them to their celebrations. Are they singing songs about you yet?”

  “I think so. Honestly, they were starting to make up stuff that I couldn’t possibly do. Not that I mind.”

  She nodded. “Our songs sometimes have a way of telling a different story than what might have actually occurred.”

  “History is written by the victorious, I guess.”

  “True enough.” She looked down at his torso. “Your suit doesn’t seem to have taken any damage. I thought I was dreaming when I saw you come back from Khyris’s blow. Was this some trick?”

  “No, that was definitely real,” he replied, feeling the area of his stomach where the sword had gone through. “The suit has better healing than I do, I think.”

  “So you did die, then.”

  “I mean, if you want to be technical about it, yeah, but just so you know, I haven’t died in a long time.”

  “I was not aware that we had these powers.”

  “You’ve never…?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, I’m sure Paralos has his reasons for not telling you, and I’m also sure they’ll be condescending and infuriating. Stuff like what you saw out there, that kind of thing we can come back from. It’s when we start losing body parts that we get in trouble.”

  “I see.” She had the same look on her face his mom used to have when he told her that he’d gotten into another fight at school—a calm front that couldn’t hide her annoyance.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “We should discuss our departure. I expect the old god will want us to leave as soon as possible.”

  She walked over and pressed her hand against a panel on the wall. A curved seat about half the length of the room emerged from the side. He took a seat opposite her on the couch.

  “Your world,” she said. “What can we expect when we arrive?”

  “You’ll like it,” he replied. “We’ve got mountains, big cities, bright blue skies…you name it.”

  “I meant militarily.”

  “Oh, right.” He scratched the back of his hair. “That might be kind of complicated.”

  “Complicated how?”

  “It depends on what Amara’s done to the place since I left. When we fought Galan’s army, our military didn’t know what was going on. They attacked everything in sight. They were blindsided. I never thought to tell them what was coming before the whole thing blew up in my face.” He realized after he said it what a horrible choice of words it was.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing, I was just… I guess you heard what Amara’s guy did to my world?”

  “I was only told that it had been attacked.”

  August scoffed. “Yeah, you could say that. This guy—Gemini—he
blew himself up and took out a lot of people at once. A whole town, at least. Bear and I almost included.”

  “So Paralos has said.”

  “Trust me. He doesn’t go long without reminding me.”

  “Will we see this champion again?” she asked.

  He felt a familiar fire in his belly at the thought of it. “I hope so.”

  “If he is there, how will we draw him into battle?”

  “You sure you want that? I mean, I want to take a chunk out of that guy as much as anyone, but it’s not going to happen on a battlefield. He’s too powerful. If he goes off, we’re dead.”

  “If he knows you are there, will he try to find you?”

  “If I have my way, he’ll never see me coming. This is not a guy you send an invitation to with a time and place for a fight.”

  The answer brought a scowl, as though secrecy was no better than cowardice. “What of the other?”

  “Talus? I can pretty much guarantee he’ll be there. That guy’s had a hard-on to kill me since day one.”

  Her head tilted.

  “It’s a saying. It means…never mind. All I know is that Talus is never far away if there’s a hint that I’m anywhere close. He thinks I’m beneath him, like it’s an insult that he even has to fight me.”

  If he was expecting sympathy, she didn’t seem ready to give it. Instead, her eyes focused on the floor, like she was already planning their attack.

  “If he can aim these synapses of his,” he said, “I’ll have Paralos drop us off in Washington, D.C.”

  “Your home?”

  He shook his head. “It’s our capitol, where our version of a Revenent lives. More importantly, it’s where our military calls home. I need to get there and tell them what’s going on.”

  “You should tell them to run.” Her eyes flitted away from him. “They will not be able to survive the fight that’s coming. Do you have another planet where your people can go?”

  “We’ve barely set foot on our moon, let alone another planet.”

  “A pity. Perhaps warning them is the better plan. Better to face your death with weapon in hand.”

  “Also handy if you want to prevent it.”