by Logan Keys
And even in my misery, vison clouded with endless tears, I think I see death glance in my direction.
Gaea
I knew he'd come. Ares alone is honorable, unlike most of the gods. He’d always cared for those who both won and lost the great battles he set into motion. And so, I’m unsurprised to find him at the front waiting near the pyre instead of drinking from the shared cup of warriors with my brother’s banner-men, who have made the funeral banquet livelier than I like.
This is no time to celebrate. It is time for revenge.
Alastor the Great has fallen. My brother is cold and laid out, waiting to burn, beautiful eyes closed to a world he was so entirely passionate about. Alastor, the famed tactician, the fighter who was never bested, and even now his legend grows when Ares bends the knee to honor my sibling. Yet I do not feel gratitude. It is only fitting that the gods should give him the same honor given only to themselves. He’d done Ares’ bidding his entire life, and if there is a patron that rivaled his servitude, I should like to see it.
“There is a blessing from the god of war!” a warrior calls when noticing Ares, and they drink more.
They fear Ares, but I do not.
Hidden inside of my cloak, my eyes track him where he moves to the shadows, his face etched with deep regret. He’s got his golden bow. It never leaves his side. It is said to be a weapon strong enough to kill a god. Exactly what I need.
My broken heart is enough payment to the gods. I forswore them the moment Alastor fell—a moment that even now threatens to pull me into a madness and grief that seems able to tear the pillars of our manor asunder.
Despite all the revelry, I stare up at the pyre to find my brother’s body where it will remain until it burns. Even in death, this warrior is most beautiful.
I had not realized I’d moved, but I am at his side now. The little moon-crested scar on his cheek is from a careless swipe of my own spear while learning. The crooked nose from so many breaks, and one of them repayment from my elbow when we’d wrestled over a new mare. Not just any mare. Sangoria is now my best horse and has saved me many times in battle. I’d bested my brother to claim her.
Alastor, my heart cries out again and again. Barely speaking, “Would that you wake up, brother,” I tease through broken words. “I would give you Sangoria if you would only open your eyes.” My voice is snagged in my throat like water on a reed. “Isn’t it tempting?”
The tears burn my lids like god’s-fire, and I feel a vengeance to the depths of my soul. I reach out and touch his shoulder, a place I’d commonly rubbed when he was too tense after a battle where too many of his warriors had fallen, or when a woman had broken his heart. During times no one else had seen, it had only been Alsty and his sister Gaea—long before he was the great—he, just a boy who had had many a filly buck him off, and I’d been the one there to pick up the pieces, as he’d done the same for me so many times. “I swear it,” I say choking down the bile of my soul threatening to make me pull a sword now and demand justice from the gods. To hold Ares at the edge of my blade just for being one of them. “I swear it, Alsty, I will make them pay. They will all pay.”
I am shaking with a rage that I have never known when I walk away from my brother’s body and nod to the servant there to set the pyre alight.
I will not watch him burn. I will watch them burn instead.
I pull off my cloak and scream my rage to the open window of my room. I had failed. Ares had indeed been more alert than I gave him credit for, and the giant god had backhanded me away from his bow when I’d been a hair away from grabbing it. He’d struck me so fast and hard, as if he could see behind himself, that I almost thought to lose my head. And he’d not apologized for the abuse, either, or seemed to worry when my cloak fell back, and a woman was revealed.
Nay. He’d treated me as he would anyone else, and had pulled his bow and said, “Amazonian, I will not strike you down for touching my weapon only for the fact that your brother is there burned to ashes, and that is enough death for today.”
If I am honest with myself, I had wanted it. I’d wanted him to bury that arrow deeply into my heart and I even said it. “Do it!” I had spat. “End me as your god king has ended my brother. Steal the breath from me now! Put me out of my grief and into hell for I will never give up!”
Ares had looked surprised, then bemused. He had lowered his bow. “I lost a warrior today. But it seems I have found another.”
The room which had quieted during my tirade, then burst into laughter and cheered for me. Ares had just given me his blessing in that moment, and I felt it tingle in my joints even as I rose to my feet from his god-words. He had made me stronger, more capable with but a comment. Is this what Alastor had felt? Why he’d been nigh untouchable before he’d run into Zeus?
But reason had carved its way through my thoughts, and anger filled me anew. Ares had moved to walk away, and I followed, lunging for him only to be caught short by Carn. He pulled me back with a bruising grip to keep me from making my second attack on the god. “Don’t be a fool, Gaea,” he’d said only for me to hear. “If roles were reversed Alastor would be plotting, planning his revenge. He would have thought it through first. You know I speak the truth.”
I had turned and stared deeply into the eyes of the dark-skinned prince, Carn. The brother of my brother, every bit as family to Alastor and me. He’d always been there for me when I’d needed it, despite Alastor’s disapproval when that had turned carnal. It was Carn who had taught me everything a brother could not. I felt myself crumbling before the assembly so that he’d pulled me away into the alcove to hide my obvious state.
“All that we’ve shared,” he said brokenly, “I cannot watch you do this, my Gaea. I will not stand by while two great loves of mine are cast down by the gods in a single day.” He had touched my cheek and watched me with sad eyes. Leaning into him for comfort, it must have been my grief that let me touch my feet onto an old path that I had not dared to walk in so long.
My thoughts were of fury, but my heart had beat a familiar beat. I had thrown myself at Carn with everything I could muster after long moments of struggling. My body was covered in moisture from fear of death, from daring Ares to take my life. Breast to Carn’s naked chest, he had caught me, his long frame firm and something I could break myself against.
He opened his mouth over mine, plundering as he always had, as his heritage of piracy and pillage demanded. Carn was a good man to everyone until plundering was within his grasp. I’d watched him crazed on the battlefield, pillaging the sacked cities of our adversaries, one after another, gutting the riches, choosing the sweetest of women, and building his own empire that had rivaled our own. But he was never cruel. Only greedy. And that greed is what I longed for now. I wanted him to become the Carn I knew he would if only I could alight his flame of want and need. If only I could pull that man from deep inside to ravage away the pain. To plunder my aching soul.
His hands had found my hair to pull gently at the root, a thing that turns my body aside with my lust. With my back to him, I’d moved aside my hair as his hands flow over me like water, and I was begging him, letting grief feed the want until it was a live thing between us. “Take me,” I had whispered. “Take me, Carn, I cannot bear it. I cannot bear to think. Please.”
Carn had pulled my mouth around to his, and had pressed himself against me, but without removing any clothes, to my frustration. He’d only kissed me deeply. He’d only marked me with gentleness when I wanted bruises and scratches and to feel the world come apart in any other way than from the memory of Alastor falling to his knees, clutching his chest, eyes locked with mine. The image of him cold on a pyre, burned away until nothing was left.
What is with this incessant kissing!
I had growled and bit his mouth until I tasted blood, but Carn did not react as I’d hoped, he’d remained good.
I turned to face him with a grunt, pressing myself into him even harder, demanding that he bring me to a plane of existe
nce beyond this one.
Carn had cupped my chin and pulled away. “Gaea,” he’d whispered. “My warrior princess, my queen of swords, it is with the last of my control that I tell you that I cannot do this. Not here. Not now. Your brother would not want me savaging his little love when she is grieving so. When she is in so much pain that I can taste it as a bitter poison on her tongue.”
I had turned away from him again, putting my hands into fists upon the wall as if they should answer the emotions that threatened to break me down. I breathed tightly the sounds of sobs that embarrassed me as much as angered me once again for a rejection that only added to this tumultuous moment of my plans to steal from Ares having not only been foiled, but of him, easily as a thought, replacing my brother with myself. As if Alastor had never even lived. As if I should serve or even could in his stead. There is no one like Alastor the Great.
Never had I wanted to be my brother, merely at his side.
Then I did what I knew I should not. I spoke harshly to the last of my friends, my face pressed painfully to the cold stone. “Get out of my sight, Carn. I cannot bear to look at you just now. Your pity is like knives to my heart. Go away. Leave me be.”
“Gaea,” he had pressed, and I’d turned on him, pulling my sword to lay upon his neck.
My breath shuddered in and out as if my lungs even could not bear the air of a life without my brother. “Go,” I had shouted. Carn did not move, and I smiled an ugly smile that hurt my mouth to make it. “Am I not cold?” I asked slowly. I had put a hand on his throat, so he could feel the chilling touch of my skin. “Am I not dead? Am I not gone as you knew me?”
When he didn’t answer I had shaken Carn roughly, someone I had once loved quickly became an enemy in my rage. I felt that I would never love another, ever again. I brought him close as I could to my face and whispered what I knew to be a spell upon my own soul. “Let the gods curse me and be done with it. Let the gods kill me, rise me, and kill me again.”
Eerily, the walls echoed my words. Strangely they layered upon one another like the rolling of the tide until they were a roar of sound as if by some magic.
Carn was a superstitious sort, and his eyes widened with fear. “What have you done?” he whispered. His pulse had beat swiftly beneath my fingers, bringing me to myself. I pulled my hand from his neck and I’d replaced my sword in its scabbard. Tears finally traced paths of victory down my face.
I then moaned in earnest and promised, “I am so sorry. So sorry.”
Carn reacted as I knew he would, instantly pulling me into a hug, then rocking me as he had when I was a child. “I do not know who I am anymore without him,” I pleaded as if he should know and point me out to myself. “I don’t see what fates lie ahead of me for once. He directed the paths I have always taken. It was my life to support his, and you know I never regretted that.”
“Never,” Carn said. “Neither have I. But Gaea, we must find our own paths now. We must move forward, together.”
“What do you mean?”
“Hush now,” he’d said, kissing me gently, in a way no one dared to kiss me or to tenderly offer. “Come with me, Gaea. Come rest with me. You are here, alive. Be thankful of that only for now.”
But I shook my head angrily. Did Carn think that I could rest, wake in his arms like his slave women, happily living a life in the palaces, watching him leave to risk all forever?
Does Carn dare to think that I will so easily cease this revenge? Why is he not angered? Why has he not demanded retribution?
I had dashed away the tears, feeling a new iron within my will. “Don’t you see? Doesn’t anyone see? I am in his grave, Carn. I will never be free. Not until justice has been served.”
And then I had walked away. It was with those steps that I would not be a warrior princess wedded to another warrior prince as Carn had been meaning perhaps. It was with those steps that I would never be a mortal begging of the immortals to save me. I damned them. I damned them all to Hades and back again. And it was Hades that I would most like to see first. His domain. For my brother would be judged by him alone.
To be continued upon release of
In the Veil of Shadows
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my wonderful husband and children who encourage me to write even when it means I’m sometimes present, but also, absent.
A special thank you to Logan Keys for her energy, enthusiasm, and collaboration on creative projects. I would not have done this without her. And to the women of the Lands: Pauline Creeden, Katherine Hayton, Kasondra Morin—thanks for coming on this journey with us.
A heartfelt thank you to all the early readers: Brandi Harvey, Katie Cook, Mandy Reed, and Amy Bartelloni. Your wonderful feedback, comments, insights and encouragement really helped push this project forward. And, to Annika for always checking in to see how I was getting on when I was editing, knowing I found it grim.
I’d also like to acknowledge the ARC readers, many of whom are busy people as well as bloggers.
And lastly, a thank you to ‘you’: the readers. I hope you enjoy reading this work as much as I enjoyed writing it.
About the Author
Nadia is a wanderer, lover of fantasy, romance, action, magic, and mystery. When she’s not writing, she’s casting spells on her husband and thinking up ways to bring more love and light to her family. The proud mother of two kids, she’s also the owner of a lovable dog and an ornery cat. If you like her stories, please feel free to visit her on Facebook where she hangs out sporadically or drop her an email.
Email: [email protected]