P R E V I O U S L Y
"This isn't going to be a war. It's going to be a massacre," Tristan gravely answered, as we both finally set off into the night.
CALCHESTER CITADEL, STEFFITH.
TRISTAN
THE OVERWHELMING SMELL OF ROTTING blackthorns greeted us as we neared the Citadel.
The place was bustling with activity in the dreary, grey morning, filled with people packing and harnessing their weapons, readying their armor for the day. Horses snorted and neighed angrily as we pushed our way past the noisy crowd, the air filled with the clanging of ringed steel and brushing of soft leather.
The armies at Steffith stationed themselves in the huge, vast fields, leaving the rest of our forces to be strategically planted around the rest of Endollon, dividing the hundred and twenty thousand men over the continent. The men were already in place since the night before, because armies could not teleport at will.
"We thought you both decided to kill each other," Deimos drawled lazily at the sight of us, clad in a sleek black leather as he buckled his expensive boots.
Neither Edwina nor I smiled.
"Sun should come up in an hour," Helios muttered, looking at the horizon as his skin glowed a bronzed gold. He slid a gilded breastplate over himself as his eyes continued to scan the landscape. The armor was inlaid with crimson swirling under the metal, crimson the very colour of blood.
To the far east, the darkness of the night had begun to yield to streaks of dull grey. My eyes travelled over to the men gathering in the courtyard of Calchester, testing their shields and the edges of their blades as they made the final checks.
"A lot of these men are going to die today," Eric said quietly, observing us both, dressed in steel and platinum grey. He had summoned his Trident, its spires gleaming sharp in the dim light.
I did not reply. Not a word.
There was nothing to say. Nothing to speak. Nothing stirred in me except for the gut wrenching horror, the wave of terror that twisted my insides.
None of these men would go back home after today.
My gaze flickered over the legions, at the brave men who had risen to our cries, to the call of our banners. All those courageous souls that wore different colors - blue, red, gold, green, white, purple... yet ready to fight in their hearts as one.
"Now look," Everard motioned us over to a round table, where he and the rest had gathered around a large painted map of Endollon. Llewellyn and Aidon moved to let Edwina through, her face stoic and impassive.
"The Titans are still chained in Seattoria," Nyx said quietly, her lips pressed, face drawn. "They will escape today - but it will be no easy feat. Especially Pandora and Zadicus. They lie in the Hall of Titans, chained and locked right in the heart of the wicked realm," she said, adjusting her fighting leathers, black in the dark of the night.
"Their six children are more than enough to wreak havoc," I said coldly.
"Right," Nyx nodded gravely, grim. "Do not take them for granted. Celicca and Quintus can hurt you without even lifting a finger. Romulus and Noire can manipulate your thoughts. Leora and Aries... well, you saw what she does," she shuddered.
"And Pandora and Zadicus are so insanely powerful that spilling even one drop of their blood will give rise to ten more soldiers," Everard breathed, inhaling sharply.
"So we go over our strategy once again. Our weak, the wounded, the women and children - they stay at Arcton Fortress."
"Half of them have already reached Vertgate," Cymbeline added, her voice soft. She tucked a lock of golden hair behind her ear, tugging at the folds of her dress. "Vivian is supervising - the remaining should reach around midday."
"And I will be leaving to go there as well," Emeline nodded. "With the rest of our supplies and the Grendel healers."
"And I secure the Fortress till the rest of the people get in. After which the Emmerson forces protect the base and I rejoin the battle. Right?" Edwina raised an eyebrow. She had been insistent about joining the fight from the very start, and no one had been shocked by her reaction.
"Right," Helios said. "Arcton will be our new headquarters. Vertgate is insignificant, but the Fortress is formidable. The Titans will not be going for it. Steffith is most likely to be attacked first - it could be in ruins by tonight. But Arcton is safer. And it won't be struck in any circumstances, Sarette has already cloaked it with another binding spell. Once the war ends, we reconvene at the Fortress to decide our next move. Clear?"
A chorus of agreements rippled across the table.
"Vivian, Rosalva, Amphitrite, Vanessa, Verona, Lunette, Halette, Therese, Olinda, Miriel, Dustin - they stay at Arcton and help with the wounded until Edwina secures it," Eric said firmly.
"And the vanguard stays at Steffith. You," I pointed to Apollo with a hiss, "Rowan. Deimos. Helios, Atherton and I. With a force of fifty thousand. The first to be struck will be the capital."
"As usual, you deem me unfit to fight alongside you," Emerick snapped from the corner, lips pulled back to reveal a set of sharp teeth.
"Your help is needed elsewhere," Edwina said pointedly, glaring at him. "You, Eric, Everard, Theodore, Nyx... the Everlys and the rest - you stay stationed across the other six kingdoms to deal with the remaining Titans if they decide to land there. Or have you forgotten the plan?"
"I forget nothing," he hissed, jerking a white finger at her. "Something you would do well to remember."
She nearly lunged for him right there, ready to break the table and tear his throat out with her fists. Irina pulled her back in time as I held her to the spot.
"Save your rage for the battlefield," my voice was low, a warning.
He only gave me a sour smile.
"Well then. I have thirty thousand men to lead. I'm off," he snarled, storming out of the doors with Justaline at his side, both in dark green armor that shone like poisoned water.
It was time.
For us to get into place as well.
"Well then," Helios said softly, his voice deep. "I suppose... this is it."
Deimos shot me a furtive, dark look as loathing glimmered in the pits of his indigo eyes.
"Kill those fuckers first. We can kill each other later," I snapped at him.
He turned on his heel and walked away with a detached nod. The rest too began to shuffle, picking up their weapons as I cast a look at the Citadel one last time.
All of that grandeur, that history, and all those centuries of hard work - Calchester stared down at us like a miserable bride, rich and ancient in her beauty. She was decked in candles and velvet banners, the crystal chandeliers above us lit. The crystals too seemed to be cut in the shape of tears, weeping as it were at the impending doom. As if they, too, were crying, preparing for their own funeral.
Death twitched in my ear.
Live, he said. For I am coming soon.
Edwina and I descended the steps in silence, watching the men march to Hewe. It was the place where the last Titanomachy had been fought as well. The Titans were nothing if not obsessively symmetric - or so we hoped. She gripped my hand tightly as we made it out of the gates, my heart pounding so badly at the thought of having to let her go.
I raised her warm palm, slowly brushing it with my lips before gently kissing it. I felt her shudder as her sea green eyes got lost in mine, her gaze on me, and me only. The rest of the world melted away, all the men, the horses, the weapons - everything. Her full lips parted slightly as she wrapped herself around me, and I pulled her into my embrace before pressing my lips to hers.
I could feel the misery in her kiss, I could taste it.
"I love you. No matter what happens. I will always love you."
"Tristan," she breathed, her voice shaken and faint as her eyes moistened. "Tristan."
"If we make it, promise that you'll show me how to use that cell phone of yours," I murmured into her ear, eliciting a choked laugh from her. I could hear the tears she was holding back in her strangled voice, yet she did not cry.
Edwina Tremayne was not a woman who cried.
She rested her hands on my chest, feeling my heartbeat.
"I love you, Valmont," she muttered, quiet, solemn, tenderly giving me another peck on the lips.
"I love you too, you stubborn woman."
"Give those motherfuckers my regards," she looked at me with fire blazing in her eyes.
I nodded, my lips pressed.
She finally turned to go, to leave for Vertgate as the sun began to peek over the hills. I watched her slender form caught in the sunburst of early light, my heart clenched so tightly that I thought it would burst open then and there and fall right to my feet.
This was goodbye, and we both knew it.
Our paths - they would not cross.
Not after this.
Let her not forget me, I prayed. Let her always remember all our insane conversations, our stupid fights, our mindless jokes whenever we passed out drunk on each other. Let her know that I would always love her. Let her never lay alone at night and debate her worth after I was gone. Because the only time a goodbye was painful...
...was when you knew you'd never see each other again.
She turned back one last time, her smile like the sun breaking out on a frigid landscape.
Tears filled my eyes as I waved my hand at her, a silent farewell. She waved back, her face so pale and white that it broke my heart into little pieces.
Then she disappeared into the night air before one of us did something stupid.
I hurriedly wiped away the moisture from my eyes and turned back to the men as the vanguard began its short march to Steffith. The other couples too were saying their farewells - Eric tenderly kissed Amphitrite on her head, Everard tightly hugged Rowan, Deimos was muttering a few careful words to Fayette. The immortals nodded to one another, their faces grim at the sight of the sun quietly rising from behind the snowy hills.
We waited.
We waited and waited and waited, watching the sunlight slowly drench the cold morning. My sleek black stallion snorted with unrest, and my palm rested on his mane to calm the beast down. The land soaked up the welcome warmth as the sky began to turn to a deep shade of vermillion streaked across with coral.
The fifty thousand men at my back waited in neat, precise lines. The battle hungry army was a sea of colors, the variations of each House marked by a different hue. The morning smelled of smoke and sweat and blood, wearing an expectant air of anticipation. The formidable wave of power rolled and swirled around the cavalry, guarded under my watchful eye. Far off, Rowan was observing the different colors running through the flanks while moving through the men, carrying out a final round of checks.
"I get to kill Pandora," Atherton declared, his voice firm.
"She is mine," Helios shot back at his brother. Apollo shot his father a filthy, disinterested glare as my eyes kept scanning the horizon.
"Do as you please. As long as you let me break Leora's neck," Deimos drawled from behind us. His power rippled and curled around him like tendrils of darkness.
I shut out their bickering from my ears, making a mental note to cut out their tongues at the first chance I got. The snow and frosted trees rolled out in front of us as far as the eye could see - but no army. We had planned a system to get a few Valkyrie to get messages across kingdoms as soon as possible, but there was no message either. None from Edwina at Vertgate, Nyx at Allington, Fayette at Normount - people who could immediately inform Helios, Deimos or me mentally.
"-she broke my neck, so I get to kill her-" they were still arguing amongst themselves like children as I finally saw a thin line across the horizon.
"Quiet," I cut them off sharply. "Shields!"
A series of clicks rang in the air as everyone locked their shields into place.
Because they were finally here.
The war had begun.
• • • • •
ARCTON FORTRESS, RIMEBAY, VERTGATE.
EDWINA
I hated being kept out of the battle.
"You'll get to join the fight soon," Halette muttered, joining me on the battlements as I gazed out at the moody, grassy plain stretching on for miles. The clatter of carts and the excited talking of the people could be heard as they made their way into the Fortress.
"I want to join the fight right now," I replied indignantly, studying the archers poised between the crenellations. "There's nothing to be done here. I didn't intend to spend my day observing sheep while my men fight for me."
"You are the only one who can be trusted enough to protect a Fortress full of defenseless people. They listen to you," my friend tried to reason, tying her hair in a loose knot atop her head and rolling up her sleeves. The rest were laying out supplies and mattresses for the healers once the wounded started coming up.
"In addition to the fact that there are no sheep here," Vivian shot me a sullen glare as if personally offended at the mention of his sheep boring me to death.
"I want to do something. Let me help," I pleaded with him, but he firmly pulled me back with a stern look in his eye.
"Watch the plain. Everything is under control here."
"There are men to watch the bloody plain. I want to help," I protested.
"Just stay there and watch the plain," he sighed. "Please."
I shook my head hopelessly and turned back to the battlements, spinning a knife between my fingers and watching the light flash between the edges.
"Honestly," Vivian muttered sarcastically behind me. "Watching sheep. As if."
Dustin seemed to be bawling somewhere, crying in fits as Amphitrite cooed at the infant, trying to soothe it. The baby was chewing on his thumb, looking at me with wonder as I grinned at him. He looked like the splitting image of Aidon when he had been a child too.
My eyes turned to the plains again, keenly watching the horizon.
And that was when I saw it.
A thin line of green.
It could have been just the shrubbery. Or it could have just been a white bird flying in the skies. It could have been the trees for all I knew, but my eagle vision spotted a flash of light from several miles away. Trees did not flash in the light.
It was metal. Weapons.
The armor was green, the banners were a black unicorn on white.
And they were coming right towards us.
Emerick had betrayed us at the very first chance he got.
• • • • •
HEWE, STEFFITH.
TRISTAN
Helios had been right.
The army was not just large.
It was enormous.
It stretched out as far as the eye could see, even further than that, it went on for miles and miles and miles beyond - it was endless.
Endless, formidable, and much, much larger than ours.
They marched until they were a quarter of a league away, before stopping as one. Like one brain controlling all those bodies. Menace and dread rippled off them, all those stone faced, emotionless soldiers dressed in sturdy obsidian armor. The helms covered more than half of their faces, but one could see the lips pressed in a grim line under. Each carried a spear of Ekrite - or was it Bloodstone?
This army was bloodthirsty.
"We're fucked," Atherton whispered under his breath. I held up a silent hand for the men behind me to get in position, ready to attack if need be.
Two people emerged from the folds of the deadly army on the other side.
A tall woman... and an even taller man.
"Quintus and Celicca," Helios whispered to me, his jaw hard, eyes shining with recognition. "The youngest of Pandora's six children."
"I wasn't aware," I snapped at him.
The figures approached us over the snow, silently gliding over it as if walking on water. Their movements were like quicksilver, eerily fluid and graceful, dangerously quiet. The horses began to whinny and neigh as they came closer, as if sensing the very evil curling off the two Titans.
"Hold!" I shouted the command, one eye still on the approaching enemy.
"Cousin!" the woman's voice rang over the distance as she motioned to Helios with a hand as pale as the snow. Her face came into relief as the light fell on her features, revealing eyes that were completely black, filled with pitch as dark as night.
I sucked in a breath.
Her nose was sharper and more delicate than her sister Leora's. Waves of silky black hair tumbled over her shoulders and fell to her waist. Her lips and nails were the same colour as the rich velvet she wore - a deep, blood red.
The male beside her looked like a splitting image of his sister, dressed in matching robes of pure black. A longsword of gleaming Bloodstone hung right at his side, his deadly lips curling in a smile.
"So excited to die, aren't you?" he mused in a whisper of a dulcet voice, tilting his head to the side.
"Perhaps he sees something more to it than we do," Celicca tinkled at his side, tipping back her head to laugh.
"Get. Lost," Helios gritted his teeth, grinding them together. She laughed again, flicking a thread on the sleeve of her velvet.
Helios screamed.
It was a cry of anguish, a cry of miserable pain as he recoiled, his stallion almost crumbling to its feet. He bent over, holding his head as if trying to block out something terrible. The look in his eyes was a look of such terror that I shuddered to think what private version of hell he was suffering in.
My heart beat faster. Those siblings had a gift - they could inflict pain without lifting a finger. Fear rippled through me, deadly and thick.
Deimos's power of spreading dread would do nothing against these two.
"You can't win. Face it," Quintus murmured almost lovingly, easing back his sister as Helios panted, clutching at his side, sweat pouring down the sides of his face. He coughed, holding at his horse as more pain flickered through his features.
"It's better to die trying," a snarl ripped out of me, as Celicca's attention shifted.
"Hmm. This one should be fun," she observed, biting her lip as she turned to Rowan. "Have you too come to meet your death, filthy mongrel?"
"Go fuck yourself," the Valkyrie woman spat.
A deadly, sick smile passed over Celicca's white face, her crimson red lips curling up in a promise of death and blood. A smile so terrible and deadly, that it turned all the blood in my veins to ice.
"So be it," she whispered, her white palm motioning to the armies behind her.
They charged right at once.
• • • • •
Ajsajsaksjsdjsjskl THEY'RE HERE FINALLY OMG THE WAR HAS BEGUN. I'M SO EXCITED FOR Y'ALL TO READ THE LAST FEW CHAPTERS OF THIS BOOK XX
I would write a longer note but honestly this chapter just makes me sad. Like the Tredwina moment. Or Helios screaming. Or Edwina and Vivian. It's just sad knowing some of these people might or might not make it. Btw, since war is a fragile, angry thing - the chapters are gonna be broken into tiny snippets with different povs that keep changing. Just watch out and keep track of em :)
Ps. Btw did you spot the Virgil quote in this chapter? If not, go read it again. Death twitches in my ear. Live, for I am coming soon.