The Rising Page 3

  He was not surprised when he saw True do the same to Farah.

  “Did you call for Cassius and Elena?” Mars asked True.

  “Yes,” True answered.

  “Would you like wine?” Farah offered.

  “Please,” Silence accepted and began to move, but Mars’s hold strengthened.

  He felt her eyes, so he looked down at her.

  “I’ll be right here, my love,” she said softly.

  He drew in breath.

  And let her go.

  “I’m assuming you were visited by a unicorn,” True noted as the women bustled to a trunk.

  Mars jerked his head up in assent. “You?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank the gods,” Mars muttered.

  “Yes,” True agreed. “Even the damned caravans at the back that weren’t keeping up came through whatever the hell it was we leaped through.”

  “Same,” Mars grunted.

  “Did you have purple?” True inquired.

  “Yes,” Mars told him. “Magic is back in Airen, this is certain.”

  “Of course,” True replied. “The Nadirii are here.”

  Without a call, the tent flaps opened and both men turned to them, hands going to the hilts of their swords.

  But they relaxed when Cassius walked in.

  Without Elena.

  “Where’s Elena?” True asked.

  “She is tending the wounded,” Cassius answered tightly.

  As he took in his friend’s expression, Mars felt his wife come to him and press to his side.

  For undoubtedly, she’d seen it too.

  He slid his arm along her shoulders, and she called gently, “Cassius?”

  “Jasmine was slain,” Cassius said tersely, the words rough and edged with pain.

  The reason Mac was uncontrolled at battle’s end.

  “Gods, Cassius,” True murmured.

  “Rosehana as well,” Cass grunted.

  Silence pressed closer to him as Farah emitted a pained mew.

  “Elena’s mother was just lost. Elena is…she is…” Cass began. They all gave him time, but he shook his head sharply and declared, “Antonius will not recover. He’s in great pain, and it is unknown when that pain will be over if the end is to come naturally. He’s asked for the soldier’s poison.”

  “Fuck,” Mars bit.

  “I cannot brief you. I have agreed to give it to him, and he is taking time with our gods. I must see to Tone, and then find my woman,” Cass finished.

  Silence gave Mars a demanding squeeze.

  He looked down to her.

  “True will look after me,” she whispered.

  True would die for her.

  Thus, Mars acquiesced to her demand.

  “Do you want company?” he offered.

  Cass barely met his eyes but that did not mean Mars missed the pain dwelling close to the surface of his friend’s.

  “Suit yourself,” he muttered, bowed shortly to the women, then disappeared between the flaps.

  Mars pressed a brief kiss to his wife’s mouth and followed him, not even bothering to gesture to Basil and Kyril as he left the tent.

  They stayed with their queen.

  Cassius was walking fast, and thus it was a good thing Mars’s legs were as long as his.

  He caught him up and asked, “Mac?”

  “He’s torn apart,” Cass grunted. “There was love between them.”

  “Yes,” Mars murmured.

  “She took a blade for him.”

  Fuck.

  “Cass—”

  Mars said no more, for Cassius stopped, turned to him, and Mars nearly reared away from the depths of black that had become his eyes.

  Cass’s eyes were normally sky blue.

  When he felt emotion, the night sky could be seen in them instead.

  Now, there was naught of any of that.

  There wasn’t even any white.

  Just black.

  Mars had never seen that, and he’d known Cassius to feel great emotion.

  And he did not know what to make of it, except what he knew would not ever happen, even before he’d seen his friend’s eyes as such.

  He would not ever make Cassius Laird his enemy.

  “My reign will be safe. My land will be free for all, Mars. They will not die in vain.”

  “They already haven’t, my brother,” Mars said quietly.

  “She took a blade for him,” Cass bit.

  “My friend—”

  “Ellie’s sister took a blade for my brother.”

  “It is war.”

  “It is obscene,” Cassius retorted. “For what? For what do they fight, Mars? How can you even begin to form the fucking thought that you’d take up arms to stop another from being free? Much less kill for it?”

  “I cannot answer that, for I have not had that thought, Cass.”

  Cassius looked to the ground and wrapped his hand around the back of his neck.

  Mars took them to the urgency at hand.

  “It is certain he will not recover?” he asked carefully.

  Cassius dropped his hand and looked to him. “Liam says it’s impossible. He left some of his intestines and most of his lifeblood on the battleground. He could barely move his mouth to ask for the poison.”

  “Then do not delay a moment longer in giving it to him.”

  Cassius didn’t.

  Not even to nod his head.

  He turned on his boot and jogged to a line of tents set up at the base of the mountains where the wounded were being tended.

  Mars ran with him.

  They went through the flaps of one and were confronted with a number of lanterns turned high, a deathbed, a dead man in it, and his two friends standing vigil.

  “Did you give it to him in my absence?” Cassius asked Nero.

  “No, he slipped away on his own,” Nero replied.

  “I should have given it to him,” Cassius muttered, looking down to Antonius. “I should have ended his pain.”

  “He lasted perhaps five minutes after you’d left, Cass,” Nero said, “Thus gaining the last thing on this earth he might want, not forcing you to administer the poison. Years ago, he told me he’d never ask that of you, no matter how bad it was. He did not know then how bad it could get, but I know, if it had to end like this, he would be glad the last thing he did, he did on his own.”

  Mars did not doubt this and suspected no one in that tent did, for all of them would feel the same.

  Before anyone could say a word, Mac announced, “I’m taking Jasmine to The Enchantments.”

  “I’m sure that’s a good idea. Let me speak to Ellie about it,” Cassius murmured.

  “I wasn’t asking,” Mac clipped. “I was telling you I’m taking Jazz to The Enchantments. We discussed it last night. And she said, if she was where she is now, she wanted to become one with the veil in The Enchantments. So that’s where I’m taking her.”

  “And I’m saying, please do not leave until I can talk to Ellie so she can make her decision of whether or not she can go with you,” Cassius returned quietly.

  Mac scowled at his friend before he looked to his boots.

  A moment was given before Cass called, “Mac.”

  Macrinus’s head came up, and he seethed, “I want to kill something.”

  “I know,” Cassius whispered.

  “I couldn’t even stop fighting so I could pull her fucking body from that pit.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cassius said, his words heavy with the weight of the decision to attack that morning.

  “You didn’t gut her,” Mac spat.

  “It was my—”

  “She’d fucking kick you in the arse if she heard you speak the words you’re about to say. She was a fighter. She believed in what we did today. And now it’s time to take her home.”

  Cassius fell silent.

  “Before she was lost, she was gods-damned magnificent,” Mac declared.

  Nero moved closer to him, lifted a
hand and wrapped it around the back of Mac’s neck.

  But Mac couldn’t tear his gaze from Cassius.

  “From the second I laid eyes on her, she was gods-damned magnificent.”

  “She was,” Cassius agreed.

  Mac’s voice was much different, coarse with emotion when he asked, “Is this what you’ve been feeling all these years?”

  “Yes,” Cass answered.

  “How do you…how did you…breathe?”

  That was when Cass moved.

  So did Nero.

  Mars lifted his chin to Nero as he came his way and they began to leave the tent.

  Cassius went right to Mac and pulled him into his embrace, cupping the back of Mac’s head and shoving his face in Cass’s shoulder.

  Mars saw Mac’s shoulders wrench once, and then he walked out.

  They took several steps away and stopped.

  They said nothing to each other.

  It was Nero who first spoke.

  “They should have bitched to their fires and got drunk in their taverns and picked fights with each other.”

  “Mm,” Mars hummed in agreement.

  “He has never engaged, not once,” Nero said.

  Mars turned his gaze from staring unseeing down an alleyway formed by tents to Nero.

  “Not with this realm, not with his father, not with his brother, not in any battle he was forced to wage,” Nero went on.

  Mars held his eyes.

  “In my knowing of him, I’ve seen him engage with four things. His wife, his daughter, his lieutenants, and Elena,” Nero stated.

  Mars said nothing.

  “They should have bitched…to their fires…and got drunk…in their taverns,” Nero said through his teeth. “For Cassius Laird unleashed about something he gives a shite about, they will curse for eternity their decision to force his hand this day.”

  Mars continued to say nothing, for he knew this to be true.

  “Before,” Nero carried on, “he was fighting for what was right, but mostly he was fighting because Ellie believed in it, and he’d shift the stars for her. But now…”

  Mars nodded.

  Nero continued to release it.

  “Otho was his brother. Tone was his brother. And she was a pain in his arse, but he loved Jazz. But that is not what makes Cassius. For Cassius, it is not about what he wants or needs or feels. Thus, it is not that her loss hurt him. It is that her loss hurt Mac. It hurt Elena. And they will know how he feels about that.”

  “You’ve lost today as well, Nero,” Mars noted cautiously.

  “They’re going to know how I feel about it, too,” Nero bit, turned and strode away.

  Mars watched him go even after he disappeared from sight.

  Not long later, Cassius came out of the tent, but Mac did not.

  “I am uncertain, mio amico, it is good you leave him in there with Tone,” Mars noted.

  “He asked to stay. He will not be at Tone’s burial. He wants to take Jazz soon. He will wait for the brothers who shroud so I can go about my business and talk to Ellie. And then he will seek Hera and prepare to transport Jasmine and Rose.”

  Mars nodded and fell in step with Cassius as his friend began to move down the line of tents.

  He’d forgotten about their shrouding ritual. How only some, who had been trained in the proper procedure of soaking the dressings in herbal liniments, before cleansing and wrapping their dead in them as soon as possible after death, could prepare a body for burial.

  It was a process of caring that Mars always found surprising, considering Airen was not known as a caring land.

  He felt, if there was care, it should be shown while the one you cared about was breathing.

  He also felt it was somehow apropos, that the Airenzian only showed this after death.

  “The Nadirii lost twenty-two, eighty injured. Thirty-eight Airenzian fell, fifty-four injured. The Zees are still assessing amongst tribes. Fern’s women—”

  “You do not have to report to me now,” Mars interrupted him, though he did it thinking something Cassius never would.

  From what he had seen, that number of losses for his side in that conflict were actually very low.

  “I’m abolishing our feudal system,” Cass decreed of a sudden.

  Mars was so stunned at his words, he stopped them walking.

  “Lords stripped of titles and lands,” Cassius went on. “Castles will be claimed by the Regency and given to the citizens of my kingdom. They will be made into schools, hospitals, orphanages or colleges at my behest. Peasants will be awarded ownership of the land they work. If you eat, you earn the food you put in your mouth. You don’t take it off another’s back. If you own a home or a plot, you pay for that too. You don’t languish in the spoils your forebears earned taking up arms for a king four hundred bloody years ago.”

  Nero was right.

  They would regret, for generations to come—indeed until what once was, was lost to history—they would regret causing anyone Cassius loved to feel pain.

  “This is great change, Cass,” Mars murmured.

  “This will be, Mars. They had to pay women a decent wage, keep their bloody hands off them, and let them go to school. None of this is asking much, except for them to be decent human beings. They will see that decision would have been the wise one to take. But they will see it too late.”

  “You will have our swords,” Mars told him something he already knew.

  And because it was, Cassius did not address that.

  He asked, “How did you get here so quickly?”

  “We had help from your unicorn, Sky. And True had help from his mare.”

  “Star,” Cass said.

  Mars beat back a smile, for this name was unsurprising, as named by Cass.

  “Star,” he said.

  “And they…what?” Cassius queried.

  “They took us through an ether, Cass. I do not know. I was in bloody Wodell this morning, and now I am here.”

  Cassius had no response to that, indeed, it seemed to take him far away, and Mars let him go there until he felt it necessary to bring him back.

  “You did not use Frey’s dragons,” he noted.

  “I did not wish to incinerate twelve thousand men I did not know, some who may be confused, or easily persuaded, or coerced, or caught up in the frenzy at the beginning of dissension, so they know not, truly, what they are fighting for.”

  Mars would not have made the same decision, but he did not share that. Cass’s heart had always been softer than Mars’s, even if he was adept at hiding it was.

  “And now?” Mars asked.

  “Now, I need to speak with my woman and see to her in her grief. Now, I need to assess the full losses. Now, I need to interrogate prisoners. I’ve sent so many gods-damned birds, it’s a wonder the sky isn’t black with ravens, for I need to know what’s happening elsewhere in my realm.”

  “My men will be riding up from the border as soon as they receive my summons,” Mars told him. “And we did not speak of it, but I would wager True is doing the same.”

  Cassius nodded his gratitude before he murmured, “I need an example.”

  Mars knew precisely what he was thinking.

  “Do you know of a primary instigator?” he inquired.

  Cassius focused fully on him. “I don’t know if I care if they are primary. Every lord whose militia is here today will lose his stronghold to dragon fire.”

  Mars did not smile, even if he wished to, before he shared, “This would be my decision.”

  Cassius’s face lost some of its intensity, though he did not smile. “I do not know if that heartens me or frightens me.”

  He clapped a hand on his friend’s shoulder and didn’t remove it.

  “This day will be heralded in the tomes of history, that you prevailed against those odds. And I know that means nothing now, but it is the beginning of the end of a blight on our continent. Thus, there will come a time, I hope, my brother, that you and yours can ta
ke heart in that.”

  Cassius inclined his head.

  Mars gave his shoulder a squeeze before he released him and said, “I’m also sending men to assist in securing the borders of The Enchantments.”

  “This is wise. I’ve no doubt this will be a target for them, and I’ve sent a raven to do the same.”

  “I will report to True. You go to Elena.”

  Cassius nodded again and started to turn to leave, but he stopped.

  “Did you sustain losses?”

  Mars shook his head. “A few injuries, but no losses.”

  “Thank the gods,” Cassius murmured, and moved away.

  Mars watched him go, and as he did, he thought for a moment of Antonius.

  He then thought of Jasmine.

  Bear them close to your bosom, he asked of his Muse god.

  He then moved through the camp in order to reclaim his wife.

  123

  The Rejection

  Princess Serena

  Base of the Night Heights Mountain Range

  AIREN

  “I will guard them. You rest. Your journey will be long,” Serena said to Hera and Macrinus, both of whom were standing close to the bodies lying on the earth under the moonlight, shrouded in coral and purple cloth, covered with the dusting of pinecones and needles Serena had placed on them in order to surround them with symbols of nature.

  “And you?” Hera asked.

  “I may ride,” Serena told her. “I do not know. I am at the calling of my queen.”

  Hera studied her.

  “I will guard her, Hera,” Serena said low. “I will guard them both.”

  Hera continued to study her.

  Serena stood still and allowed it.

  After a time, the Nadirii warrior turned to Macrinus.

  “Let us go, my friend, and prepare for our journey,” Hera urged quietly.

  Macrinus didn’t move, not his body or his gaze from the shrouded figure on the ground.

  “Mac,” Hera whispered.

  “I find I cannot leave her,” Macrinus whispered back.

  “You need to pack your things, and hers, so you can be prepared to take care of her,” Hera told him and reached out to touch his forearm, finishing, “So you will be ready to take her home.”

  “She should be here, and I should be there,” he replied, dipping his head toward his woman’s body.

  “And if she were standing by my side, and you in her place, she would be saying the same thing,” Hera returned.