Page 1 of Ashes of Honor

Amaia

Iwas tired of saying,“When this is over.”Alexiares was right. It never would be.

Humanity had many chances to get things right. To act like we had some damn sense. Three hundred thousand years on this planet and counting, and barely a lesson learned to show for it. We are what we always have been.

Savages.

Seth had always held the belief that this earth was riddled with godless savages. On that topic, we were aligned.

So why I continued to root for something better—to try after so many greats known and unknown had failed before me … whofucking knew. Perhaps habit? That idea that evolution worked both ways. Yes, the strong survived, but the lessons were learned from the weak.

They taught it in schools—never outright, yet the lesson remained. What else was the phrasehistory is told by the victorssupposed to mean? The strong survived, yes, but the weak weren’t forgotten. Their stories were still told—just from a different angle. A carefully crafted one. Educational. Meant to enlighten. To indoctrinate.

That was the other thing about humans. We were creatures of habit. There were three things that decided what we did every day: eat, shit, and sleep. One break in that routine, and it affected the others. The cost of one without the other two?

A hell in which only savages could prevail.

The Pansie population was out of fucking control. Our border patrol had been massacred in the attack on Salem Territory over a month ago, and what was left of our troops were too busy with more pressing matters. Which, if I was being honest, was fine by me—another excuse for me and the girls to have a day out.

Morning fog swept around my knees, making whatever went crunch under my thick combat boots a mystery. Based on the ooey gooey slush under my feet, I’d guess it was a head flung my way from the ruthless strike of Tomoe’s katana. A loud click to my right had me turning on my heels. A small Pansie, around my height, stared back at me.

“We got a conscious one over here,” I called out to my friends.

“Aw,” Tomoe bantered back through the chaos. “We should tell it to say goodbye to its little friends.”

Killing them had become … easier, to say the least.

For me, there had always been a person behind the empty, decayed gaze of a Pansie. But for everyone else, that realization was still somewhat new since our discovery up in Duluth. I’dexpected at least Reina to hesitate, but ever since she’d come back from her mission in Montana and Wyoming with Tomoe and Abel, she hadn’t been the same. She hadn’t even asked where her brother’s remains were. Didn’t so much as flinch when Moe argued that Seth deserved to be buried with the rest of our fallen. Ultimately, I’d left it up to Reina. And Reina … well, she’d settled on the fact that no traitor had ever been buried at The Graves and that we weren’t about to start now.

“What should we name it?” I teased, toying with it by offering up a finger before pulling away the moment it snapped for a bite.

“Seth,” Reina said, not breaking in her stride toward her next victim.

My knife got caught in the skull of Reina’s so-called undead version of her recently dead brother. I let it fall with the now inanimate corpse and pulled Jax’s twin swords from the holster on my back. With another spin to the side, I sliced through two Pansies without much effort, my focus still stuck on Reina’s words.

“Been there,” Moe cooed, though the life slipping from her eyes told me she was anything but okay with what Reina had said. “Done that.”

Where Reina’s successful attempts to avoid all things depression, Moe had spent weeks wandering around—lost in her mind. She was neither present nor distant. Always where she needed to be, when we needed her to be there, but she was … not the same Tomoe Sato I’d come to know.

How could she be when she had killed the love of her life with the very katana that she’d sworn to use to protect those she adored? Wrath. And she had plenty to spread.

“Yeah, okay. No more naming things. Fun’s over,” I said, placing the swords back where they belonged at the sight of the last Pansie splattering against the pavement.

“We should get back,” Moe said, glancing at the position of the sun. Monterey Compound would be alive with construction and activity by now. It was almost time for me to report for duty.

Duties. Plural—since they expected me to do it all. After Prescott’s death, his responsibilities had been dumped on me, stacking on top of my already endless list. General of Salem Territory—and, apparently, the rest of the continental United States. An exaggeration, sure, but with the fallen compounds Ronan left in his destructive wake now leaning on me, Duluth’s mess of a settlement, and Covert Province always lurking in the background, my hands were full. Too full. Which made chasing down Pansies at the asscrack of dawn about as close to peace as I got.

I pulled Prescott’s favorite compass from my pocket. I didn’t need it. I knew exactly where we were and a million ways to get us back. But I wanted it. I’d kept it by my side since I’d gone through his belongings.

No one talks about that part much.

What it’s like to go through the life of someone who left you behind. How deciding who gets what and what goes where forces you to confront a lot of shit about both yourself and them. Jax’s stuff, omitting his swords, still remained untouched in our quarters.Myquarters—the correction still not coming naturally. Somehow, invading Prescott’s life had been easier, a less daunting task. There were memories in his room, good ones, bad ones, but mostly the comfort of all things familiar.

“What a beautiful day for more bullshit,” I said, leading us back to our home that had not felt as such in a very long time.

Amaia

Today was about confronting all the shit I’d been putting off for as long as possible. Jax used to say that I could only outrun my problems for as long as I could steady my breath. I ran half-marathons every day. Steadying with every inhale and exhale was kind of my thing. Right now, there was no more air for me to gulp down. My world suffocated me. I was deprived of all oxygen and the only way to keep moving forward was to claw my way out, one problem at a time.

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