A ragged cheer ran through the soldiers around her, and Ares felt the tide of battle rise and break, sweeping over the remaining enemy as the soldiers of Arktos cried out in victory beneath the great spire of the Needle.
Chapter
Ten
If she’d been worriedthat her father’s familial sentiments were the reason she’d been left behind in Axon, she saw nary a trace of them in the furious Arkoudai Strategos who was, at that moment, giving Kataida and Theron both the dressing down of alifetime.
“When I give orders, soldiers, I expectthey will be obeyed.Notonlydid you disobey, but you abandoned the post I specifically assigned to you. In wartime, that’s treason. What is the one crime the Arkoudai punish by death, Captain Akti?”
Kataida was still standing, but Theron had gone to his knees the second Evander so much as glanced at him, and even she had to admit her father’s dominance was nigh overwhelming. She was still shaking with post-battle adrenaline, her thoughts racing, Ares in their form as a sword at her side. Every now and then, she would drop her hand to the hilt and brush over it, and she would imagine Ares shivering in pleasure, reveling in the bloodstained steel of the blade.
“Treason,” Kataida said, flatly.
Evander stared at her, his dark eyes blazing. “Address your general properly, soldier, you’re in enough trouble.”
“Treason, sir,” Kataida corrected. “Fine, I submit. Put me to death.”
Evander’s eyes narrowed, and she could see that his hand was shaking. He was furious with her and Theron, which was fine, because she knew exactly what lay under that anger, and why her father was focusing so strongly on their disobeying orders instead of how the battle might have gone.
Beside her, Theron struggled to his feet with effort, swearing lightly under his breath. “Fucking dominants, rein itin.”
Evander shifted his coldly furious glare to his son. “I didn’t ask for you to speak, soldier.”
“What the fuck does it matter? Apparently my own father is going to sentence to me to death for the crime of being a soldier who cares about his stupid sister and his fucking country.” Theron crossed his arms over his chest, as if he were finding some solace in being both an unrepentant brat and a terrible soldier, his own way of dealing with his terror from battle.
Kataida wondered at her own feelings, which weren’t angerorfear, just a fierce sense of triumph and a restlessness that made her want to excuse herself and ride Ares’ cock until she was exhausted. Her fingers brushed the hilt of the sword again, and she felt a warm rush of heat, like they were responding to her touch, her desires--her bloodlust, which they would never shame or fault her for.
“What I am trying to make you understand,” Evander said, very carefully, “is that I am already slaying my ownpeopleand shedding their blood on the sand of our shared country. To have my own children disobey me is proving the traitors–”
“Are getting to you,” Kataida interrupted. The look on her father’s face was almost shocked– she was the child who never disobeyed, didn’t backtalk, and here she was doing both. It would be comical at any other time. “The reason you kept us at home has nothing to do with the flow of battle. It’s because youlove us. But it wasn’t the right choice, Strategos Akti. I disobeyed because I knew it, and so did Theron, and it doesn’t matter because–”
“Itdoesmatter!” Evander slammed his hand down on the table, and the crude wooden figures carefully arranged on the map went flying. They were back in his tent at the camp, with the army outside attending to the wounded, the prisoners who had surrendered, and the dead back for the pyres. “It matters when we’re in this situation because of my leadership in the first place.”
For the first time, Kataida wondered just how deeply this was going to affect her father. He’d never been meant for it, being Strategos, but he’d performed his duties with honor, grace and civility, a fair and just Strategos in a country that was all but a well-trained army under his command. “That isn’t it. It’s only an excuse for someone to try and tear down what you’ve built. They’re trying to make you doubt yourself, and it’s working.”
“Just exile me to Staria,” Theron muttered. “Go on. Thalassa. Fuckinganywhere else.”
Evander’s voice was deadly soft. “I almost watched my two children die today in front of me.”
“A lot of people’s children died today,” Kataida said, “and hundreds ofactualchildren died in the training center. That’s why I’m here. That’s why Theron’s here, and it’s whywe should be.”
“I was trying to keep dumbface over here from getting fucking murdered,” Theron said. “But I keep forgetting she’s got a spine of steel, a war god in her back pocket and apparently doesn’t care as much as I do about some freak in a mask beheading her.”
She turned a glare on her brother, and Theron stuck his tongue out. If it weren’t for the fact she could also seehishandsshaking, she might have kicked him in the shins like when they were children.
“Maybe it was my love for you both that made it easy to assign you a post in Axon, but that isn’t the issue. The issue is that you disobeyed, and do you know how distracting that was for me, the commander of the army, to see you out there?” Evander’s voice shook, just slightly.
“Then don’t raise us to be soldiers,” Kataida snapped. She couldn’t help her annoyance. What was the point of any of this, of the training and the hierarchy and the songs, the proud history and thenot even one, if they couldn’t stand alongside their fellow Arkoudai when a threat came knocking at their door frominside the house? “Why didn’t you send us to fancy school in Gerakia like the Katoikos patricians do with their children? All Arkoudai are soldiers. But if you keep us from the battle when it matters, all we’re doing is playing at it by wearing a uniform we neither earned nor deserved.”
She whirled on her brother. “You came with me. For once in your life, admit you care about something. Admit you’re just as Arkoudai as the rest of us.”
“I didn’t realize anyone doubted that!”
“Your brother came here for the same reason that I wanted you to stay in Axon,” Evander interrupted quietly. “He loves you.”
Once again, she felt adrift, frustratingly set apart from her family. “I came here out of love, too. I came here out of love for Arktos, for my father, my brother, my mothers, and the others who aren’t fighting–Elena, Aleks, Malik. I came here for the woman who runs the tea shop, for Markos and all the others who died in the training camp.”
“I know.” Evander sighed. “I’m not faulting your wanting to be here, either of you.” His voice cracked, slightly, and his eyes went bright with unshed tears. “Even though I’ll havenightmares for the rest of my life about what might have happened, the sight of you holding that mask, Kataida--I’ve never been more proud of you in my life. I’ll deny ever saying it again. And you,” he said, to Theron, “I saw a swordsman who’d rival my own brother, who was still the best I’ve ever known. And knowing how afraid you were, and still you stood up for your people, your family–”