Page 58 of Flamesworn

The wind stirred her hair and she caught a scent on the wind, something citrus like lemon, and sharp like eucalyptus. It was gone so quickly that she might have imagined it, but it was the first thing she’d smelled that wasn’t blood in what felt like days.

Kataida felt tears sting her eyes, tasted them in the back of her throat, and reached blindly down to rub the hilt of the sword again. She didn’t have the luxury of crying right now. The civil war needed to end, and that meant getting to Axon while the chaos of their attack filtered through whatever ranks were left, robbing them of any chance to regroup.

She closed her fist around the coins in her hand, carried it up to her mouth and kissed her own skin, bloody and dirty as it was. “Thank you. I won’t let my heart turn to ash. I swear it.” She didn’t know if Atreus was anywhere he could hear her, if any of this was real or just a post-battle, exhausted delusion, but she figured it couldn’t hurt.

They were an hour from Axon when it occurred to Kataida that they couldn’t simply ride up into the capital and head toward her father’s house. Word must have gotten out that she’d disappeared from camp, and her stomach twisted unpleasantly at the thought that anyone would think her a deserter, if they’d seen her leave with Menelaus.

Even if she wasn’t labeled a traitor, Damian Akti was only known by one name in Arktos anymore, and it wasn’t his own.

“I think we should stop,” Kataida called out, and she felt horribly uncomfortable. Should she call himUncle? Was she using too much of her dominance? This was exactly why she never wanted to be Strategos. She could do the killing if it had to be done. Policymaking and small talk were something else entirely.

Menelaus had a heart that yearned for war and burned to ashes under the heat of its flame. She, apparently, did not. But what about Damian? He hated war, which was understandable, but what if that hatred made him lash out, hurt other people because that was all he knew how to do?

Damian didn’t argue, simply slid off the horse and stared at her without blinking. It was unsettling, but suddenly, she found she didn’t care what sort of heart he had at the moment, she just wanted to sit down and drink some water and figure out the easiest way to get in touch with her father.

“We can’t ride into Axon,” she said, even though Damian hadn’t asked why they’d stopped. “They think you’re on their side, and me too, by now.”

Damian was so still, she had to stop herself from waving a hand in front of his face to see if he was even awake. “We’ll have to get word to my father somehow,” she continued, thinking aloud.

“Send the bird,” Damian said, turning away.

It took her a moment to realize he meantAres,which—wasn’t a bad idea, actually. They’d get there even faster if they flew. Kataida took the sword from its sheath and said softly, “Ares, I need you.”

The air rippled and there they were in their mortal form, slightly taller than her with their hair braided and that worshipful smile on their face, eyes blazing. “Lovely girl.”

She smiled despite herself, and didn’t stop them when they stepped in close and wrapped their arms around her, blood and grime and all. “I need you to do something for me, bright eyes.” Later, she thought, she’d show them the coins, and recount her strange auditory vision of Atreus. She wanted to show them the tattoo that was inked now on her skin, and let them worship her with their body, hurt them like they wanted, likeshewanted.

“Anything,” Ares murmured, nuzzling at her hair, licking at it as if they were a cat and she was in need of grooming. They might have been licking blood from the dark strands, but instead of finding it strange or off-putting, she thought it was rather sweet.

She heard a sound from Damian, a noise somewhere between disgust and annoyance, but she ignored it. She turned Ares’ face to hers and kissed them, nipped at their lip, keeping it between her teeth as she slowly pulled back. “Take a message to my father in Axon? If you fly, you’ll be there in no time.”

“Of course. What should I tell your father?”

Kataida thought for a long time, wishing she had paper and ink to at least try and write down some sort of coherent explanation. She ran through several versions, and finally, she thought about her father and what kind of man he was, and it turned out she didn’t need to give Ares a very long message at all. “Tell him I need him,” she said, her voice heavy, all the emotions she’d been ignoring now a tide threatening to crack the facade of her stoic resolve.

Ares nodded and kissed her one last time, and then they stepped back and shifted forms to the winged being with the blazing eyes and the glass skin, and she and Damian watched them take to the sky in silence.

“How did you do it?”

She blinked, surprised by her uncle’s harsh voice, that he was speaking to her. “How did I do what, exactly?”

“Bind War to you,” Damian said, eyes still on the sky where Ares’ bright form grew more and more distant, a falling star in the faraway dark. “Menelaus tried everything.”

“That he tried at all was the problem,” she said. She looked at him, considering. “And I didn’t bind them. We’re bound, yes, but it goes both ways.”

He cut an unfriendly look at her, but his voice wasn’t quite as harsh when he spoke this time. “Menelaus would have willingly done that, too.”

“Menelaus wanted to use them as a weapon,” she said, her voice tight.

“What do you think waris, girl?” Damian faced her there, with his tangled hair and burning eyes, a specter of violence and death illuminated in the moonlight. “War is nothingbuta weapon. It doesn’t care about glory, or gold, or any of it. It just wants to kill.”

“Weapons don’twantanything,” she said. “They can’t. They’re just a thing.”

“And that thing you just sent to Axon?” He pointed at the sky, in the direction where Ares was no longer visible.

Is a godwas on the tip of her tongue, but there was something about her uncle’s pointed gaze that kept her from saying it. She put her hands on her hips. “Helped save your life. Broke the chains that bound you.”

“And in such a timely manner, too,” Damian said.

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