Ruler, Rival, Exile (Of Crowns and Glory—Book 7) Read online

  “It’s beautiful up here,” Ceres said.

  Thanos could only agree, although for him, Ceres was the most beautiful thing on Haylon by a long way. He’d never thought that they would end up here together. Or anywhere together, come to that. When he’d left for Felldust, he hadn’t been sure that he would be able to come back. He certainly hadn’t dared to think about might what happen between him and Ceres if he did.

  The two of them continued along, offering suggestions where they could to help with the defenses. Thanos knew that the others would be doing the same. Ceres’s father was already helping in Haylon’s forges, while the remaining combatlords were helping to teach the fighters there the kind of moves that might give them an advantage at close quarters.

  “We will hold,” Iakos said. “If necessary, we will funnel them deeper and deeper into the hills, picking them off as they come. We’ve fought this way before. And we have you now. A prince who fought in the Killings without killing, and the girl with the powers of the Ancient Ones.”

  Perhaps he caught the tone of the silence that followed, because he stared at them.

  “I’ve said something wrong, haven’t I?”

  Thanos did his best to explain. “Not wrong, Iakos. It’s just… we think that Ceres doesn’t have her powers anymore. We’ll still fight, but we can’t promise the powers of the Ancient Ones.”

  Iakos’s face fell a little at that. “But there must be a way,” he said. He snapped his fingers. “Of course. Zaxos. Come with me, both of you.”

  He led the way across the hills in the direction of a site where men were quarrying stone for defenses. They were sweating in the sun, working despite the obvious risk of falling rock.

  “Stay here,” Iakos said. “I will see to things.”

  He walked away, and probably for the first moment since they’d gotten to the island, Thanos found himself truly alone with Ceres. In every other moment, it seemed that her father or her brother had been there, or Jeva had been hanging around trying to keep Thanos safe, or Iakos had been there, wanting to discuss the details of defending the island.

  Whatever the reason, this was the first moment when it had really been just him and Ceres. Thanos had been looking for the right moment to say what he’d been thinking since they left Delos. Since before then.

  Thanos wished that this moment could last. In fact, he wished that it could last forever. He wanted to spend the rest of his life with Ceres. That urge hit him so suddenly and so hard that it could have been a hammer.

  He knew then that he had to act. He’d been waiting too long already. He’d been thinking about this since he left for Delos. Now, there was an invasion coming, a battle that might see them both dead. This was the moment. No more wasting time, no more letting the world come between them. If they were going to die here, let it be as husband and wife.

  He took Ceres in his arms and kissed her, hard and sudden. He felt her kiss him back, and that was all the encouragement he needed for the next part of it. He stepped back and then went down his knee, taking her hand.

  “Marry me, Ceres,” he said.

  “Thanos?”

  He saw the shock on her face then. Thanos had assumed that because he’d been thinking about this since Delos, Ceres must have been thinking the same. Instead, she looked as stunned as if he’d just proposed charging into the teeth of a battle. Even so, he pressed ahead.

  “Marry me,” he said. “After everything we’ve been through, I don’t want us to be apart again. I love you, and I know that you love me. Let’s find a priest, fetch your family, and do this.”

  The seconds stretched out in the wake of it, and Ceres’s shock didn’t seem to diminish. She stood there looking out past him as if the answers lay there. Thanos couldn’t blame her. He was a little in shock himself at having asked, but now that he had, he’d never been more certain about anything in his life.

  “Ceres?” he said.

  When Ceres shook her head, it was like the world falling in around him.

  “No, Thanos. I’m sorry. I can’t.”

  Those words were enough to tear apart everything he’d thought he’d known. He’d been sure about how this would end up. He’d been sure that now that everything was settled with Stephania, now that the Empire that had held them back was gone, they would finally be free to do the thing that they’d always wanted to do.

  If Ceres was saying no now, that could only mean one thing: that she was never going to say yes.

  “Thanos,” Ceres said, reaching out for him.

  Thanos couldn’t risk listening to any more of it, because what he’d already heard had torn something out of his chest. He stepped back from Ceres, because right then it felt like the only way to protect the hurt that he felt.

  He picked a direction at random and started to walk.

  ***

  Ceres stood reeling as Thanos walked away, still not quite certain what had just happened, or why it had happened, or what might happen next. The sheer uncertainty of it seemed to hold her there even though a part of her suspected that she ought to be going after Thanos to talk this through.

  The truth was that she had no idea what she would say, even if she did.

  She wished she had the words. Ceres knew there were some people out there for whom the right words seemed to come easily. Even Ceres had managed to find the right things to say when it came to persuading people to join the war against the Empire, but with Thanos, things were different.

  Maybe they were different because they mattered more. It seemed stupid, that her own feelings could matter more than the loss of a whole Empire, but right then it felt that way to Ceres.

  She’d never expected a proposal to come from nowhere like that. Things between her and Thanos were… well, that was the problem, wasn’t it? How were things between them? This had been the first moment they’d been alone together since before the collapse of the Empire. They’d had no time to really talk, or get to know how events had changed each other, or anything else.

  She hadn’t even really had a chance to process any of the things that had happened to her back in Delos. Day after day of abuse of the worst kinds. The loss of powers that had become a part of who she was. Ceres felt as though a part of her was still trapped there.

  As for Thanos, what had he been through in Felldust? She knew that Lucious was dead, and while that was a cause for celebration from where Ceres was standing, she guessed that it would be a lot more complex for Thanos. He’d lost a brother, however evil he was.

  Then there was Stephania.

  Thanos had left her behind, to whatever horrors Felldust had waiting for her. Ceres thought that was probably the least Stephania deserved after all she’d done, but for Thanos to act as though everything was good?

  Ceres knew he had to be hurting more than that, and diving into marrying her wasn’t the way to solve any of it. It was him trying to pretend that none of it had happened, when the past couldn’t be so easily swept away. Was she supposed to simply forget that Thanos had come back for Stephania, even if he’d chosen Ceres in the end?

  Maybe it wasn’t just Thanos who still had things to deal with when it came to the two of them.

  “There’s no time,” Ceres told herself, balling her hands into fists.

  There never seemed to be any time in which to sort out the things that sat between them. Now, it was the need to protect Haylon, and try to find some space in which it might be possible to stop Felldust’s advance.

  Even now, when she should be trying to work out things between her and Thanos, Ceres found herself looking over to where the men were quarrying their stone, and Iakos was busy talking to one of the ones there who seemed to be supervising the others. Perhaps that was just because she wanted the distraction. If she didn’t have to think about what had just happened between her and Thanos, it couldn’t hurt her.

  Although, of course, it could. Somehow, they always seemed to end up finding a way to hurt one another.

  “Ceres,” Iako
s called, leading the man over, “I want you to meet Zaxos. There are those who call him the wisest man on Haylon.”

  “It wouldn’t be hard,” the older man beside him grumbled. “Half of those idiots were just trying to hack out rock without using wedges. A man should use his brain, not just his muscles.”

  This man was old and wiry, stripped to the waist in the fashion of some of the younger workers, his body looking as though he might once have been as heavily muscled as any warrior. Now, his long gray hair was thinning, and he seemed a shadow of the man he must once have been. Except for his eyes. Those sparkled with intelligence, and Ceres knew in that look that she shouldn’t underestimate him.

  “Iakos tells me that you have a problem,” Zaxos said. “Although he wouldn’t explain to me what it was.”

  It took Ceres a moment to remember that they weren’t talking about what had just happened with Thanos. Right then, the state of her too easily fractured relationship with him seemed like the only problem that was worth solving. She would have gone after him, but he was already out of sight, lost in the twists of Haylon’s hills.

  “I doubt you can help me,” Ceres said. “My mother tried, but even her powers could only help temporarily.”

  “Your mother is one of the Ancient Ones?” Zaxos asked.

  Ceres nodded. The truth was, right now, she wanted to finish this conversation so that she could go after Thanos. It might take time to find him, but she needed to do it. She shouldn’t have reacted without thought as she did. She should at least try to talk things through with him.

  She didn’t think it would result in a different decision right then, but they could still try, couldn’t they? They could try to make things better. They could try to get past all the things that had left echoes bouncing between them, even if the things themselves were gone. Together, they could try to find a way forward.

  “And what, exactly, is the problem?” Zaxos asked.

  “I was poisoned,” Ceres said. “I was given a potion designed to take away all the powers of my Ancient One blood. As I said, though, even my mother—”

  “Your mother is one of the Ancient Ones,” Zaxos pointed out. “She could not help because the poison is designed to stop the things an Ancient One might do to help themselves. Or another of their kind.”

  The way he said it was enough to make Ceres stop and listen. Zaxos sounded as though he knew more about this than she’d thought. Certainly more than Ceres knew herself.

  “You know about this poison?” Ceres asked.

  “I’ve heard of it,” Zaxos said. “They say that in the wars against the Ancient Ones, some of those who hunted them used such things.”

  If that was all he knew, it wouldn’t help. Ceres had come to terms with what she was now. Stephania had taught her that she wasn’t special anymore. She’d done it in ways that made Ceres’s skin still crawl to think about them.

  “Is there anything that can be done about it?” Ceres asked anyway. She wanted to hear Zaxos’s apology quickly, so that it would be over and done with, and the hope that briefly dared to raise its head would sink back down inside her.

  To her surprise, Zaxos nodded. “There might be something. Come with me, and we will talk. I will tell you what you can do, and then you can decide if it is a thing you are willing to risk.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Stephania experienced the world in brief moments snatched from between dreams. It became a thing of fragments to her, making no more sense than the sleeping world did, too brief to count as something real. She was in a room somewhere, but she could never stay awake long enough to get the details. Every time she flickered back to waking, the old woman was there.

  “Drink,” she said, pushing water to Stephania’s lips.

  Stephania could taste the herbs there: valerian and opium, maybe more. She still drank, not even trying to fight as the blackness claimed her.

  She was in a maze. She knew that even before the first turnings appeared. There were tall hedges on either side, towering over Stephania so that she couldn’t see beyond. She started taking turnings. Stephania knew the trick to mazes and kept a hand on one wall, reasoning that she would find her way through it eventually.

  Somehow, though, she knew that wouldn’t be enough. There wasn’t enough time, because the thing she was searching for would be gone by then. Stephania paused, frowning, in her dream. She hadn’t realized until then that she was searching for something, but now it seemed obvious. There was something she needed, something so vital it counted more than life. She had to get to it.

  Stephania started to run through the turnings as she searched. There was something behind her now, and that only spurred her on to move faster. She had to get to what she was hunting for before whatever was behind her caught up.

  She stepped into an open space at the heart of the maze, and Stephania knew it was too late. A figure stood there, but it wasn’t the one she’d been hoping for. Irrien was there, and he seemed to tower over her as he walked forward.

  “Please,” she begged. “Not again, please. I’ll do anything you want. I won’t speak this time. I’ll be the best slave you’ve ever—”

  Somehow, Irrien’s hands were claws now, and they lashed out, ripping across her belly in a way that made Stephania scream…

  “Shh!” the old woman snapped as Stephania came back to consciousness. “I’m stitching as neatly as I can, but none of that will help if you move too much.”

  Stephania stared up at her. She was lying on a hard surface, looking up at the ceiling of a wooden hut. It wasn’t a bed, so that meant either the floor or a table. Probably a table, judging by the way the old woman was leaning over her to work.

  She did something, and Stephania screamed again, twisting to get away. That just made things worse.

  “Now you’ve ripped a stitch,” the old healer said. “Keep still, girl!”

  “I am… a princess of the Empire!” Stephania snapped back. It was a stupid thing to say. She shouldn’t be putting herself in someone else’s hands like that.

  “Right now, you’re a patient who won’t hold where she should,” the healer replied. She put water to Stephania’s lips again. “I’d hoped to do this with you asleep. Here, drink again. It will be better.”

  Stephania didn’t want to. She hated the idea of being that weak, or that helpless. She started to shake her head, but the old woman, curse her, clamped Stephania’s nose shut until she had to swallow, just to be able to breathe. Stephania cursed her with every vile word she could think of while she waited for the darkness to drag her back down. Just so long as it wasn’t Irrien again.

  Anything but that…

  Stephania realized her mistake almost as soon as she saw where her dreams had taken her. Home, to the house where she’d grown up, its gardens beautiful, its marble statues carved by the greatest sculptors of the Empire. Just the sight of it made her tense in fear.

  She was walking out into the garden, and Stephania knew how this day had gone. She wanted to turn around and walk away, but she found her feet dragging her forward. The table was set out in the garden, just the way it had been that day. The figure who sat at the head of the table brought a familiar shiver of terror to Stephania.

  Her father. The man who had taught her more about how to hide her true feelings than anyone else. The one who had been the first to show her how brutal the world could be if you were anything less than perfect. He’d been a man known to whip his slaves to death if they displeased him, and if he’d been kind to his daughter in public, inside the walls of their home, he’d been nothing short of a tyrant.

  He’d been the first man Stephania had killed. Here, like this.

  “Come here, Stephania,” he commanded. “Come and bring me wine.”

  Stephania moved forward, and now she was holding the flagon of wine she’d been carrying that day, laced with the poison she’d read about, that would bring a man the most agonizing of deaths.

  There were other people sitting arou
nd the table now, and they were people she’d poisoned as well. There were men and women there, their complexions gray with death, or mottled with the effects of the substances she’d used. Still, she seemed to be coming forward, offering up the wine the way she had the first time.

  They drank it. They drank it and laughed while they did it. It had no effect, because they were already dead, and Stephania couldn’t seem to do anything but stare at them.

  They grabbed her then, lifting her onto the table, holding her in place as easily as if she’d been a child.

  “We have been remiss,” her father said. “We must share what you’ve so graciously given us, Stephania.”

  She struggled to get free while they poured the wine down her throat. Wine that burned inside her, feeling as though it was rotting away her insides. She tried to bite the hand that was forcing the liquid into her, but it made no difference. She struggled to sit up…

  …and she was looking at the old woman, who was standing over her with a spoon.

  “Easy,” she said. “You’re having a bad dream, that’s all.”

  “A bad dream?” Stephania asked. Right then, it felt as though her whole life was a bad dream.

  “You talk in your sleep,” the old woman said. She kept feeding Stephania, and for a moment Stephania resisted, still thinking of poison. “No, don’t fight me. You need to eat if you’re going to recover.”

  Stephania knew it was true, but even so, she resented being told to do it. The memories of the dream were too fresh. Fresh enough that she could still taste the poison within the food, caught as an aftertaste of her imagination.

  Or maybe not. Stephania knew sedatives when she tasted them.

  “Don’t fight,” the healer said. “You need to sleep so that you can heal, and you can’t do that if you’re in pain. I promise you that you’re safe.” She smiled in a way that was probably meant to be reassuring. “Well, from everything except your dreams.”