Page 56 of Flamesworn
An eye opened on their shoulder. They saw the soldiers following Kataida and Damian, one leveling a crossbow, her shot clear. Something pushed out against the skin of their side, and another pair of limbs emerged, long and lanky, with too many joints in their fingers and red glass coating their skin. They caught the arrow as it flew toward Kataida’s neck and crushed it in their fist.
Menelaus was already on his way to the lift.. Light spilled over Ares’ blood-soaked form, and they staggered as soldiers blocked Kataida and Damian from both sides of the bridge. Something burst from their back, their neck, their shoulders, crackling and shrieking like metal sliding together—and Ares saw the flicker of wings made of the same red glass, feathers sharp as knives. Eyes blinked to life on the back of their hands, and the two in their face merged to become one enormous eye shaped like a diamond, red-lidded and white as their hair. Their mouth split their face in half, tearing the skin, which re-formed as they laughed with the sound of cannon fire.
“Gods,” Damian breathed. Kataida was looking up at them, and Ares realized that they’d grown, rising almost three times her height. The bridge buckled when they took a step toward her.
“You’re beautiful,” she said, and Ares’ smile broadened further still. “Help us down?”
Ares turned to look at Damian, who hesitated before reaching out a hand. Ares gathered them both in their arms as the bridge groaned and creaked under their weight, and just as the wood started to snap, their glass wings beat the air. Arrows broke against their feathers as they descended, too fast, not quite used to the novelty of flying, and the three of them crashed to the sand with a thump that shook the earth.
Damian cursed darkly as he pushed himself to his feet, but Kataida was still holding onto Ares. She used two of their arms to pull herself up, her eyes blazing despite the dust that cakedher skin and the blood running from a cut on her shoulder. “Do you see Menelaus?”
Ares let their power fall free over the sand, and shivered with pleasure under the shadow of the stone pillars. They could sense every person in the city, every heart that ached with resentment or outrage, the soldiers who raged at the loss of their friends and lovers, the civilians who feared the sight of troops on the horizon. Menelaus’ spirit was easy to find, and they pointed, their nails long and hooked like claws.
Kataida nodded and ran, Damian at her heels, as Ares turned to the nearest pillar and sank their hands into the stone.
“The children you killed died much like this,” they said, and remembered the babies slaughtered in a battle in the hills centuries before the empire fell, the children who starved in besieged castles, the poor farmers who’d hung themselves as soldiers trampled their fields. The rock split, and so did the pillar behind it, crashing to the earth with the force of a rockslide. Souls flickered out in Ares’ mind as buildings collapsed and bridges snapped free of their supports, and more flared with fear, with hatred, with the sickening twist in the stomach that Ares felt when they thought of Kataida in pain.
They looked down at the rubble at their feet, and turned to look at the soldiers following Kataida and Damian. They stopped a few hundred yards from Ares, the air thick with terror, and Ares regarded them as they trembled and shrank like grass in the wind.
This wasn’t War. This was something else.
Ares licked the dust off their palm and turned away, walking sedately after Kataida.
Menelaus was heading for the stables when Kataida and Damian found him, but he wasn’t running from them anymore. Ares could taste Menelaus’ fear as he looked up into their rictusgrin, and when their wings spread out, they cast a long shadow that slid over Menelaus’ face.
He reached for his sword, but Damian stepped forward, slicing off his arm at the shoulder with the finesse of a butcher. He screamed, staggering to his knees, and Kataida grabbed his hair in a tight fist.
“No,” Damian said, as she drew back her sword. “Let me.”
A burst of power sank into Ares, strong as the force that rose from the blood of a battlefield, as Kataida bared Menelaus’ neck. “Do it, then.”
“No.” Menelaus’ voice was a rasp. “Damian. Damian, no?—”
“Say it again,” Damian said. Menelaus stared at him, blood pooling over the sand, eyes unfocused. “Say it. Say my name.”
“Damian.” Menelaus jerked in Kataida’s grip. “Please. You know what we had to do for this, what we sacrificed.”
“Akti,” Damian said. His grip on his sword hilt was so tight, his knuckles went pale. “DamianAkti.You were a fool to think I could be anything else.”
He sank his sword into Menelaus’ neck, and as the blade cut through his throat and spilled blood over the steel, Ares knew at last what they had become.
Once, they’d been War. They’d danced in the arrow storms and laughed as their chosen mortals threw themselves into the thick of battle, mouths frothing with battle fever. But that was before Atreus.
Before Kataida.
War could only love Death. Ares lovedher,Kataida, fierce and beautiful and wicked, so loyal that she’d stain her hands with blood a thousand times over to save a man who was practically a stranger. And because Kataida loved her people—had loved Ares—Ares had changed. They could feel their true power in the sick relief running through Damian, the cold rage that made Kataida step back from Menelaus’ dying body with asneer of disgust. War didn’t care, but Vengeance knew how to love, and Ares, the god of vengeance, loved Kataida so fiercely that they might burst with it.
The ground shook as they dropped to their knees. No soldiers approached them. The city was shrouded in dust from the falling pillars, and it coated Ares’ glassy wings as they gazed down at Kataida.
“This is who I am, beloved,” they said, “the shape I made for myself. I am Vengeance, and I am yours if you want me.”
Kataida touched their knee, and they bent at the waist, long hair falling over the blood-red glass that coated their skin. Kataida held their face in both hands, looking up into their enormous, white eye.
“I do,” she said. Power rippled in the air between them—the covenant of a companion bond at last, wrapping around them both. “I want you.”
“It would be always,” Ares said. Their teeth were sharp as steel, shards of metal clacking against each other. “You’d have me until we both cross the river one day.”
Kataida nodded. “I know.”
