Victor, Vanquished, Son

  Her family had been little better. Claudius had been a heroic figure in his youth, but he’d been foolish enough to believe that he was naturally superior to everyone else. The result had been a kind of arrogant hedonism, taking whatever gave him the most pleasure.

  Her son… well, Lucious had been what Athena and her husband had made him, the kind of dark reflection that told her exactly who she was. With Lucious, there had been none of his father’s bravery, just a kind of cunning calculated to take from the world and keep taking until there was nothing left.

  “Well,” Athena said. “There’s nothing left now.”

  The destruction was down to the invasions, but there was a time when those would have seemed unthinkable. The Empire had seemed so impregnable when Athena had married Claudius, but since then, they’d pulled it down to the point where even the thugs of Felldust felt as though they could invade. They’d worn away the strength and the happiness of their kingdom, and they’d lost it.

  What would people remember now? If they thought of her at all, it would be as the woman who helped to destroy what had been. It would be as a villainous memory, a lesson to be learned from the past. Athena had hoped to make a dynasty to stretch into the future, but now…

  …now there was only dust.

  Dust where her husband had been, dust where her son had been. Her kingdom was gone, her nobles scattered to the winds. Athena had thought of herself as a broken thing when she’d been out on the city’s streets, but it was only now that she had her revenge that tears for herself came, blurring her view of the city.

  When she’d had the thought of rising up, she’d had something. She’d built something. More than that, the work of it had managed to keep her from thinking too hard about everything that she’d lost. She’d had to keep busy, keep moving, and push all her pain down into some deep recess of herself where it couldn’t hope to touch her.

  Now that pain came roaring back, seeming to overwhelm everything else. It filled the spaces that had been left by all the things Athena had lost, and that didn’t seem like an equal trade at all.

  She supposed that there were those who might think that she could rebuild. She could go to some remote part of the country and find a home, or prevail upon some long-lost follower for aid, although that was probably asking too much of the kind of people who had supported the Empire. Without the prospect of a rise back to power, Athena doubted that any of them would so much as look her way.

  The wind caught at her dress as she stood there on the edge of the balcony, reminding her of where she was, and what she was doing.

  No, there was no point in trying to build another life. At best, she would be some tolerated old woman, given a place on the edge of a village or a noble’s house out of a misplaced sense of pity. At worst, she would return to a life on the street, without even the need for revenge to keep her warm.

  Athena didn’t want that. She didn’t want any of it without her empire, without her husband, without her life. She stood there, taking one last, lingering look at the city that had taken up so much of her time trying to control it. From here, there weren’t any more distinctions between the noble areas and the poor, because everything was equally ruined.

  She thought about Claudius, as he’d been as a young man. She thought of herself on her wedding day, happy, just for an hour or two, to be married to that heroic man. She thought of the good moments of their lives, so many in the first years, then fewer and further between. She tried to think of one good thing she’d done with her life, and the saddest part of all was that she couldn’t think of a single one. Maybe things would be better on the other side. Maybe she would even see Claudius again. Claudius as he had been, not as he was at the end.

  Athena took a breath, and stepped off into space.

  CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

  Ceres knelt by Thanos and watched him dying through a haze of tears.

  “Where is that healer?” she shouted, but there was no answer. The truth was that if there had been a healer anywhere nearby, they would have been there by now. They would have been there in time to save Telum. They would certainly have been rushing to save the life of the man who had saved so many others.

  The man she loved.

  “Hold on, Thanos,” Ceres begged, as Thanos’s eyes started to flutter closed. “Please hold on. I don’t want to lose you.”

  “Will you marry me?” Thanos murmured, his eyes still half closed. “…said you talk about marrying when this was over.”

  “Yes,” Ceres said, pressing her hands to the wound in his chest, trying to hold back the flow of blood. “Yes, I’ll marry you. But you have to be alive to get married. You have to live, Thanos.”

  “Not… sure… I get a choice…” Thanos said.

  Ceres tried to use her powers then. They were things for killing, but she’d healed herself before, hadn’t she? She could summon storms, turn flesh to stone… what was one wound compared to that? Yet she’d seen the truth of it in that first rush of power. Some things were simply harder than others, and this… there were layers and layers of damage, from a blade that had magic running through it.

  She couldn’t simply reach out and wish his wound away as if it was nothing.

  Even so, Ceres tried. She tried to knit together the layers of flesh, simply to hold in the blood. She tried to undo what Telum had done, working piece by piece, trying to make Thanos whole again. She needed him alive. She needed to be able to do this.

  Somewhere in the middle of her efforts, he went far too still, and Ceres screamed.

  She screamed with enough force that power went with it. She screamed with enough force that a wall nearby rattled and fell. She screamed and lightning flashed down, striking the ground around her so that men had to run for safety. None of it made a difference. None of it changed the moment when she felt Thanos’s life fleeing his body.

  “What’s the point of this?” Ceres called out to the sky. “What’s the point of any of it if it can’t save one person?”

  Why did her powers find killing so easy and healing so hard? She had all the power of an Ancient One now, and even if it was untamed, it should have been enough to help.

  Then Ceres remembered what Telum had said before he died. That she had the power to change the world within her. Well, right then, there was only one thing about the world she wanted to change.

  “Is it possible?” Ceres yelled, not caring if she looked mad and grief-stricken. She could see the men around her, all wondering if they should go to her, none of them daring to actually do it when power still crackled around her. “Mother! I know you can hear me! Answer me!”

  Her mother’s voice came to her like a whisper on the wind, seeming to carry from a long way away.

  There are things that can’t be done, Ceres. Do you think any of us would be gone from the world if it were possible?

  Ceres wasn’t about to accept that. She wasn’t about to believe it. Some things couldn’t be allowed to stand in the world. She’d given so much already. She’d given her pain, she’d fought against whole armies. She couldn’t give up Thanos too.

  “I’ve healed before,” she said.

  But you haven’t fought against fate. If someone is meant to die… there is little even we can do.

  “Not someone, Thanos!” Ceres snapped back. She could feel the gentle whisper of her mother’s presence around her. It was probably meant to be comforting, but right then it was simply a reminder of all she couldn’t do. “And if I have to, I’ll change fate!”

  Such things are possible.

  Her mother didn’t sound as though she agreed with it though.

  The strongest of us could change fate. We did it subtly. But to undo something that is done… it wouldn’t just use power, it would spend it. You would never be the same. You would be…human again.

  Powerless.

  You would have to give up everything for him, all of your powers.

  “I don’t care!” Ceres yelled. How could her mother think that m
ade a difference, when Thanos lay so cold? Right then, there was only one thing she cared about, and it was seeing him alive again.

  Consider what you are doing. Consider all the good you can do in the world. You have the power in you to open a way back for the Ancient Ones, her mother sent, to start a new kingdom, or—

  “There’s only one thing I want to do, Mother,” Ceres called. It must have sounded mad, her calling to the wind like this. “Don’t you understand? Don’t you know what it’s like to love someone?”

  She felt a wave of something then. A wave of love like nothing she’d felt before. She knew in that moment that her mother did understand.

  Do it, her mother sent. There will be those who are angry, after all their planning, but this… I will not deny you this, my daughter. Do it.

  A heartbeat later, and Ceres knew what it was she had to do. It was breathtaking in its simplicity, but also in the power it would take. Enough power to change a world.

  Ceres bent over Thanos and kissed his cooling lips. She threw power into him, filling him the way water might have filled a ewer. She summoned every dreg of the energy that had been given to her, holding nothing back, not daring to. She could feel herself emptying out as it flowed into Thanos, turning her into something less, something human. When there was nothing left inside her but the beating of her own heart, Ceres pulled back, kneeling and watching.

  Nothing happened.

  Thanos lay there, with that stillness that only the dead had. The thunderclouds summoned by her anger still hung there, and now they disgorged their burden of rain, soaking Ceres to the skin as she continued to kneel, not knowing what was rain and what was tears. The water washed over Thanos, and it cleaned away the blood on him in a kind of cruel mockery, leaving clear flesh beneath.

  Clear flesh. Not wounded flesh. Not the ruin that had been there before. Just clean, undamaged skin. Ceres dared to look up with hope.

  Thanos took a shuddering breath.

  Ceres clung to him then, calling out for help, and this time people came. They lifted them, helping them back to their feet. They helped them to stand, and it was Ceres, not Thanos, who stumbled. He’d come back from death, and she was the one who stumbled, simply because she was back to being human again.

  He caught her, and they clung to one another. Ceres understood in that moment what the couple in the golden bubble had felt, as though there was no one in the world except the two of them. Even surrounded by people, Ceres felt as though she and Thanos were the only ones there.

  “I love you,” Ceres said, holding him close.

  “I love you too,” Thanos replied. “You brought me back. I was dead, and you brought me back.”

  Ceres forced a smile. “Well, I couldn’t have you running off just as we were about to get married, could I?”

  “True,” Thanos said, and he kissed her then. It wasn’t everything that the last touch of their lips had been, but this was real, normal… human. It was everything that Ceres could have wanted.

  Around them, the last of the fighting seemed to have finished. The ships in the harbor were still. The last of Felldust’s warriors had either fled or surrendered. The islanders there had gone from fighting to looking after the wounded or moving away the dead.

  “Is it over?” Thanos asked.

  Ceres thought about everything that might follow. There was an empire to reconstruct, homes and farms and more to build. There were people to find and bring back from whatever fates the war had sent them to. Before all that, there was a wedding, to the one man Ceres would give anything for.

  “I think it’s just beginning.”

  EPILOGUE

  They didn’t call it the Empire. That was a relic of a past that had hurt too many people, and Thanos had done his best to stop it from happening. He hadn’t been able to stop them from proclaiming a kingdom, though, especially not when he’d heard who the people on Haylon had chosen as their queen.

  “Careful,” he said, as he helped men to lift the statue into place. “The last thing I want is to chip my wedding gift to Ceres.”

  “She’d probably turn you to stone if you did!” one of the men joked.

  Thanos laughed along with him, although the truth was that there would be no more petrified people, no more battles where Ceres killed a dozen men at once. These days, she was as human as Thanos was.

  A year after the battle on Haylon, and it was still more than enough for him.

  They lifted the statue into place above a fountain of white marble, and it caught Ceres at the moment of victory perfectly. Thanos was glad of that. There were so few statues of Ceres in the aftermath of the war against the Empire, because she wasn’t the kind of ruler to use coin for that when it could go to feed the poorest, or rebuild a few more houses.

  “Don’t you need to go and get ready for your wedding?” one of the men asked.

  Thanos nodded. He did, but he’d wanted to get this in place first. “I do. I hope I’ll see you all for the feast later.”

  He and Ceres had both been adamant about that. A wedding feast that only nobles could attend was no kind of celebration.

  He started to walk back through the city. A year on from the conflict, and Haylon still bore scars from the fighting, in areas where the stone was cracked or patched, or where houses had been cleared but still not quite rebuilt yet. Even so, more of it had been repaired. Every day, crews of former soldiers from Haylon and the Empire, the Northern Coast and beyond worked to repair what the war had destroyed.

  Not that the distinctions meant as much these days. Haylon had become the center of something new, and all of those there had a place in it. Thanos even saw a few of the Bone Folk, wandering the streets now without attracting the stares that they once had.

  They hadn’t bothered trying to repair Delos. A few crews went there to scavenge supplies, but the former capital city of the Empire was a dead place now, a kind of stone-built desert that even the poorest had left for the hope offered by Haylon.

  Thanos thought about his son as he walked. He wished that he could have shown Telum the place that the city had become. He wished that he’d had time to get to know his son as something other than a foe to be fought, a weapon in someone else’s hands.

  By the time he reached Haylon’s castle, Thanos knew he would have to be quick. Thankfully, there were servants and friends there waiting. Sir Justin of the Northern Coast was there, holding out a jacket of white velvet for him. Slowly, they managed to make Thanos look presentable enough for his wedding.

  “You couldn’t put the statue up yesterday?” Justin said. “Or leave it until tomorrow?”

  “There are always too many things to do,” Thanos replied. “You know that.”

  They all knew it. Building something new together took all their efforts, but Thanos knew that it would be worth it. Already, they were making the city into a green, beautiful place. There were even those who were talking about going across to the ruins of Delos to search out anything left there, or sending expeditions to Felldust to see who had emerged to rule there.

  There was a part of Thanos that wondered if it should be him doing it, but the truth was that he wanted more time for himself, for Ceres, and for all the things that they would do together. Excitement bubbled up in him at the thought that he was actually going to get to marry her at long last.

  The wedding was becoming a necessity. After so much conflict, the people needed something to draw them together, a reason to celebrate and hope after all the death, but it was more than that. They were doing this, at last, because they wanted to.

  That seemed like more than enough of an adventure for now.

  ***

  Sartes stood with Leyana and his father among the crowds for the wedding. They filled the space of Haylon’s main square, crowding in until it seemed that no more people could fit in, but everyone had recognized who they were, and had let them come to the front to see it.

  It seemed as though the rest of the world wanted to fit into that squ
are. There were people there from all the groups that had been a part of the fighting, although without the colors they wore to fight, it was getting harder to tell most of them apart by the day. They were becoming just people of the new kingdom now.

  It was hard to think that they’d come to this point after everything that had happened. They’d grown up so poor, and the rebellion had seemed like the only way out of the crushing violence of the Empire. When their brother had been killed, it had seemed like the end of the world. Now, he was one amongst so many dead in the course of the wars that had followed. There had been the rebellion, the overthrow of the Empire, the invasion by Felldust. Sartes had found himself a part of an army he’d never wanted to be involved in, and then a rebellion he had. He’d killed people, but he’d also saved lives, including Leyana’s.

  Through it all, the thing that had kept Sartes going was the certainty that his sister would know what to do. Finding out what she really was had been the strangest part of all of it, but also the part that had given them the most hope.

  There were ambassadors from more places than Sartes had heard of. There were people from the Southlands and some of the islands, while one of the Forest Folk stood, barklike skin marking him out. There was even a man in the dust robes of Felldust, although people gave him a wide berth. The crush of people was so great that it was hard to keep looking at the raised platform where the priest stood. When Thanos came up to join him, the roar of the crowd there was almost deafening.

  “I can’t wait to get back to the farm,” Sartes said, lacing his fingers through Leyana’s. “There are too many people.”

  “Shh,” she replied. “We’ll be back soon enough.”

  They’d found their own small space, nestled among the valleys of the outlying islands. Sartes’s father had gone with them, and now his forge shone day and night as he produced nails and brackets, farm equipment and parts for ships. There weren’t as many swords now, though, and Sartes found himself grateful for that. It said that there might be peace, for a while at least.