Ascended (War of the Covens 3)

For a number of days, the trail had been cold, until one evening Galen’s eldest daughter came to Kirios’s room with Kleisthenes’s journal. Parthenia had claimed she knew who had murdered her mother and urged Kirios to read the pages.

Eneas.

He had been the one carrying on the affair with Kleisthenes … it was fair to assume he’d been the one to silence her. Kirios made Parthenia promise not to tell anyone until he found Eneas and discovered the truth for himself. This very night, Kirios set out to catch up with him where he was questioning townspeople. But Kirios was dragged back to the house by a messenger with urgent news.

Parthenia.

Hades, Eneas! Kirios crashed into the bedchamber with hopes of finding the journal pieces. He stopped abruptly, instantly sensing his room had been disturbed. That’s when he felt the cold press of the blade to his throat and the heat of the lykan at his back.

“Brother,” he pleaded in Kirios’s ear, “you have to understand.”

“Understand what?” Kirios bit out, trembling with rage and desolation. “That you would kill me to cover your crime?”

“I made a mistake, brother. She wasn’t even worth it. I can’t lose Galen. He’s like my father, he is all I have ever known.”

“And yet you took what was most precious to him.”

Eneas growled, spittle flecking the side of Kirios’s face. “She seduced me! It wasn’t my fault.”

“Ye gods, what has become of you, Eneas, that you would blame a hapless human for your own folly?”

“Hers as well.”

“Yes. But she is gone and with her, an innocent child by your hand.”

Eneas held still, seeming to have stopped breathing altogether. And then … “This can only end with your death, brother. I am truly sorry.”

Before the blade could pierce his skin, Kirios whirled as if a tornado, took the blade from Eneas’s hand, and plunged it into his black heart.

Blood soaked Kirios’s hands and tears his face.

Seven nights later

His prison was cold and solitary. Like his heart, he snorted. Bitterness threatened to overwhelm Kirios, but he held true. This was not his fault. Who knew Galen was a poisoned dagger, biding its time before plunging its blade into the hearts of those he befriended? The beginning of a war was brewing, and it had only been a few days.

After Kirios sought out Galen with evidence of Eneas’s treachery, Galen had gone mad, almost as if he’d been taken over by the gods themselves. What had once been a magik of, yes, mercurial moods, was now a magik of molten violence who held a deep hostility toward lykans and vampyres. He threw Kirios in prison (an act of mercy, ha!) and was already enlisting faeries into espionage, searching for powerful communities of vampyres and lykans that he and his remaining children could destroy.

“Kirios.”

He blinked in surprise to see Agamemnon towering over his naked form. “Agamemnon?W-w-what are you doing here?”

The magik’s mouth twisted. “Freeing you.”

“Why? Galen?”

He shook his head. “He doesn’t know I am here. I’m getting you out and then I’m leaving. I want no part in this madman’s war.” At that he reached out and touched Kirios, his magik flowing over him until he was clothed. Kirios barely had time to nod his thanks before the magik grabbed hold of his hand and the world whirled past them with sickening speed. The sound of crashing water met his ears, the invigorating scent of salty ocean cleansing his dirt-filled nose and waking his numb senses. He blinked. They stood on the dark shore, the sea a black mass before them.

“This is where I leave you, friend.” Agamemnon handed him a clay bowl. The liquid was coagulated, but Kirios almost wept with relief.

Blood.

“I don’t know how to thank you, my dear friend.”

“Just stay alive and out of Galen’s path.”

And then he was gone.

Brundisium, 253 AD

It had been more than five hundred years, and yet there was a yesteryear familiarity in being held captive by the Galen family. Galen himself was gone now; his children and grandchildren were Kirios’s captors. “Stupidity,” he murmured weakly under his breath, his head lying against the jutting cold stone of his cell, his neck aching with the awkward angle.

He didn’t move, though. He couldn’t. He was starving and had been for … Gaia, how long had he been here? The sound of the shore off Tyras still rang clear in his memory, as if it had only been yesterday he had fled from Galen. Back to a life of a nomad for him. And every time Kirios had heard of Galen’s movement growing closer to his location, off he would flee once more.

After centuries of travel, Kirios found a certain peace in Athens for a time, mesmerizing his way back into citizenship. No one knew or remembered his family or their connection to Ephialtes’s murder. Indeed, it was a legend now. A mystery.