Ruler, Rival, Exile

Anger flared in her at that. Stephania’s pride told her that she would find a way to make Irrien pay for that blow, that she would have revenge on him.

“Ah, there’s the real Stephania,” Irrien said. “Do you think I’m fooled by your pretense that you’re a humble slave? Do you think I’m stupid enough to believe you can be broken with one beating?”

Fear flashed again in Stephania. She could still remember the whistle of the whip as Irrien had struck her with it. Her back still burned with the memory of the blows. There had been a time when she had enjoyed punishing those servants who deserved it. Now, the thought just brought back the pain.

Even so, she would use the pain if she had to.

“No, but I’m sure you plan more,” Stephania said. She didn’t even try for innocence this time. “You’re going to enjoy trying to break me as much as I’m going to enjoy playing with you while you do it. Isn’t that half the fun?”

Irrien hit her again. Stephania let him see her defiance then. It was obviously what he wanted. She would do whatever she had to in order to bind Irrien to her. Once she’d done it, it wouldn’t matter what she’d suffered to get there.

“You think that you are special, don’t you?” Irrien said. “You are just a slave.”

“A slave you keep chained to your throne,” Stephania pointed out in her most sultry voice. “A slave you obviously plan to have in your bed. A slave who could be so much more. A partner. I know Delos like no one else. Why not just admit it?”

Irrien stood then.

“You’re right. I have made a mistake.”

He reached down, taking her chains and unlocking them from the throne. Stephania had a moment in which to feel a sense of triumph as he lifted her. Even if he was cruel to her now, even if he just dragged her to his chambers and threw her down there to claim as his own, she was making progress.

That wasn’t where he threw her, though. He cast Stephania down on the cold marble, and she felt the hardness of it under her knees as she skidded to a halt in front of one of the figures there.

The shock of that hit her more than the pain. How could Irrien do that? Hadn’t she been everything he could want? Stephania looked up to see a man in dark robes looking at her with obvious contempt.

“I made the mistake of thinking you were worth my time,” Irrien said. “You want a sacrifice, priest? Take her. Cut the babe from her and offer it up to your gods in my name. I’ll not have some mewling brat alive with a claim to this throne. When you’re done, throw what’s left of her for whatever scavengers will eat her.”

Stephania stared up at the priest, then looked over at Irrien, barely able to form the words. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t. She wouldn’t let it.

“Please,” she said. “This is foolish. I can do so much more for you than this!”

They didn’t seem to care though. Panic flashed through her, along with the shocked thought that this was actually happening. They were actually going to do this.

No. No, they couldn’t!

She screamed as the priest grabbed her arms. Another caught her legs, and they carried her, still struggling, between them. Irrien and the others followed in their wake, but right then, Stephania didn’t care about them. She only cared about one thing:

They were going to kill her baby.

CHAPTER TWO

Ceres still couldn’t believe that they’d escaped. She lay on the deck of the small boat she’d stolen, and it was impossible to think that she was actually there, rather than back in some fighting pit beneath the castle, waiting to die.

Not that they were safe yet. The flight of an arrow overhead made that much clear.

Ceres looked up over the boat’s railing, trying to work out if there was anything she could do. Archers fired from the shore, most of their shafts striking the water around the boat, a few thudding into the wood to tremble there as they spent their energy.

“We need to move faster,” Thanos said beside her. He rushed to one of the sails. “Help me get this up.”

“Not… yet,” a voice croaked from the other side of the deck.

Akila lay there, and to Ceres’s eyes he looked terrible. The First Stone’s sword had been sticking through him just minutes before, and now that Ceres had pulled it out, he was obviously losing blood. Even so, he managed to raise his head, looking at her with an urgency that was hard to ignore.

“Not yet,” he repeated. “The ships around the harbor have our wind, and a sail will just make us a target. Use the oars.”

Ceres nodded, pulling Thanos over to where the combatlords they’d rescued were rowing. It was hard to find space to fit in beside the heavily muscled men, but she squeezed into place and lent her little remaining strength to their efforts.

They pulled into the shadow of a moored galley and the arrows stopped.

“We need to be clever now,” Ceres said. “They can’t kill us if they can’t find us.”

She let go of her oar and the others did likewise for a moment or two, letting their boat drift in the wash of the bigger boat, impossible to see from the shore.

It gave her a moment to go over to Akila. Ceres had only known him briefly, but she could still feel guilt for what had happened to him. He’d been fighting for her cause when he’d suffered the wound that even now seemed like a gaping mouth in his side.

Sartes and Leyana knelt beside him, obviously trying to staunch the bleeding. Ceres found herself surprised by just how good a job they were doing of it. She guessed that the war had forced people to learn all kinds of skills that they otherwise might not have.

“Will he make it?” Ceres asked her brother.

Sartes looked up at her. There was blood on his hands. Beside him, Leyana looked pale with effort.

“I don’t know,” Sartes said. “I’ve seen enough sword wounds before, and I think this one missed the important organs, but I’m just basing that on the fact that he isn’t dead yet.”

“You’re doing fine,” Leyana said, reaching out to touch Sartes’s hand. “But there’s only so much anyone can do on a boat, and we need a real healer.”

Ceres was happy that she was there. From the little she’d seen of the girl so far, Leyana and her brother seemed to be a good fit for one another. They certainly seemed to be doing a good job of keeping Akila alive between them.

“We’ll get you to a healer,” Ceres promised, although she wasn’t sure how they could keep that promise right then. “Somehow.”

Thanos was at the bow of the boat now. Ceres went to him, hoping that he had more of an idea than she did of how to get out of there. The harbor was full of boats right then, the invasion fleet standing like some floating city alongside the real one.

“It was worse than this in Felldust,” Thanos said. “This is the main fleet, but there are more boats still waiting to come.”

“Waiting to pick apart the Empire,” Ceres guessed.

She wasn’t sure what she felt about that. She’d been working to bring down the Empire, but this… this just meant more people suffering. Ordinary people and nobles alike would find themselves enslaved at the hands of the invaders, if they weren’t killed outright. By now, they would probably have found Stephania too. Ceres should probably have felt some kind of satisfaction at that, but it was hard to feel much other than the relief that she was finally out of their lives.

“Do you regret leaving Stephania behind?” Ceres asked Thanos.

He reached out to put an arm around her. “I regret that it came to that,” he said. “But after everything she did… no, I don’t regret it. She deserved it and more.”

He sounded as though he meant it, but Ceres knew how complicated things could be when it came to Stephania. Still, she was gone now, probably dead. They were free. Or they would be, if they could make it out of this harbor alive.

Across the deck, she saw her father nod, pointing.

“There, see those ships? They look as though they’re leaving.”

Sure enough, there were galleys and cogs leaving the harbor, clustered together in a group as though afraid that someone would take everything they had if they didn’t. Given what Felldust was like, someone probably would.