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I looked back at the Spartoi, finding them anxiously glancing skyward. With a sigh that I almost managed to hide, I gestured to Theras to let them go ahead and pray. For the Spartoi, who seemed to have vague memories of an ancient time, praying to the gods was their version of self-care. They weren’t just making offerings and expressing gratitude, they were making sense of the world. It didn’t hurt me to pause for a moment to let them do what they needed to do, even if in my experience, deities were selfish assholes.
I flopped down to the ground while they went about their worship, pulling out a few nuts from my satchel to stave off the worst of my hunger. One of the farms we’d passed must have once produced almonds, and while the trees had died off in the darkness, we’d found stores that had been miraculously untouched by scavengers. The owners hadn’t been so lucky and their bodies were well atrophied by the time we’d arrived; but we’d made sure to give them proper burial rites after clearing out the entirety of their food supplies.
The Spartoi were all distracted with their worship, which gave me a moment of silence.
I hated moments of silence.
When we were marching—toward what I hoped was the direction of Ephesus and Grace—or when we were sitting around a fire, teaching each other ways of communicating despite our language barrier, or when I was so exhausted that I fell down, asleep, on the hard ground of wherever we were staying, I didn’t have time to think.
But in moments like this, when I still had enough energy to carry on, and the Spartoi were distracted, and it was just me and myhead…
That was when the walls pressed in. When oxygen felt hard to come by, and grief tightened its grip around my throat.
“I wish we had more time. There are so many things I’d do differently. I knew this moment was coming, and I still let fear rule my actions. I should have made the most of the time we had…”
Bullet’s last words to me had haunted me from the moment I’d shaken off the bloodlust. Not just because I missed him—which I did, terribly—but because I felt the crush of time just as keenly now. For whatever reason, the gods had given me more time, even though Bullet was the one who deserved it. And what was I doing with it? Was I making the most of it? Each day felt painfully long and like it passed all too quickly at once.
If these were my last days on this earth, I hadn’t made the most of them. Far from Grace, separated from Riot and Dare, I just felt… lost.
“Strategós?” Theras hedged, gently breaking me out of my melancholy thoughts. I looked around, finding my handful of almonds gone and the Spartoi rising to their feet, dusting off their legs where they’d been kneeling in the dirt.
I nodded once, securing my bag back in place and heading to the front as the men fell into formation easily behind me and Theras.
Between my inability to speak or to understand anything but a few words of basic Ancient Greek, even after spending time on the road together, I struggled to ascertain exactly what the Spartoiwere. They had the same physical needs as mortals, but they weren’t human, daimon, or agathos. They had a sixth sense for battle, but didn’t appear to crave it to the point of self-destruction the way Keres daimons did. They could move as a group and understand formations with almost no direction, but didn’t seemlostwithout it, necessarily.
I had no idea what it meant for them if they were ever free, if the battles were over and they had nothing left to do. Would they sink back into the ground? Or would they have to find some kind of normalcy here in the upperworld?
We continued our march south, having moved back to the coastline after raiding farms further inland for food and shelter. Aside from the rising and setting sun giving us a sense of direction, the only thing I knew about where Grace was, was that it was near the coast. It wasn’t much to go on, but it was something.
The sky rumbled overhead, a shadow spreading over us as we headed south past a sandy beach with the broken remnants of lounge chairs and umbrellas marring the landscape.
What the fuck is that?I thought, pausing to squint up at the sky.
There was… something flying over us. I had no idea what that something was, but it was not of this world, that was for fucking sure.
“Typhoeus!” someone shouted from the ranks. What the fuck was a Typhoeus? It had enormous black bat wings and what appeared to be two giant snakes for legs, and was absolutely terrifying. And as it flew closer, I realized that it was carrying something in its greenish-leathery hands.
No. No, it couldn’t be.
Please not her.
“Prophêtis,” Theras confirmed quietly, standing at my right. He was shaking slightly, and I’d never seen him look anything less than stoic and completely put together. “Grace.”
I mouthed her name, reaching for the sky, helpless to do anything as she flew overhead. Grace was looking down—undoubtedly noticing the sea of plumed helmets—and I silently prayed to every deity there was that she’d see me. That she’d know I was here, and that I was coming for her.
My throat burned in violent protest as I attempted to scream her name, wishing I could speak, wishing I couldflyso I could somehow get up there and steal her away. Stab that fucking beast in the eye and take my girl back. What was he going to do with her? She wasn’t in Tartarus, but she was being carted around by what looked like a monster from the bowels of that prison, and only the very worst of the worst were sent there.
Had she attempted to enter Tartarus? Had that creature brought her back?
I took off at a run, the Spartoi falling into line behind me as we sprinted in the direction that the beast was flying. Had Grace seen me? Did she know I was following her? That I’d follow her anywhere?
My heart hurt to think of her up there, afraid and alone. Grace was tougher than she looked, full of more inner fire and compassion than anyone I’d ever met, but she wasn’t meant to be by herself. Grace came alive around people. She was so full of love and light that it spilled out of her. I had to get to her.
“Wild!” Theras called, pointing at something falling from the sky up in the beast’s wake, so tiny I wouldn’t have seen it if it hadn’t been catching the sunlight as it fell. It landed on the ground a few hundred feet away, and I picked up the pace, sprinting toward whatever it was.
I was breathing hard as I searched, unsure what I was looking for exactly but hoping it was some kind of sign. A glint of gold in the light caught my eye, and I fell to my knees in the dirt, picking up Grace’s opal ring with shaky fingers. I knew it was some kind of symbolic agathos thing, probably some sort of puritanical bullshit that she didn’t believe anymore, but I’d never seen her take it off.
Grace had seen me, she had to have. This was her way of letting me know, of offering me some kind of reassurance. She shouldn’t be reassuringme. I should be reassuringher.
