Total pages in book: 161
Estimated words: 162269 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 811(@200wpm)___ 649(@250wpm)___ 541(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 162269 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 811(@200wpm)___ 649(@250wpm)___ 541(@300wpm)
He would not ever make Cassius Laird his enemy.
“My reign will be safe. My land will be free for all, Mars. They will not die in vain.”
“They already haven’t, my brother,” Mars said quietly.
“She took a blade for him,” Cass bit.
“My friend—”
“Ellie’s sister took a blade for my brother.”
“It is war.”
“It is obscene,” Cassius retorted. “For what? For what do they fight, Mars? How can you even begin to form the fucking thought that you’d take up arms to stop another from being free? Much less kill for it?”
“I cannot answer that, for I have not had that thought, Cass.”
Cassius looked to the ground and wrapped his hand around the back of his neck.
Mars took them to the urgency at hand.
“It is certain he will not recover?” he asked carefully.
Cassius dropped his hand and looked to him. “Liam says it’s impossible. He left some of his intestines and most of his lifeblood on the battleground. He could barely move his mouth to ask for the poison.”
“Then do not delay a moment longer in giving it to him.”
Cassius didn’t.
Not even to nod his head.
He turned on his boot and jogged to a line of tents set up at the base of the mountains where the wounded were being tended.
Mars ran with him.
They went through the flaps of one and were confronted with a number of lanterns turned high, a deathbed, a dead man in it, and his two friends standing vigil.
“Did you give it to him in my absence?” Cassius asked Nero.
“No, he slipped away on his own,” Nero replied.
“I should have given it to him,” Cassius muttered, looking down to Antonius. “I should have ended his pain.”
“He lasted perhaps five minutes after you’d left, Cass,” Nero said, “Thus gaining the last thing on this earth he might want, not forcing you to administer the poison. Years ago, he told me he’d never ask that of you, no matter how bad it was. He did not know then how bad it could get, but I know, if it had to end like this, he would be glad the last thing he did, he did on his own.”
Mars did not doubt this and suspected no one in that tent did, for all of them would feel the same.
Before anyone could say a word, Mac announced, “I’m taking Jasmine to The Enchantments.”
“I’m sure that’s a good idea. Let me speak to Ellie about it,” Cassius murmured.
“I wasn’t asking,” Mac clipped. “I was telling you I’m taking Jazz to The Enchantments. We discussed it last night. And she said, if she was where she is now, she wanted to become one with the veil in The Enchantments. So that’s where I’m taking her.”
“And I’m saying, please do not leave until I can talk to Ellie so she can make her decision of whether or not she can go with you,” Cassius returned quietly.
Mac scowled at his friend before he looked to his boots.
A moment was given before Cass called, “Mac.”
Macrinus’s head came up, and he seethed, “I want to kill something.”
“I know,” Cassius whispered.
“I couldn’t even stop fighting so I could pull her fucking body from that pit.”
“I’m sorry,” Cassius said, his words heavy with the weight of the decision to attack that morning.
“You didn’t gut her,” Mac spat.
“It was my—”
“She’d fucking kick you in the arse if she heard you speak the words you’re about to say. She was a fighter. She believed in what we did today. And now it’s time to take her home.”
Cassius fell silent.
“Before she was lost, she was gods-damned magnificent,” Mac declared.
Nero moved closer to him, lifted a hand and wrapped it around the back of Mac’s neck.
But Mac couldn’t tear his gaze from Cassius.
“From the second I laid eyes on her, she was gods-damned magnificent.”
“She was,” Cassius agreed.
Mac’s voice was much different, coarse with emotion when he asked, “Is this what you’ve been feeling all these years?”
“Yes,” Cass answered.
“How do you…how did you…breathe?”
That was when Cass moved.
So did Nero.
Mars lifted his chin to Nero as he came his way and they began to leave the tent.
Cassius went right to Mac and pulled him into his embrace, cupping the back of Mac’s head and shoving his face in Cass’s shoulder.
Mars saw Mac’s shoulders wrench once, and then he walked out.
They took several steps away and stopped.
They said nothing to each other.
It was Nero who first spoke.
“They should have bitched to their fires and got drunk in their taverns and picked fights with each other.”
“Mm,” Mars hummed in agreement.
“He has never engaged, not once,” Nero said.
Mars turned his gaze from staring unseeing down an alleyway formed by tents to Nero.
“Not with this realm, not with his father, not with his brother, not in any battle he was forced to wage,” Nero went on.
Mars held his eyes.
“In my knowing of him, I’ve seen him engage with four things. His wife, his daughter, his lieutenants, and Elena,” Nero stated.