My excursions with T.a.o. helped me heal. They were brief and mostly uninteresting. We popped onto a planet, looked around for people like me and then popped back to Cinder or Earth. Holding to the accord, I arranged for Andrius and his family to travel north by merchant caravan. Decades later, I learned it never made it to its destination.

[SS]: “She already took him?”

I believe so, and, at our next rendezvous, T.a.o. confirmed my suspicions.

The petite woman Seamswalked into my room on Cinder, fell at my feet and sobbed. “Korac! Korac! Save the Progeny! Save Earth!”

I knelt and took her in my arms. “Shh. Shh. You upset yourself again. Deep breaths.” Red flushed her deep complexion, exposing her vulnerable state. The poor woman suffered similar fits. Sometimes she stared. Sometimes trembled and cried out, petrified. But this level of anguish was new.

Breathed deep. In and out. T.a.o. faced me again, and I saw my reflection in her Atramentous eyes. “Andrius is gone. Celindria… the others are hers. They do her bidding. Cherished Blood. All her blood to return the Icari to Cinder.”

I frowned. “T.a.o., slowly. Explain. What is ‘Cherished Blood?’ And how can it send the Icari to Cinder?”

An old tale now. We know Devis forged the Pretiosum Cruor and guaranteed our forced evacuation to our blighted planet. The extinction of our race and the death of hope.

“Fuck that.”

T.a.o. stopped crying and gazed at me.

“I will inform King Nox immediately. Until I come for you, T.a.o. make yourself small and unappealing to her sights. If you feel threatened, return here.” I could only hope she went back to the stronghold and heeded my advice.

I informed Nox in the Castle on Cinder, and I still cringe to this day what he asked of me. The entire garrison I took to accompany me also looked displeased. But orders are orders.

Xelan waited in the center of the settlement on Earth as if he expected us. No cloak or disguise. Proud and tall, he ground out, “General.”

I almost winced. “Prince Xelan, King Nox requests an audience. Will you come peacefully?”

People pressed around us. Eager for a fight.

Xelan shook his head. Not at us, but at them. His answer set my teeth on edge. “The monster made this a request, and not a demand?”

Deep breath. Don’t kill the stubborn idiot. “I highly recommend you consider his request.”

With another gesture to the crowd, the Prince of Cinder relented and stepped into the center of the garrison. The people dispersed and returned to their lives. The entire way to Cinder, I felt him glaring a hole in the back of my head. Meanwhile, I was left wondering how much he influenced this rebellion, and if he was complicit in designing the Pretiosum Cruor. The device that would condemn his people to death by starvation.

Hope. Maybe there was hope. This could be the last chance for the brothers to reconcile, but that implied there was still a chance.

With that, I led Xelan into the throne room, and—

“This will be the last time I set foot on your planet until I die, brother.”

So much for hope. I swear the sound of it shattering was loud enough for everyone to hear. Nox asked me to guard the doors, but I barely heard him over my grief as it slowed the blood from my heart.

Xelan.

When he looked at me…

[SS]: “You still hoped for that reconciliation, too.”

I did, and now I couldn’t. It would never mend.

I left them. Alone. To their last argument as brothers.

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The worst argument.

[SS]: Korac looks so lost even now, and it’s been thousands of years. His only family, and this was when it fell apart. “I hated reading this in Nox’s Verse. I felt… all of it. And one day, I think I want to talk to Xelan about it after he’s read yours.”

Let me know what he says, amos. I’m dying to know myself. Because this was the day Nox nearly killed him. Took his nacre from his chest in his budding madness and rising rage. As we know, Xelan survived, but only after Merit sacrificed herself for him. A good woman. Kind and fun. I only learned later of their relationship, and I hate how it ended.

And there’s so much more to hate.

Do you remember what happened to Devis at this point?

[SS]: “Celindria publicly declared him a traitor to the cause after she learned he tampered with the Pretiosum Cruor. She meant for the humans to rip him apart. You saved him.”

That’s right. Nox and I rescued him. Escorted him to a safe house with a forge. Which I also learned much too late was discovered and raided.

By the time I rescued Devis from Celindria’s public denouncement of him, it was already too unsafe for our people on Earth. We evacuated to Cinder, while Nox and I remained on Earth to launch a farewell campaign to our enemies.

Integrating the Cult of Night proved useful on Earth. During one of our strategy sessions in the compound, Caedes disrespected Nox. Unfortunately for the Icarus, I was disgusted and exhausted with undeserved abuse thrown at my King. A good man who received a lot of shit for circumstances outside of his control. I took it out on Caedes and introduced him to a Hell he only heard of and could barely imagine.

Camp was a ring in the Inferno for Icari born on Earth. Cinder’s ashen atmosphere alone would tax his lungs and handicap him against the likes of whalesharks.

I may have overreacted.

I stayed at the compound a while before returning to Cinder for obligations regarding the evacuation. We were halfway across the desert when my instincts alerted me.

The dunes. They cast more than one shadow in the full moonlight.

A formation of Icari stepped into it and disappeared. It wasn’t a conduit. It was… something else.

“Together!” We pulled into a phalanx to protect the soldiers without wings. “Keep an eye—”

Someone screamed, shrill and horrifying. Followed by gurgling and then nothing.

“General! The shadows. They move!”

There was a ripple to them that was separate from the waves of heat. “Keep together. Attack anything you can.”

Another scream followed by silence.

We were too far from the conduit to make it at a run, and we needed our numbers for the ambush we knew waited at the entry to Cinder—

A lump of fire fell from the sky and landed right in the center of our formation. Several Icari caught aflame, and we doused them out. The lump was a dead Icarus, burnt to unrecognizable ruin.

More screams.

Chaos.

My heart raced as several Icari burst into flames. I shouted, “Retreat to Cinder! Hurry!”

Then the stars pulsed. All of them across the sky winked. Darkness. Then Light. The shadows stopped shifting in the dark, but the screams never stopped.

The next five minutes saw seventy Icari reduced to burning char until only I remained.

So I jumped when a hand tapped my shoulder. I whirled to find Celindria behind me. She glowed from victory and far-along pregnancy.

“Korac.”

I glared at her, reaching for my whip, but the way she shook her head stopped me. “Tell Nox I want an audience with him. Where the monster fell. Three Earth hours from now. I will burn one garrison every ten minutes if he refuses to appear.”

Unable to help myself, I glanced at her belly.

Celindria smoothed a hand over it. “Holding life in your hands is beautiful. Nox should know. The baby is his.”

I’d rather she slapped me as I reeled with this information.

Nox. Had sex. With her.

[SS]: “I mean… you didn’t suspect when they disappeared together?”

Korac’s shaking his head solemnly.

You don’t understand what it’s like to know someone like Nox. He never engaged partners. Ever. I assumed it was some self-imposed celibacy. To compensate for his father’s crude mistreatment of women. And Celindria… She was deranged before we knew she instigated a coup. Although, now his taste in women makes much more sense after reading his Verse.

Rayne being an outlier in the crazy department, of course.

[SS]: “I’m redacting that since Rayne censored most any mention of Nox’s romantic intention toward her in the version of Nox’s Verse she gave to us. We can infer all day about what it actually said. But there’s definitely a tone.”

Nox was entitled to his privacy, but given the circumstances surrounding Celindria, it seemed courteous to mention the minor complication that they slept together. It stung that we existed as brothers, but both felt disinclined to confide our lives in this way. Xelan a secret. Celindria a secret. Maybe things would be different if we’d been more frank with each other.

But he was my King, and I was his General. And this is how it was done.

Nox met her. We know what happened from his Verse, but I wish I knew then. He never told me. The Icarus just bore the pain of losing a daughter on his own, and it showed.

It rained on Cinder for the first time since Savis died.

Nox returned with an icy resolve. He started treating me more like a soldier and less like someone he helped raise. I’d dealt with worse. But I worried more about the scowl that seemed to affix permanently to his face and the bitterness in his words.

A manic fervor settled in him.

Fire and ruin.

He wanted to set the world ablaze. Thought of nothing else—spoke of nothing else—but killing Celindria.

Colita tried that “I told you so” shit, and he locked her in the dungeon on Cinder for a month.

Nox slaughtered his entire court and replaced them with people he elevated from the servant caste using non-winged warrior blood.

He. Lost. His. Fucking. Mind.

All the while, I was beside him as we marched into the Vacating.