Rune and Ruin

30 - Graves and Battles

391 B.C.E. The Cliffs, Tasuri Capital of Rune, Tasurian Peninsula, Spring, Month of Lunius

Quintus

I snag Titus by his nape and barely refrain from rolling my eyes. As it is, my demon snarls and sneers, his tail flicking in agitation with the hatchling. "Show me where he murdered the hatchlings," I repeat.

"All the eggs were burned," Titus mutters. "You know that Thania was talked about years ago, right?" he asks, changing the subject. "Our father," he spits, "thought the Fyrrin had lost his mind. There were rumors about killing her to spare him more humiliation. Now she's with our father, and you want to see some ash pit?"

Gods, he's mouthy.

"I hear my wife's heart," I explain through gritted teeth. My jaw aches from the effort it takes to stop the shouting. Leda would never be as difficult as this male.

"Her heart is soft," Ciro mumbles as he dutifully follows us through the maze of alleys and tunnels deeper and deeper into Rune.

I got here so quickly that I left my army behind—something I've never done. For years, I had no family outside of the army. My grandmother went to the Underworld a year after I joined the ranks, and my parents earlier than that.

Now I have more family than I ever thought I would, and this brat is fast becoming my favorite after my wife and daughter. Titus is clever, and he knows I have more patience than my brothers, which is why he won't stop running his mouth.

"So our father will crush her heart," Titus complains.

I spin him around to face me, holding his eyes. "This is her plan. She is the oracle, the voice of the goddess in life. She will be queen. If she wants us to run around the Rotunda floor in nothing more than our scales and loincloths made of chicken feathers, we do it without questioning."

"I think I would question the feathers," Ciro jokes weakly.

"You should have stayed at the camp," Titus snaps at his younger brother.

"Do not scold your brother," I say, more calmly. Titus has grown used to caring for his brothers as a father would. It will take time for that habit to break.

"The eggs, first," I tell Titus. I can hear Tems's in my mind. His thoughts fixated on the fate of those eggs. If they are all dead, as he suspects, then their 'brides' are invaluable. If we can expose the emperor's duplicitous actions, then more noble families will fall in line. We may not need them to take over, but we do need them to rule with noble support. Especially with Falx's father somewhere in Ardea, causing trouble.

"I don't want to!" Titus protests, finally sounding like the young hatchling he is. I nod quietly as he seethes in frustration. His trauma is rooted here, in this city, in the palace we are slowly traveling towards, in the crumbling ruins that can't hide the seedy, corrupt underbelly of Rune any longer. The gods have spoken. Destruction has rained down on our land, and our bonded female is the only soul capable of healing us all.

A wave of love washes over me as Thania's thoughts turn to me. Her emotions lash between fear and anger, but always, my wife tempers her harsh feelings with her love for us and our family.

Titus whimpers. "Fine," he says sullenly. "It's this way."

Night has fallen by the time we reach the cliff bottom, where Decimus Runion cast the dead, hollow shells of Tasuri eggs to lay. In an odd twist of the goddess's hand, ash has not touched the eggs. Part of a tower fell from the tremors, its buttresses forming a shield for the graveyard below.