The Lady of Fire and Light: A Fate of Ashes Prequel Novella (The Fate of Ashes) by Victoria K. Taylor

Author:Victoria K. Taylor [Taylor, Victoria K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Snowshoe Press
Published: 2024-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

Light’s Tower had always felt like Val’s home. But in the days after Aris’s betrayal, it started to feel like a battleground.

It didn’t take long for Val’s unit to hear about the incident. Aris’s comment had seemed to reignite the rumor mill that Val had not earned her captain’s rank in any way other than on her knees.

“Just ignore them,” Atria whispered, her hand clasped tightly around Val’s arm as they headed to training one morning. A few soldiers Val recognized from Lycas’s unit made kissing noises at her, laughing uproariously as she passed. But every jeer, every laugh, was starting to chip away at Val’s very soul.

She didn’t want to go to training anymore. She barely wanted to leave her room. But every morning, Lucia was at her door, waiting for her.

“You do not hide from these people,” Lucia told her.

But that was all she wanted to do. Hide.

Until the day that Aris burst through her bedroom door.

“What in the Mother—” Val sprang from her bed. She had been lying down, pouring over some fluffy book Katia had given her, but it went flying with the crash of her door against the wall.

Aris was panting, his face white. He was wearing his usual tunic that clung to him in all the right—and very wrong—places. She never thought she would miss the armor so much.

“General, I’m really not in the mood,” she snapped, but the sheer panic on his face as he shook his head made Val forget for a second how angry she was at him.

“T-Titus,” he panted.

Val stilled. “What about him?” But she knew the answer. One look at Aris’s face told her all she needed to know. Nothing else would panic the general like this. Nothing else besides maybe kissing her like the world was ending.

“He did it . . .?” she whispered.

The general stumbled into her room, pushing the door closed and slumping against it, his face ashen. He was in such a state that Val didn’t even have time to be worried about being alone in a room with him again for the first time in weeks.

“I just got word from our spies in Maniel,” he told her. “They said Titus flew over the Red Citadel on the back of an enormous, winged beast.”

Val’s heart skipped a beat. Titus had always been a terrifying, bloodthirsty brute. She had only met the male once or twice, the last being when she was young—barely out of adolescence. There was nothing that terrified her more than seeing him in the throne room of the Red Citadel. How his gaze had swept her body, those red eyes of his gleaming when he told her parents that she had “blossomed nicely.” How she would make a valuable bride for his son . . .

To picture the High King on the back of a deadly, winged beast—one that could burn whole kingdoms to the ground—she did not want to think . . .

Aris slumped down on the edge of her bed, rubbing his face with a rough hand.

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