Page 79 of Tempest

“You didn’t think we’d go anywhere,” Levi said, and Sophie smiled. “We have surfing lessons tomorrow, you know.”

“And there’s leftover cake for him to wolf down,” Iason said. He pulled Sophie close and kissed her forehead, and she let out a weak laugh. “Let’s go home.”

“I’m afraid you’re stuck with me, by the way,” Levi told her, taking Iason’s hand as they started down the hill. Iason squeezed his fingers, breathing in the scent of flowers and the sea, and the very air seemed alight with the possibility of something new.

“Really?” Sophie wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “How long?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Levi said, grinning at Iason. “What do you think of forever?”

Iason smiled back. “I think forever is enough.”

Epilogue

The Beast of Arktos came to the northern watchtower in the night.

No one knew where he came from. He seemed to emerge from the sand fully formed, a massive, broad-shouldered man with heavy iron pauldrons and an enormous frame over his head in the shape of a snarling mountain lion. His chest was scarred and branded with rough marks in a circle, and he carried two curved swords that gleamed in the light of the fire burning at the base of the watchtower.

Castor, a new recruit who’d only been elevated to a proper soldier three weeks before, staggered out of bed just as the watchtower began to burn. People were shouting, alarm bells were ringing in the hot night air, and smoke rolled over the sand and curled around the figure of the Beast as he cut down Castor’s company sergeant in one stroke.

There were others with him, people in red cloaks with a strange swirling shape over their white tunics, but Castor couldn’t look away from the Beast. He was the biggest man he had ever seen, but he moved with a swiftness that reminded Castor of a fire dragon darting toward a flame. He fought economically, brutally, and every soldier in his way died before their bodies fell. He spun on a heel and beheaded a man with both blades in a move Castor could barely follow, and then he was there, in the shadow of the watchtower, descending on Castor.

Castor dropped to his knees. Fire licked up the side of the watchtower, and the Beast looked down at him through the snarling iron maw of his mask, his eyes dark and dead.

“Please,” Castor said.

The Beast raised his sword. The lion’s head mask tilted slightly, and the Beast kicked Castor to his back. He set a heavy boot on Castor’s chest. Blood fell from the edges of his blades onto the sand, which swallowed it.

“Go.” His voice was a hoarse rasp, hardly human, and it took Castor a second to understand that he’d spoken at all. “Tell your Strategos that war has come to Arktos.”

Then, as the roof of the watchtower collapsed in a spray of fire, the Beast turned and walked away.

Castor lay in the sand, breathing hard, as the screams of his fellow soldiers rang out over the din of bells and crumbling stone. The screams followed him even as he fled, echoing in his ears as he ran, the heat of the dying watchtower at his back, toward the distant city of Axon.