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)
Then they left the room.
Tor fought a flinch at the sight of his arms ending at his wrists.
Tor had fought wars, lost battles, but thankfully won the wars, and he’d seen men with Joseph’s injuries, as with Alfie’s.
The true warriors, in his estimation, were the kind like Alfie.
It was clear Alfie had not simply put his injury behind him and moved along. He struggled. There were frequent moments of darkness that he was not able to hide.
But he was robust. Fit. It seemed daily, his upper body physically strengthened, and this was because he worked hard at it.
And he had found a calling. He had shifted the meaning that was always his life to the same meaning, just going about it a different way.
And he carried on.
This…
Joseph.
He had earned his injuries at the hands of his own, who had turned on him for the gods didn’t know what reason, but any brotherhood that would take the hands of a brother was no brotherhood at all.
All of them locked in an undertaking that was wrong from the start.
It turned Tor’s stomach.
“I will warn you,” Apollo said, his eyes jade daggers aimed to the prisoner who had rested his stumps on the table between them, “if you waste our time again, there will no longer be anyone to listen to your blathers. This will be our last visit.”
“I—” Joseph started.
Tor spoke from where he stood with his shoulders against the wall to the side of Apollo.
“Your Golden Thomas is dead.”
Joseph lifted his gaze to Tor and blinked at him repeatedly, all the while his face paled.
“He was found in a clearing in the Lesser Thicket Forest not far from a pile of dead women,” Tor went on. “His head had been crushed.”
“By the true gods,” Joseph whispered.
“Another one of your people,” Apollo took up the narrative, gaining Joseph’s attention when he did, “identified as G’Fenn, or Fennley Trehurst of Wodell, was with him. He’d been decapitated.”
Joseph’s mouth dropped open.
“Do you know what this clearing is used for?” Tor asked.
Joseph wasted most of both the men’s remaining store of patience, which admittedly was not much, in pulling himself together, straightening in his chair, at the same time obviously trying to work out how to twist this to his advantage, when Tor decided to end it.
“We know the Beast has ascended. We can put the dead women together with the fact some ritual was performed to make that happen, and we can deduce from the dead Rising priests in that location that they did not get what they bargained for when he arrived. Though, their bodies there offers irrefutable evidence your lost cause was behind it.”
And the minute Tor spoke the words the Beast, all pretense dropped for Joseph.
“So they did it,” he said.
“Apparently,” Tor replied, pushing from the wall. “Which states, as of now, the level of your guilt rises with the level of atrocities your cause wished to unleash on this land. Not to mention the fact pertinent to this moment. You are useless.”
“I didn’t know!” he cried, lifting a stump toward Apollo as Apollo also shifted as if to rise.
“You haven’t told us any of what you do know,” Apollo reminded him. “However, at this juncture, whatever it is you know…or knew, has no meaning.”
“What I mean to say is, they spoke of it. But I didn’t know they were going forward with it,” Joseph told them.
Apollo settled himself back in his chair and Tor again rested his shoulders against the wall as Apollo spoke.
“You didn’t know they were going forward with what?”
“Working with the Society. Bringing forth the Beast,” Joseph explained.
Apollo glanced at Tor.
Tor lifted his chin.
Apollo looked back to Joseph.
“What Society?” Apollo asked.
“I must have your assurances—” Joseph began.
“You have no assurances. You have nothing,” Apollo stated impatiently. “Outside convincing us you had nothing to do with raising a creature we’ve even heard across a vast ocean about his last reign of terror. And that happened before man had thought to put pen to paper to record history, because pen nor paper had been invented yet. For I can assure you, as King True will be on the battle lines in fighting this thing, when he wins, he will not have a great deal of tolerance for anyone involved in the rising of it. And the last man he had little tolerance for endured a very prolonged, very public death.”
Joseph’s face twisted. “Then what is the point of saying anything? For if the Beast is indeed risen, we are all going to die.”
“I don’t intend to die,” Tor said.
“I don’t either,” Apollo added.
“We have a friend who commands dragons and those dragons are here, on Triton,” Tor informed him.
“And I command the wolves. Not to mention, our wives are witches.” Apollo flung a hand Tor’s way. “The wives of all the rulers of this continent are witches. And the King of the Mer, which are the people, it’s my understanding, who defeated the creature the last time, has allied with all nations.”