the captain stepped back, dodging the strike with ease. Lucious slipped on the wetness of the deck and in that moment the other man slapped him.
Slapped him! Like he was some whore who’d spoken out of turn, not a warrior worth fighting. Not a prince!
Even so, the blow was enough to drop him to the deck, and Lucious made a small sound of anger.
Better stay down, boy, his father’s voice whispered.
“Shut up!”
He reached into his tunic, searching for the knife he kept there. That was when Captain Arvan kicked him.
The first blow caught Lucious in the stomach, hard enough to roll him from his knees to his back. The second only clipped his head, but it was still enough to make him see stars. It didn’t do anything to silence his father’s voice.
Call yourself a warrior. I know you learned better than that.
Easy to say when he wasn’t the one being beaten to death on a ship’s deck.
“Think you can knife me, boy?” Captain Arvan demanded. “I’d sell your carcass if I thought anyone would pay for it. As it is, we’ll drop you in the water and see if even the sharks turn up their noses at you!” There was a pause, punctuated by another kick. “You two, grab him. We’ll see how well royalty floats.”
“I am a king!” Lucious complained as strong hands started to pick him up. “A king!”
And soon you’ll be an ex-king, his father’s voice supplied.
Lucious felt himself weightless as the men lifted him, high enough that he could see the endless water around them, into which he would soon be thrown to drown. Except that it wasn’t endless, was it? Could he see —
“Land ahoy!” their lookout yelled.
For a moment, the tension held, and Lucious was sure that he was going to be pitched into the water anyway.
Then Captain Arvan’s voice boomed out above all of it.
“Leave that royal waste of breath! We’ve all duties to get to, and we’ll be rid of him soon enough.”
The sailors didn’t question it. Instead, they threw Lucious down to the deck, leaving him while they set about hauling on ropes with the rest of the crew.
You should be grateful, his father’s voice whispered.
Lucious was anything but grateful, though. Instead, he mentally added this ship and its crew to the list of those who would pay once he had his throne back. He’d see them burn.
He’d see them all burn.
CHAPTER FIVE
Thanos sat in his cage and waited for death. He twisted and turned in the sun of Delos, slowly baking while across the courtyard, guards worked to build the gallows on which he would be killed. Thanos had never felt so helpless.
Or so thirsty. They’d ignored him there, giving him nothing to eat or drink, directing their attention Thanos’s way only so that they could rattle their swords across the bars of his gibbet, taunting him.
Servants hurried back and forth across the courtyard, a sense of urgency to their errands that suggested something was happening in the castle Thanos didn’t know about. Or perhaps this was simply the way things happened in the wake of a king’s death. Perhaps all this activity was simply Queen Athena getting Delos to run the way she wanted.
Thanos could imagine the queen doing that. While someone else might have been caught up in their grief, barely able to function, Thanos could imagine her seeing her husband’s death as an opportunity.
Thanos’s hands tightened on the bars of the gibbet. There was every chance that he was the only one truly mourning his father’s death right then. The servants and the people of Delos had every reason to hate their king. Athena was probably too caught up in her schemes to care. As for Lucious…
“I will find you,” Thanos promised. “There will be justice for this. For everything.”
“Oh, there will be justice, right enough,” one of the guards said. “Just as soon as we gut you for what you did.”
He lashed out at the bars, catching Thanos’s fingers in a way that made him hiss with pain. Thanos made a grab for him, but the guard just laughed, dancing back out of range and going to help the others with the construction of the stage upon which Thanos would eventually be killed.
It was a stage. This whole thing was a show. In one instant of violence, Athena would take control of the Empire, both removing the main danger to her power and showing that she remained in charge, in spite of her son ascending to the crown.
Maybe she even really believed that would be the case. If so, Thanos wished her luck. Athena was evil and grasping, but her son was a madman without limits. He had already killed his father, and if his mother thought she could control him, then she would need all the help she could get.
So would everyone in Delos, from the least peasant all the way to Stephania, trapped and at the mercy of royalty that didn’t have any.
The thought of his wife made Thanos wince. He’d come here to save her, and instead it had come to this. If he hadn’t been there, perhaps things would have turned out better. Perhaps the guards would have realized that Lucious was the one who had killed the king. Perhaps they would have acted, rather than trying to sweep it all away.
“Or perhaps they would have blamed it on the rebellion,” Thanos said, “and given Lucious another excuse.”
He could imagine that. No matter how bad it all got, Lucious would always find a way to blame it on others. And if he hadn’t been there at the end, he wouldn’t have been able to hear his father acknowledge who he was. He wouldn’t have learned that there was proof of it to be found in Felldust.
He wouldn’t have had a chance to say goodbye, or hold his father as he died. His regrets now were all about the fact that he wouldn’t get to see Stephania before they executed him, or get to make sure that she was all right. Even given all that she’d done, he shouldn’t have abandoned her on that dock. It had been a selfish move, thinking only of his own anger and disgust. It had been a move that had cost him his wife, and the life of his child.
It was a move that was probably going to cost Thanos his own life, given that he was only there because Stephania was trapped. If he’d taken her with him, left her safe on Haylon, none of this would have happened.
Thanos knew then that there was one thing he needed to do before they executed him. He couldn’t escape, couldn’t hope to avoid what was waiting for him, but he could still try to make this right.
He waited for another of the servants crossing the courtyard to come close. The first one he signaled to kept walking.
“Please,” he called over to the second, who glanced around before shaking his head and continuing on his way.
The third, a young woman, paused.
“We’re not supposed to talk to you,” she said. “We’ve been forbidden from bringing you food or water. The queen wants you to suffer for killing the king.”
“I didn’t kill him,”
