than that, it was enough to serve as a signal.
Arrows rained down. Stephania saw one punch through the meat of a combatlord’s arm, and he roared like a wounded animal before another three slammed into his chest. Knives flashed down to cut and skim, dig and gouge. Darts carried poison that probably had no time to act before the targets were punctured by arrows.
Stephania saw imperial soldiers fall along with the combatlords. High Reeve Scarel looked up at her with accusing eyes as he pawed at a crossbow bolt that had struck him through the stomach. Men continued to fall under the combatlords’ blades, or found gaps in their defenses, only to find their moment of victory cut short by arrow fire.
Stephania didn’t care. Only when the last combatlord fell did she raise a hand for the assault to cease.
“So many…” one of the noblewomen started, and Stephania rounded on her.
“Don’t be so foolish. We have taken Ceres’s support, and we have taken the castle. Nothing else matters.”
“What about Ceres?” one of the guards there asked. “Is she dead?”
Stephania’s eyes narrowed at that question, because it was the one thing about this plan that irritated her.
“Not yet.”
They had to hold the castle until either the invasion was done or the rebels somehow found a way to beat it back. At that point, they might need Ceres as a bargaining chip, or even just a gift so that the Five Stones of Felldust could show their victory. Having her there might even draw in Thanos, letting Stephania have all her revenge at once.
For now, that meant that Ceres couldn’t die, but she could still suffer.
And she would.
CHAPTER FIVE
Ceres was floating above islands of smooth stone and beauty so exquisite she almost wanted to cry. She recognized the work of the Ancient Ones, and instantly she found herself thinking of her mother.
Ceres saw her then, somewhere ahead of her, still robed in a mist. Ceres sprinted after her, and she saw her mother turn, but she still didn’t seem to be gaining on her quickly enough.
There was a gap between them now, and Ceres leapt, holding out her hand. She saw her mother reaching out for her, and just for a moment, Ceres thought that Lycine would catch her. Their fingers brushed, and then Ceres was falling.
She fell into the midst of a battle, figures flailing about her. The dead were there, their deaths apparently not stopping them from fighting. Lord West fought beside Anka, Rexus beside a hundred men Ceres had killed in as many different fights. They were all around Ceres, fighting one another, fighting the world…
The Last Breath was there in front of her, the former combatlord as bleak and terrifying as he had ever been. Ceres found herself jumping over the bladed staff he wielded, reaching out to turn him to stone as she had before.
Nothing happened this time. The Last Breath knocked her sprawling, standing over her in triumph, and now he was Stephania, holding a bottle in place of a staff, the fumes still acrid in Ceres’s nostrils.
Then she woke, and reality wasn’t any better than her dreaming.
Ceres woke to the feel of rough stone. For a moment, she thought that maybe Stephania had left her on the floor of her room, or worse, that she might still be standing over her. Ceres spun, trying to come to her feet and continue the fight, only to realize that there was no room in which to do it.
Ceres had to force herself to breathe slowly, fighting down the panic that threatened to engulf her as she saw stone walls on every side. It was only when she looked up and saw a metal grille above her that she realized she was in a pit, not buried alive.
The pit was barely broad enough to sit in. There was certainly no way that she could lie full length. Ceres reached up, testing the bars of the grille above her, reaching down for the strength to bend or break them.
Nothing happened.
Now, Ceres felt the panic starting to rise. She tried reaching down for the power again, being gentle with it, remembering how her mother had corrected her after Ceres had burnt out her powers trying to take the city.
This felt the same in some ways, and yet different in so many more. Before, it had been as though the channels along which the power flowed had been burned through until they hurt too much to use, leaving Ceres hollowed out.
Now, it felt as though she was simply normal, although that felt like less than nothing compared to what she’d been only a little while ago. There was no doubting what had done this either: Stephania and her poison. Somewhere, somehow, she had found a method to strip Ceres of the powers her Ancient One blood gave her.
Ceres could feel the difference between this and what had happened before. That had been like flash blindness: too much too soon, fading slowly with the right care. This was more like having her eyes pecked out by crows.
She reached up for the bars again anyway, hoping that she was wrong. She strained, putting all the strength she could muster into trying to move them. They didn’t give in the slightest, even when Ceres pulled at them so hard her palms bled against the metal.
She cried out in surprise as someone threw water down into the pit, leaving her soaked and huddled against the stone of the wall. When Stephania stepped into view, standing over the grate, Ceres tried to glare at her in defiance, but right then she was too cold and wet and weak to do much of anything.
“The poison worked then,” Stephania said without preamble. “Well, it should. I paid enough for it.”
Ceres saw her touch her belly then, but Stephania went on before Ceres could ask what she meant.
“How does it feel to have the only thing that made you special taken away?” Stephania asked.
Like having been able to fly, but now barely being able to crawl. But Ceres wasn’t going to give her that satisfaction.
“Haven’t we been here before, Stephania?” she demanded. “You know how it ends. With me escaping and giving you what you deserve.”
Stephania dumped another bucket of water on her then, and Ceres leapt at the bars. She heard Stephania’s laughter as she did it, and that just drove Ceres’s anger. She didn’t care if she had no powers right then. She still had a combatlord’s training, and she still had everything she’d learned from the Forest People. She would strangle Stephania with her bare hands if need be.
“Look at you. Like the animal you are,” Stephania said.
That was enough to slow Ceres a little, if only because she wouldn’t let herself be anything Stephania wanted her to be.
“You should have killed me when you had the chance,” Ceres said.
“I wanted to,” Stephania replied, “but events don’t always give us what we want. Just look at how things have gone with you and Thanos. Or me and Thanos. After all, I’m the one who’s actually married to him, aren’t I?”
Ceres had to put her hands against the stone of the walls to keep herself from leaping at Stephania again.
“I would have cut your throat if I hadn’t heard the war horns,” Stephania said. “And then it occurred to me that
