Queen of the Night (The Revanche Cycle Book 4) Read Free Page A

as the battle raged around her, cold grace in the eye of the storm, brandishing her borrowed sword like a beacon to spur her followers on.
    *     *     *
    The sun crested over the rolling green hills of Verinia, bringing the cold, clear light of an autumn morning. Shining down on silent, scarlet sands, where cherry foam washed over the teeming bodies of the dead, shoving them toward the shore. And beyond the corpse sargasso, the ravaged and flame-scorched ruins of Livia’s fleet slowly sank toward an icy grave. Charred masts jutted up from the water like the straining fingers of a drowning man.
    Amadeo knelt in the bloody sand, clasping a soldier’s hand. He was barely more than a boy. His chest was a ragged waste, cleaved open by an Imperial blade and laying bare his shattered ribs, and it was only by some sick miracle that he still drew breath. Amadeo stroked his trembling hand, listening to his rattling breath as his chest rose and dropped, meeting the animal panic in the boy’s eyes.
    There were ritual words to say, a rote prayer for the dying, but the soldier didn’t need that. Instead, Amadeo just sat with him. Eventually the boy managed enough breath to gasp out a single question.
    “Did we win?”
    Amadeo looked out over the beach. The survivors staggered in tiny clumps, voices hushed, medics scurrying to tend to the wounded and ease the dying. They’d left Itresca with three ships’ worth of veteran soldiers. What they had left would barely fill a single galley.
    “Yes,” Amadeo told him, forcing a smile. “We won.”
    The boy tried to smile back, his lips contorting in a rictus. “Good,” he said. Then he died.
    Amadeo released his limp hand, letting it drop to the sand, and rose. He walked through the carnage, feeling adrift, wondering if he was dreaming again. All the things you show me , he thought with a sudden flash of anger at the sky, all the pointless visions, all the stupid riddles, and you couldn’t warn me about THIS?
    A pack of Browncloaks conversed in a tight huddle, their voices carrying on a gust of cold wind.
    “Did you see? The sword caught the sunlight. It glowed, just like Saint Elise’s did.”
    “Just like Saint Elise at the Battle of the Red Gates.”
    Amadeo gritted his teeth and walked on by.
    He found Livia at the water’s edge, Dante at her side. Her face etched in sorrow. She threw her arms around Amadeo and he held her tight, letting her cling to him as long as she needed to. They parted, wordlessly, and her eyes had gone hard. Her mask firmly back in place.
    Dante put his hands on his hips, shaking his head at the battlefield. “Apparently,” he said, “we underestimated your brother’s reach.”
    “This isn’t Carlo’s work,” Livia said. “The Empire was committed to their crusade. Emperor Theodosius’s sole and single-minded dream was to conquer the heathen east. And yet.”
    Dante looked over at a fallen black and gold banner, the Imperial eagle slashed down the middle. “And yet. Sometimes emperors die. And sometimes they’re undermined. Someone had a vested interest in making sure your homecoming was cut tragically short, signora.”
    “We have to turn back,” Amadeo said. “If they sent troops to stop us, we have to assume the Holy City won’t stand unguarded. We came prepared to battle a band of mercenaries, not the Imperial army.”
    “Turn back?” Dante pointed a finger at the wreckage in the waves. “With what ships?”
    “Then we find another ship. Or we head south, to Carcanna, and slip into hiding.”
    Livia frowned. “No. No hiding. No running. We do the one thing they won’t be expecting. We advance .”
    “Livia, we don’t have the troops. It can’t be done.”
    Livia stepped toward the water. Foam rippled over her slippered feet.
    “The people who died here today,” she said. “They died to ensure my return. To see Carlo’s downfall and the mending of this Church. Run? Hide? I’d be spitting in their faces if I did