The rain had thinned to a whisper, though the earth still drank its memory. The camp at Viroconium lay beneath a pall of grey the banners limp. The fires low, the air thick with the scent of wet iron and trampled earth.
From the timber walls came the faint murmur of Latin, measured and precise, a language of order wrapped around conquest.
Taranis Storm knelt in the mud outside the command tent, wrists chained, head bowed. The iron bit deep, the skin at his wrists raw and darkened with rust and blood.
The mark of the Stormborne ring had already been scrubbed from his armour. He was no longer heir, no longer rebel merely a trophy of Rome.
But even stripped bare, even silent, there was something in his stillness that unsettled the soldiers. Some swore the air shifted around him, that the faint tremor of thunder haunted the edges of his breath.
Others avoided his gaze altogether, crossing themselves as they passed. A man broken should not look like that unyielding even in ruin.
Inside the tent, the light was dim, filtered through canvas streaked with rain. The scent of oil lamps mingled with the metallic tang of blood. He had been made to wait hours, until the flap stirred, and three shadows crossed the threshold.
Drax came first.
Older now, heavier in both body and soul. The broad shoulders that had once carried their people’s trust. Now bore the eagle of Rome, its gold thread dull in the half-light. He paused by the entrance, rain dripping from his cloak, his eyes lingering on Taranis longer than words fill.
Behind him, Rayne entered, slower. His face was pale with sleeplessness, the hollows beneath his eyes deepening the cold fire in his gaze. He did not meet Taranis’s eyes. The torchlight caught the edges of his features sharp, beautiful, worn.
Draven followed last. He moved like a shadow quiet, deliberate, almost ghost like. His cloak brushed the ground, damp from the mist outside. When his eyes lifted, they carried both sorrow and warning.
No one spoke at first. The silence was a living thing, heavy and raw, pressing between them like the weight of the storm itself.
Then, slowly, Taranis lifted his head. The light touched his face. Revealing the dark bruises along his jaw. The faint smear of dried blood across his temple and eyes. Eyes that still burned with the calm fury of the storm.
“Brother,” he rasped, voice rough but steady. “Have you come to finish what Rome began?”
Rayne’s jaw tightened. “I came to make sure you lived.”
“Lived?” A hollow laugh escaped him no warmth, no humour. “They’ll march me south in chains, Rayne. You traded the Circle for a collar. Don’t pretend it was mercy.”
Drax’s tone was even, but heavy. “Enough. You both know what’s done can’t be undone. I took the oath so the rest of us survive. So that our kin would not hang from Roman walls.”
“And what of honour?” Taranis’s gaze snapped to him. “Or do we trade that too for a few more winters of peace and a Roman coin to buy it?”
Draven shifted in the corner. “Peace doesn’t last, brother. It only changes its face.”
Rayne’s voice cracked through the air, sharp as the wind. “You think I wanted this? You think I didn’t bleed the same as you when the Circle broke? I saw no victory left to take I chose survival!”
“You chose fear,” Taranis said softly. “And fear has a longer memory than Rome. It will rot what’s left of you.”
Rayne turned away, jaw clenched, the lamplight trembling against his cheek. “You’d have doomed us all for pride.”
“And you’d damn us for obedience,” Taranis countered.
The space between them trembled with tension brothers bound by blood and broken by choice.
Drax broke it first, his breath slow, his tone heavy with command. “They take you south tomorrow. I can do nothing more without risking every name tied to ours. Whatever happens after this live. Find your chance.”
Taranis’s lips curved, a ghost of the old stormborn grin. “I will. And when I do…” His eyes rose, burning through the gloom. “I’ll remember who stood, and who knelt.”
For a heartbeat, no one moved. Only the rain, soft and relentless, filled the quiet between them.
Draven looked away first, eyes glinting with something close to grief. Drax’s shoulders sagged, his silence an admission. Rayne lingered his hand hovering at the tent’s edge, uncertain, trembling.
“Taranis…” he began.
“Go,” came the answer, quiet but final. “Before you remember what it means to be one of us.”
But as Rayne turned to leave, Taranis’s voice cut through the rain again lower, heavier, carrying the weight of prophecy.
“You know what you’ve done, brother. You’ve condemned the poor those I sheltered, the villages I defended. Rome will use your choice to bleed them dry.”
His gaze flicked to Drax, then Draven. “Do what you must to live in my absence. Keep them safe if you can. But remember this the storm doesn’t die. It only learns patience.”
The words hung in the air like thunder before the break.
Rayne hesitated, his throat tight with something between guilt and defiance. “If you live to see freedom, Taranis… will you forgive me?”
Taranis met his eyes grey meeting grey — and said nothing.
Outside, a trumpet sounded the signal for the night watch. The guards were coming.
The brothers turned, one by one, each carrying their silence like a wound.
Drax’s heavy boots faded first. Draven followed, his steps ghost like. Rayne lingered, then vanished into the rain.
Alone again, Taranis knelt in the mud and closed his eyes. The iron dug deep, but his breath was steady. The storm was not gone merely waiting beyond the hills, patient and unseen.
And somewhere, far to the south, Rome’s banners rippled in the wind ready to claim the storm for themselves.
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Further Reading
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