Fortunes of War: The Debriefing

 

Welcome to the Fortunes of War debriefing post! There will be spoilers, but I'll put them under the cut. Turn back now if you haven't read the book yet and don't want to be spoiled!

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Okay, ready? Spoilers ahead:

I talked about the three Drakes in my last post, in which I talked about the reasons Oliver's my favorite character in the whole series. He definitely is - but boy is he screwing up in this book! Poor Ollie. To be fair, he didn't ask for the emperor's attention. He still has no idea why Romanus refers to him as "the red whore," nor why he's been searching for him in the Between. He'd understandably frightened, especially after their first encounter: 

“I was out for a flight, that’s all,” Oliver said. “Minding my own business. What do you want? Romanus Tyrsbane.” He leaned hard on the name. Yes, I know who you are. No, I will not use your titles, you insulting fucking wanker.

Rather than expressing alarm, the Sel – the emperor – nodded, seeming satisfied. “You have heard of me. Your little necromancer told you of me.”

“Don’t say it like that. He’s not my little necromancer. He’s my friend. Do you have those where you come from? Friends?”

“I have subjects,” he said, without a shred of humor or irony. He was perfectly serious.

And ungodly strong, when he snatched Oliver’s ankle, and dragged him down off Percy’s back. 

But Oliver, scholar that he is, brat that he is, is also wildly curious. If I'm honest, I'd say there's a bit of unacknowledged vanity at play here, too. In his old life, the only people who sought him out, who searched for him, were his cousins, and occasionally his aunt and uncle. His own father didn't care about him, and certainly never sought his counsel. But now he's wanted by a king, and a valued member of his court...even though he doesn't recognize it in himself, he's preening a little beneath the attention of an emperor. He knows that talking with the man - even in the Between - is dangerous, but pride and vanity have convinced him that he can handle the situation. 

Spoiler alert: he can't, and the book's final scene proves that. 

“Amethyst?”

“Yes. From the first mines of Seles. It is…an heirloom.”

Oliver searched for his gaze in the dimness, a wink of silver in the shadows. “Why give it to me? So you can track me? So you can find me when you want to do this?” He gestured to camp, its turmoil.

“No,” Romanus said. “It’s a gift.”

“But why? What does it do?” Oliver’s heart was racing; the furious thrashing of it at the base of his throat was wild enough to choke him. His hands went clammy on the chain, and he nearly threw it out through the trees.

Nearly.

The coin-flare of Romanus’s gaze slanted, as though he’d tilted his head. “It doesn’t do anything. It’s a jewel. A decoration.”

“But…then…it’s not magical?”

“No.”

“Then why are you giving it to me?”

“Because I wanted you to have it,” he said, simply. 

There's a Big Reveal coming for Oliver, and it's going to rattle him hard. For now, there's this delicious secret-keeping angst to play with. 

As far as the war goes, the attack on the road, in which the little girl explodes and opens a portal to places unknown, allowing Sels and strange purple drakes to pour through, the characters learn they have no clue how powerful the Selesee magics are. These drakes, riderless, are dog-sized in height, and about as long as a crocodile, thin and ribbon-like; able to kill a man, certainly, but nothing like Alpha and his girls. I had a question on the last post about the size of the drakes, and I see Alpha as being Indian elephant size at the withers (shoulders) but longer-bodied, obviously, and with a long neck like a brontosaurus that can lift much higher. His smallest female, Marigold, as about horse size - same with Valgrind. Whereas the purple drake that attempts to come through the portal at the end, and is beheaded by its closure, is more GOT-size, big, and long-necked, like Caraxes in HoTD. 

Time stopped.

And then there was a terrible crack like thunder, and a blinding light. Wind roared – a sucking wind, one that Alpha screamed against and struggled to escape, wings beating furiously. A moment of tumult and anguish, her mind screaming, too – or maybe that was her mouth, who knew.

And then stillness.

Utter stillness. Alpha fumbled midair, and then righted himself, flapping strong, climbing up into the air once more.

Amelia twisted around in her saddle to look.

The portal was gone.

On the ground beneath where it had been lay the severed head of the purple drake, its red tongue lolling on the dirt, black blood leaking out across the road from the stump of its neck.

 

 The roadway scene marks the first scenes told from Ragnar's POV. They're limited, and with good reason: I'm not ready for the audience to see the inside of his mind in its entirety, so going forward we should expect only brief glimpses. But it was important to witness this scene from his viewpoint, especially with regard to Leif. The moment Ragnar decides to mount Shadow and join the fray is a small one, but an important one for his character development. He could have taken advantage of the chaos and tried to flee - tried, because he would never truly be able to abandon his pack and alpha, but he could have made the attempt. Instead, he rushed right into the fray. 

Speaking of Ragnar...I think the romantic developments in this book are where the, no pun intended, real meat of the story resides. 

Leif massaged at the back of his neck, for all the good it did; he’d begun to sweat, hair sticking to the skin there, suffocating. “Ragnar, we can’t–”

“But we can, we can! See, that’s what I wanted to show you.” He surged in closer, shrunk down into himself to appear small, supplicating. His voice was pinched and pleading. “I’ve been into the village – no, don’t growl at me, I didn’t betray us. But this is a harbor town. This is a trade route.”

“You found a brothel, then.”

“Yes.” His eyes flared, pupils going wolf-narrow for a moment. “Yes, I found a brothel, and some of the girls aren’t even ugly. There’s enough of them, at least, and business has been slow, with the war on. The madam would only love to have a few gold marks to rub together. I’ve told her I work for a wealthy lord who can–”

Leif snatched him by the jaw, and squeezed until he earned a whimper of pain. “What did you do?” he snarled, and put the full force of his growl behind it.

Ragnar’s whimper became a whine. “Leif. Alpha. Please.”

Three words that reached straight into his chest and squeezed him back.

His growl cut off abruptly, unbidden, and for a moment he feared he might actually release the reassuring chuff that built in his throat. He shoved Ragnar roughly away instead.

The other wolf caught himself against a tree, and rubbed at his jaw, working it side to side. “You’re stronger than you realize, you know,” he muttered, and then ducked his head with a murmured, “Sorry, alpha.”

Leif wanted to scream.

He swallowed hard, and gritted out, “The brothel. Show me.”

Ragnar’s head snatched up, face slack with shock. Then, slowly, a grin sliced across it like the opening of a knife wound. A wound Leif felt echoed in his gut, a painful, sharp slice too much like desire. 

I've had a fair number of questions about Leif and Ragnar, will-they/won't they. Some readers have asked hopefully, others aghast, and I have to say that it's been fun teasing the progression of their relationship, because it's something that feels like it was both inevitable, and like having "gone there" in a way that more mainstream stories sometimes tease without ever intending to follow through on. You could argue that the tension between them is what's engaging, and it absolutely is, and I don't think getting physical negates that tension - in fact, I think it heightens it, because now there's feelings involved on both sides, but Leif is still reeling and lost, and Ragnar is still an unknowable traitor, and the development in this book only increases the likelihood of disaster. 

It feels inevitable because though Ragnar does submit to his role of beta, he still pushes and challenges Leif at every turn, and that sort of friction is going to boil over if left unattended. Their power struggle here turns sexual, finally, but it isn't just about power, for either of them: there's also this desperate sort of longing to be understood and accepted beyond their roles as clansman and prince. Leif was always going to marry as was his duty, and be a perfect gentleman about it, but he wasn't excited by the prospect. He thinks Tessa is lovely and he cares for her, but there was no heat there, on his part. I won't say he resents Rune in any way, but Tessa choosing Rune instead stung because it felt like yet another case of Rune not having to work and toe the line to get what he wants; things seem to come easy to Rune, and he doesn't ever seem to get any more careful. Of the princes, Leif's been the heir, the elder brother, the dutiful one, and being turned has shaken him out of that role and got him thinking about what he wants. 

As for Ragnar: I think it's obvious by this point that he has some complicated feelings about Erik. Familial feelings, yes, they grew up as cousins, peers, but always with that disparity between the kingdom and the clans. Ragnar both rejects and envies Erik's way of life, just as he rejects and envies the man himself; a kicked-puppy sort of love he's always covered with bravado and insult. He's terribly conflicted over him, and his life, and his role as king...and in Leif he sees a young Erik, one still full of potential. An Erik he can mold. He harbors genuine love, but it's inextricably tangled with a host of other emotions, chief among them envy and lust and something like grief. Ragnar's a hot mess, and that makes him delightful to write. 

Here they were, alpha and beta. Master and thrall. Warrior and war prize.

Leif had gotten some answers…but been left with one pressing question. He said, “If it had come down to it, if you’d had the chance, would you have ever done it yourself? Would you have killed any of us with your own two hands?”

Ragnar, fingers dancing along the carved wood of the footboard, stared down at the coverlet. After a long beat, he said, “Maybe with Rune. I never cared for him.”

Leif wanted to shudder at that – at the admission that his own brother, his closest flesh-and-blood, held no meaning for the man he’d fucked – but suppressed it. “But not Erik,” he said. “And not me.”

A slow blink was Ragnar’s only response, but Leif read plenty in it.

He said, “What would your masters have said if they knew you’d turned me, rather than killing me?”

“They do know.”

“What if they knew,” Leif insisted, “and recaptured you? What if they held you, instead of me?”

“They’d kill me,” he said, without hesitation. “But slowly.” A flickering dart of a glance, vulnerable and hurting beneath the screen of his lashes. “I would have at least done it quick. For Rune.”

Leif took a slow breath, and let it out. “Yeah.”

Leif and Ragnar both genuinely like Amelia, and feel drawn to her, are attracted to her, but we'll have to wait and see how that all works out in the books to come. 

The other new relationship in FOW - but one that's been building for a while - is Connor and Reggie. I love the way they complement one another: the disheveled lord turned outlaw, and the golden lord living in constant fear. On Reggie's road to finding something like peace, I could have had him reclaim his old role as the dominant party in a romantic tryst - but in this instance, I much prefer writing him as more submissive, and through submitting to someone he actually trusts finding a quiet strength in knowing that he wasn't weak for being a captive and a victim, that it doesn't make him lesser, and that he now can control his own pleasure in this way. Their scenes were some of my favorites to write in this book, and I'm looking forward to what lies ahead for them. 

“For gods’ sakes.” Firm fingers gripped his chin and pulled his head back around, so they faced one another. Connor’s expression had gone stern – nearly lordly, despite the long hair and scruffy jaw. “Stop saying what you’re saying – stop thinking it, because it’s all bollocks. What you do or don’t want to do in bed has nothing to do with being a man or a commander. Anyone out there” – he aimed his free hand toward the field beyond the tent – “who disagrees can answer to me.” His hand became a fist, knuckles cracking as it tightened. 

I feel like poor Erik is taking a bit of a back seat here - by necessity. But I promise our king gets plenty of time in the journey ahead to prove just how kingly he is. There is some intense action to come, and I can't wait to watch him shine. 

Something I haven't discussed in any post yet, and which I still won't say much about here, is the addition of a prisoner of war. Cassius. 

The prisoner drew himself stiffly upright, and held Amelia’s gaze, though a muscle in his lean cheek flexed. “My reasons are my own, but I wanted to go home. I didn’t want to die here, in this godforsaken wilderness.”

Amelia nodded. But she said, “I find it odd, however, that a boy brought up for a singular purpose, trained from birth to be a soldier in the imperial army, should have such independent ideas.”

It seemed an age before he blinked, and then he titled his head, a slight concession. “And I find it odd that now, of all times, is when the Drakes should remember that they are dragon riders.”

His gaze bored straight through her – not threatening, but knowing. She suppressed a shiver. According to Oliver, the Selesee emperor claimed that the Aquitainian magic, the Aeretollean magic, had been stolen from Seles. A tale of twin sisters, and one who’d fled, and birthed children amongst whom she’d divided her gifts. She, and Tessa, and Oliver, and Náli, no doubt Leif and Ragnar as well, had a wealth of questions. Questions only a Sel could answer. And here, for the first time, sat a Sel who wasn’t trying to kill them, and was answering questions instead.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Cassius, my lady. My name is Cassius.”

 Culturally, I'm styling the Sels as Roman. The emperor, the empire-building, the language. The name Romanus. And, in the case of this prisoner, Cassius. I couldn't write a prisoner who no one trusted but whom they might have to rely upon without also making him "lean and hungry." Julius Caesar is my favorite Shakespeare, so our prisoner is a little tip of the hat to him. 

I'm curious to know y'all's favorite moments and characters in Fortunes of War! It was at times challenging, but very engaging to write. I can't wait for the next installment 💖