Titos's war began slowly, almost clumsily, before it turned vicious.
On the eighth day, Aerys , Callius and Rosis watched from the hills overlooking House solenar. The grass around them swayed beneath the cold wind rolling down from the mountains, and below, the siege dragged on beneath a pale afternoon sky.
Titos rode the horse he had captured days earlier. The animal was lean and restless beneath him, foam gathering around its mouth as he guided it back and forth in front of the fortress walls. A coil of rope hung loose in one hand while the other rested casually against the saddle.
"He's baiting them," Rosis muttered beside me.
Titos laughed loudly enough for the defenders to hear him and raised his lasso overhead. Several archers appeared atop the ramparts, shouting insults down at him. One girl leaned farther than the others, trying to find a clean angle through the chaos below.
Aerys saw the moment Titus noticed her.
The rope snapped through the air before she could release her arrow.
The girl jerked backward, hands clawing at the cord tightening around her throat, but Titos had already kicked his horse forward. Her companions lunged for her arms, trying to hold her back over the edge of the wall, but the strain nearly tore her neck apart. They were forced to let go.
Her scream echoed across the valley as she fell from the ramparts.
Titos dragged her through the dirt behind his horse while his pack erupted into cheers and whistles. Cassandre stepped forward laughing and slammed the butt of her spear into the girl's knees before fastening a chain around her wrists like she was restraining livestock.
The sun sank lower behind the hills, casting long shadows over the ruined wheat fields surrounding the castle. Smoke drifted upward from burned orchards, and high above the battlefield, several Proctors floated through the air as if they were watching a play instead of a war.
"And violent hearts spread the brightest flames," Roque murmured softly.
Aerys remembered the look in Titos's eyes when Aerys had struck Vixos in the throat. The excitement in them. The hunger.
"He doesn't fear violence," Aerys said quietly. "He enjoys it. Maybe too much."
Callius nodded slowly without taking his eyes off the siege below.
"He's a killer," he said. His voice sounded rougher than usual. "But he's also a fool."
Aerys glanced toward him. "What do you mean?"
Callius stayed silent for a moment. Rosis crouched beside us with his arms wrapped loosely around his knees, looking almost childlike despite the dirt beneath his nails and the knife strapped at his hip. Wind tugged at his tied-back hair while his gaze moved between us.
Finally, Callius spoke again.
"He's doing all this for nothing."
The words settled heavily between us.
"He will never win against solenar with this tactic ," Callius continued. "He foolishly led his troops into a siege without having the resources to support them. Being the attacker, he already didn't have the advantage, But he stupidly forgot that the leader of Solenar was one of the princes"
Aerys knew exactly where his thoughts were going before he said anything else.
Corlys Aurelyon.
The name remained unspoken, but it lingered there all the same.
Behind them, the wind groaned through the hills while below, Titos continued circling House solenar like a wolf pacing around a wounded animal.
"he will never be able to beat him," Aerys said carefully.
Aerys's jaw tightened. he said nothing more.
Part of him hated hymself for wanting titos to lose because it will be easier for them to regain control over house celerion , but another part understood that titos downfal was useful. Rosis watched Aerys quietly after that, his eyes narrowing slightly as though he was trying to understand something about him that he hadn't noticed before.
Below them, Titos's slaves continued causing problems for their own side in small, almost ridiculous ways.
The strangest part was that they never openly disobeyed orders. They simply obeyed them exactly as spoken.
If Titos ordered them to fight, they fought. If he ordered them to gather berries, they returned with sacks full of poisonous ones without warning anyone. If he told them to stack stones, they built unstable piles that collapsed minutes later.
Once, Titos forgot to specifically order them to attack after forcing open part of an enemy barricade. His entire group simply stood there staring at the opening while arrows rained down around them.
Even from a distance, Aerys could see the fury twisting his face.
Despite all the violence, House celerion remained inefficient. Titos understood fear and momentum, but most of his followers were useless without direct supervision.
Sometimes they emptied waste into the river upstream from House solenar, hoping to poison the defenders. Other times they burned fields or tried to steal horses from the stables near the outer walls.
The cadets of solenar answered with mockery instead of panic.
From atop their walls, they ate fresh bread and shouted insults down at the attackers while fishermen pulled trout from the river beneath them. One afternoon, a girl from celerion slipped while trying to relieve herself near the water and fell directly into the filth her own people had dumped there.
The defenders laughed so hard that even some of Titos's soldiers looked embarrassed.
Titos responded the next day by dragging one of his captured slaves in front of the gates.
The boy was tall and handsome in a careless sort of way, with the kind of grin that probably came naturally to him before all of this began. He still thought the whole thing was some kind of game until Titos stepped behind him and sliced off one of his ears.
The boy collapsed screaming for his mother.
The Proctors did nothing.
They hovered overhead in groups of two or three while healers descended occasionally to treat injuries severe enough to threaten permanent damage. Beyond that, they simply watched.
On the twentieth day, Titos attempted to break down the gates of House solenar with a massive tree trunk carried by several students.
The defenders answered by throwing baskets of bread over the walls.
The attackers immediately dropped the battering ram and began fighting each other over the food.
A moment later, screams erupted across the battlefield.
The loaves had been filled with razor blades.
That night, Titos retaliated.
He approached the walls with five of his newest slaves, including the boy whose ear he had mutilated. In his hands were several wooden clubs.
He distributed the weapons calmly, almost ceremonially, before pointing toward the captured girl he had dragged from the walls days earlier.
"Hit her," he ordered.
At first, the blows were hesitant.
Then Titos reminded them what happened to slaves who disobeyed.
The strikes became harder after that.
The girl collapsed quickly, but they kept going. Wood cracked against bone while blood soaked through her hair and ran down her face into the dirt. By the time Titus finally raised a hand for them to stop, she no longer had the strength to scream.
He grabbed her by the hair and dragged her back toward camp like discarded cargo.
From our position in the hills, we watched everything.
Callius nearly ran toward the battlefield before Léa and Quinn restrained him together.
"She'll survive," Aerys told him, though he wasn't entirely certain.
Rosis spat bitterly into the grass and reached for Léa's hand. Aerys remember thinking how strange it looked—Rosis comforting someone else.
later at night, they learned Titos still wasn't finished.
He had tied the beaten girl to a post at the foot of the fortress, while one of the girls from his pack spent hours screaming insults in the darkness, pretending to be her.
Maybe the girl from solenar believed she was safe , Maybe she thought the Proctors would intervene before things went too far.
Maybe she imagined she would survive this and return home someday. After an hour, the ramparts glowed, but it wasn't torchlight; it was the light of dozens of spells that were cast.
They never saw the target of their spells until it was too late. At dawn by the time the healers descended from Eclipse, the girl had already been injured beyond saving. The riders stared in horror while her broken body was carried into the sky, She never returned.
The Proctors said nothing, Did nothing.
For the first time since arriving here, Aerys found myself missing home so badly it hurt him .
Eventually Titus ran out of slaves to capture.
The students of solenar stopped leaving their walls after sunset and extinguished the fires along their ramparts at night. Though the land outside the fortress had been devastated, they still had gardens and orchards protected within the walls, along with access to the river.
Titos could do little beyond burning fields and stealing whatever crops remained.
Even that became dangerous.
The last apples left behind were filled with hidden needles and wasp stingers.
Little by little, the siege stalled.
Titos had failed.
And like every tyrant who loses a war against an enemy, he eventually turned toward his own people instead.