The troops made it back to Glasgow the following afternoon. The slow, two-day trudge was one he hoped he never had to repeat. If only the Howls hadn’t eaten all the damned horses. If only the necromancers hadn’t destroyed the roads.
If only it hadn’t started raining after the first hour, and hadn’t let up since.
Aidan had expected cheering from the amassed crowds when they made their way through Glasgow’s gate. After all, the army would only return if victorious. There was no option for failure.
Instead, the moment the drawbridge opened and he and his army marched into the waiting city, there was silence.
He walked at the front of the troops. Made sure everyone within Glasgow saw him for who he truly was—a leader. Victorious. Loved. He would have held Calum’s head, but it had “accidentally” been dropped in a fire the night before.
It didn’t matter. No one was there to see it. At least, not the crowds he’d expected.
They walked past the high black walls of magically crafted stone, a heavy rain falling around them, making everything gray and black and green in the pallid light. At once, the familiar smells of the city wafted over him—the scent of baking bread, the tang of stone, the undercurrent of excrement. Above them, high on the wall, the guards left to man the city watched them pass, hands to their foreheads in salute.
But the city itself—the wide boulevard, the winding side roads that stretched up into the rolling hills of the West End—was nearly deserted.
“Not exactly the hero’s welcome,” Aidan muttered to Kianna.
She grunted. Watched a small child run off into a nearby building.
Was it the rain?
Normally, he’d feel his hackles rise, but the city didn’t seem abandoned or off. It just seemed...blasé. They walked deeper in, making their way toward the University. The architecture here had been mostly salvaged. The long sandstone tenement flats that housed all of Glasgow’s residents. The winding cobbled and concrete streets.
Just like before, the tenements facing the main road had shops on the ground floor. But they had changed drastically in the past few years, cafés and chippies and barbers giving way to more important vestiges of humanity. Like open-air grocers. Seamstresses.
And pubs.
There was still a pub on every corner, if not more. They were the only things that had truly survived and thrived post-Resurrection. There was always a reason to drink your troubles away. And in this country, there was always a need for a warm place in which to do it.
A few civilians stared from windows as they passed, holding pints or small children before them like shields. Before, Glasgow had been fairly chic. But now, with all clothing passed down and recycled and restitched, the emphasis was on warmth rather than fashion. There were still peacoats and cardigans and hints of tartan, but they had all been layered and repurposed. And soiled.
It made Aidan’s blood boil, seeing them cower within the walls that he and his troops kept safe. Acting as though he were part of the problem. Fire roared within him, told him to show them just what they should be afraid of—set a flat on fire, turn the rain to embers. The rest of him knew it wasn’t personal. Commoners treated every mage like a boil-covered witch.
To the civilians, he and the rest of the Guild were a necessity, but a terrible one. Using magic, they were no better than the monsters and necromancers that prowled outside. He’d always thought that Scotland would be more receptive to magic, that maybe somewhere up in the highlands they still believed in the Fair Folk and other worlds and all the rest. But the truth was, humanity was all the same.
The people here didn’t trust what they didn’t understand, same as everyone else.
Which meant that even though Aidan and the rest of the troops were the only reason any of them were alive, they were regarded with the same hatred as Howls and necromancers. At least the civilians tried to keep that hatred concealed behind layers of drunkenness and fear.
Aidan made sure to look each and every person he saw in the eye. To remind them who was in power.
Who it was that paid for their new freedom in blood.
He wondered if that freedom would be enough to change the council’s mind.
They cut through Kelvingrove Park, which had been converted into magically fueled greenhouses and grazing grounds. Fields of barley and hops and wheat stretched along the River Kelvin, bowing under the weight of rain, while glasshouses brimmed with vegetables. Distantly, he heard the bleating of sheep. And a bagpipe. Of bloody course. He hated bagpipes.
Above it all, peeking up over the few remaining trees, was the building the Guild had taken as its own: Glasgow University.
Even after everything that had happened—the buildings lost, the cities destroyed—there was a magic to the University that belied the turn of years. Its tallest tower still stretched up to the graying sky like a castle turret, as it had when Aidan first visited. Umber stone, intricate latticework in the upper windows, slate-tiled roofs. Castle-like. Majestic. Sprawling. The other University buildings might have fallen, but this one endured.
It filled him with pride just as it filled him with dread.
This had been his home. Not even a week ago, it had been torn from him. Now, like a scorned lover, he had to hope that it would accept him back.
No, Fire seethed. You should never feel the need to grovel. It is they who should beg for forgiveness.
He curled that confidence around himself. They would beg to have him back, and he would allow it. So long as being there served him.