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my Dragon shifter’s body a reflection of the beast that lay dormant within me.
“I’m Kayla Brimtheon by the way. I’m one of The Matriarch’s adopted children which most people already know but it kinda seems like you’re not from around here so I figured maybe you don’t.”
“But we do have a cage for feral beasts beneath The Matriarch’s chambers. She’s in there. At night you can hear her sobbing and pleading to be let go.”
I was about to turn away from them to assess my opponents but my gaze caught on the little blue Sayer Dragon which was now perched on the shoulder of the man The Matriarch was speaking to.
Not that I could use it here. But luckily for me, Dragon fire could pass for Pyros flames easily enough so I’d be able to make use of it during this brawl in place of my earth magic.
Ransom Rake was a muscle-bloated imbecile who clearly hadn’t seen real battle yet despite his bragging.
But it seemed, as Mirelle had suspected all along, that corruption was rooted in the prophets of the stars. There was more to them than they let The Waning Lands at large know.
“The girl is the key to all of this,” she continued in a frantic whisper. “And I need to tell you something I should have told you sooner. It’s about your emotions and why you cannot-”
Our spies have confirmed the trader Mavus Angelico is selling news of a great weapon in Pyros’s possession.”
I nodded, moving to pick up my swords and strap them in place, running my finger over the dagger I’d tethered to my hip too. Everest’s dagger, the one marked with my name.
The brute who had floored most of his opponents stared right at me, a moment of recognition passing between us, one unhinged soul acknowledging another.
She glanced back at the Sky Witch and I noted the strange, lingering look they gave each other. There was no hatred there that I could place, but then again, I had always been bad at judging emotions.
He said nothing in answer to that and a biting coldness took root in me. I didn’t mention his family, but the unsaid words were loud enough. Neither of us should have lost the people we loved in the ways we had. But I wasn’t the one who had been the deliverer of death.
“They have,” Kaiser said simply. “They know we have the Void. Their alliance is in aid of claiming you.”
“Mavus Angelico has been selling the information from land to land.”
“That slimy, piece of shit conman. That manatee fucking trince o kaské. I’ll kill him. I’ll slice him open and feed every piece of his traitorous guts to the fishes!”
My lips parted as I found that arrogant Dragon asshole smirking at me through the tiny window in the top corner of the room, looking so fucking amused by my predicament that I was damn tempted to smack that look right off of his face. But then reality caught up to me.
I’d forgotten how damn big he was, my eyes rolling over the breadth of his chest and the cut of his muscles which strained against the ill-fitting Flamebringer garb he wore. His dark skin was shadowed in stubble, the line of his jaw accentuated by it and the silver of his eyes flashed in the light of the fires in the room.
“I’ve spent the last few weeks hunting you down and I finally got your location by following The Matriarch’s emotionless lump of a son down here, spectre, but you don’t even look thrilled to see me,”
He surged forward, tugging me towards him, and I gasped as his lips crashed against mine, a flood of want exploding through me and my eyes falling closed before I realised that I couldn’t feel a thing.
“And I don’t even know your name.”
“Vesper,” I admitted, the name a curse on my lips but he drank it in, his pupils dilating as the weight of his power pressed up close to the edge of his skin, my palm buzzing at the promise of its kiss.
The joining of our magic was like a fuse finally meeting with dynamite, the following explosion ripping through the two of us in a wave of potent pleasure before diving into Bastian’s body and tearing free of him again with a blast that had my breaths coming raggedly.
And then his mouth really was on mine. My shock was stolen quickly by the heat of his skin, the rough demand of his lips and the powerful hunger in his body.
My traitorous lips parted for his, welcoming the press of his tongue against mine alongside a rough moan which rolled up the back of my throat to join in the betrayal. His fingers pushed into my hair, pulling me closer and my body fit against him like it had been moulded to do nothing other than that.
It was fire in the dead of winter, a shock of lightning to my bruised and silenced heart, it was thunder breaking over a desert and it was the awakening of a creature I’d almost forgotten I could be. Kissing Bastian Carderrin was treason of the highest form.
“Cinder Vale will fall to us this day!” I boomed and my warriors cried out their agreement. “Leave none alive in your wake!”
Kaiser laid a hand on my arm - the gesture could have been misinterpreted for comfort had I not known his true intentions.
“Earl Tarlord is one of the few Earls who leads his army into battle from the front,”
“His bravery will earn him his death soon enough.”
“Our people butchered his family in an attempt to assassinate him. They managed to destroy most of his bloodline aside from the most important one. Him.
“He butchered the entire legion who were responsible for his family’s demise and decorated his throne room with their bones.
He has had his vengeance but his hatred pushes him to seek more and more of it. He will not be satisfied until he has taken the heads of every Fae of power in Pyros. It makes him predictable and will be his downfall in the end,” Kaiser
My gut lurched as Kaiser’s possession latched onto something deeper, more terrible than water magic even in its most ruthless form.
“You can do more than this.” His possession bit into me so deeply that it hurt, every part of my body becoming his.
“It is caged somehow, not fully unleashed. You must free it. I command you to.”
“You’re a fool if you believe that. Do you really think a prophecy would have been written about a power so meagre? You are unstoppable, silka la vin. And you will prove it this very hour.”
“I may not have fought in a battle yet but I’m well made for it. I’ll gut more Flamebringers this day than you will, sky prince.”
I slammed into a Skyforger on a windrider, the air slamming from my lungs as pain splintered through me and I was knocked aside again, pinwheeling off of it and shrieking in terror.
I wrapped my whole body around her, looking up to find The Matriarch herself glaring at me in surprise.
was shaken, my whole body trembling as I met the eyes of my saviour. “Oh boy, I do not like you. But I did not wish to see you go splat.” Galomp nodded to me, patting my head then lumbering off to join the warriors fighting against the Flamebringers.
I released a sigh, my shoulders drooping. I was exhausted already. I’d always thought more about the after-parties of war.
It wasn’t unusual for Reapers to attend and witness battles. Our kind kept records of the Endless War without bias, laying watch to all that took place and keeping the truth guarded in archives far from battlefields.
“Or maybe you just want me to yourself for a few more weeks?”
“And if I did? Would losing yourself in the wilds with me for a week or three be so very bad?”
The heavy lumps of black glass and stone exploded around us and I stared into his silver shot eyes with my heart racing and every lie we’d ever told each other keeping us company. “What are we to one another, spectre?”
Cinder Vale was destroyed in every way that counted and despite me knowing that I should have been relishing this victory, I couldn’t help but feel a sourness to it as so many of the houses of its citizens were destroyed so callously.
“He says you’re not as mean as you pretend to be. He says you should listen to your heart more often.”
I snarled because whoever the Fae who had sired me were, I would never find out their names anyway, so it had always seemed most honest to claim they were dead. They might as well have been so far as I was concerned.
“Nope,” said the oldest of them firmly. “There is no secret steam engine hiding anywhere and no way for us to sneak away and nowhere in the mountains for us to run to.” “’Specially not a magic cave with an oasis where nargalumps swim,” the middle girl agreed firmly.
