Page 45 of A Kingdom of Sand and Ice (Kingdom of Gods #2)
I fear the day when witches are hated across all the kingdoms. I pray to the gods to spare us from it. But now, I see our end. It is so near, I feel I could reach out and touch it.
Tabitha Wysteria
The city of Spark had been erased, vanished from the map as though it had never existed.
Obliterated. Nothing remained of the once-charming coastal haven, where the royal castle had stood proud amidst ivory sands and lush, meticulously tended gardens.
The town surrounding it, with its red-tiled roofs and sun-warmed walls, had crumbled to ash.
Vera had watched it all burn, the sight more surreal than she’d ever imagined.
Drakonian homes could not be felled by ordinary flame, but magic was another matter entirely.
The witches had left Spark in ruin, their eyes now set on the true prize: Fireheart, the capital.
Vera had succeeded in diverting Hagan’s attention, buying her sister precious time.
But eventually, the truth would find him.
He would realise that Dawn was no longer among them, no longer marching to his twisted tune. Ah well.
Vera smirked at the thought of his expression, the confusion, the fury. One of his own, gone. Defected to aid the enemy. The tantrum that would follow… She would savour every second of it, hidden deep within the shadows like a spider awaiting the tremble of her web.
‘Vera.’
Her name on his lips was like acid. Always had been.
He had spent their childhood wielding his influence like a blade, using it to cut her down in the castle halls, barking orders at her as if she were nothing more than a servant.
Because that’s what she had been forced to be.
Just a maid. And their mother? She had stood by, lips sealed, eyes blind, as if Vera were truly beneath notice.
Not a single word of defence, not even a glance of recognition.
As though Vera were a ghost, lingering in the corridors of her own bloodline.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Hagan said, crouched low as he stared at the scorched horizon. Vera raised a brow. What would a brute like him know of beauty? Beauty would be watching his blood spill upon the stones they now stood on. Beauty would be the grass dyed red beneath his broken form.
‘And the plan is?’ she asked, her tone clipped and cold.
The searing heat of the drakonian lands gnawed at her skin, unbearable in its relentlessness.
They had marched on foot from Spark to Fireheart, a decision made by Hagan in one of his grandiose fits of whimsy.
He had claimed it was for the fresh air, but in truth, it was theatre.
A ploy. He wanted the drakonians to see the smoke curling across the sky, to feel the dread tightening in their chests. A warning. An omen.
Vera rolled her eyes. Always so dramatic.
Couldn’t he conquer a city without turning it into a stage play?
But no, every move had to be laced with pomp and grandeur.
And the others, the witches and warlocks, lapped it up like starving dogs, bewitched by his performance. She, however, remained unimpressed.
‘We march straight through.’ Hagan extended his hand, gesturing towards the city as if the answer lay cradled in his palm.
‘We don’t have a Red Guard stationed in every city, Hagan,’ Vera replied. ‘What we managed in Spark won’t be so easily replicated here. This, this will be different.’
He scoffed, the sound low and derisive. ‘That won’t be a problem.’
‘Power has a way of creeping into our minds,’ she warned, her voice taut with veiled threat, ‘slithering beneath the surface until we no longer recognise our own reflection. It blinds us. Strips us of reason. Many of our own will die.’ She didn’t bother including the lives of others. He wouldn’t give a damn.
‘Isn’t this what you wanted too, sister?’ he asked, the word landing like a stone between them.
Vera stilled, something sharp curling beneath her ribs at the sound of it. Sister. They had never truly been siblings, not in affection or kinship. Their blood only bound them in vengeance, a mutual hunger to make the world bleed for its cruelty.
‘I want many things in this life, brother .’ She allowed the word to drip with disdain. Hagan turned, his shaven head tilting just slightly, eyes narrowing in reply. He’d caught the note of challenge in her tone, subtle as a blade between the ribs.
He stood, stretching his back and neck with deliberate slowness, the movement a silent reminder of his size and strength.
Taller than Vera by far, he towered above her like a shadow threatening to fall.
It was his way of posturing, asserting dominance without a word.
She let him have it, for now. Let him swell with borrowed power.
When the time came for him to fall, she would be the one to gather his broken pieces… or grind them beneath her heel .
The land surrounding them was arid and cracked, sun-scorched with no shelter to shield them from the blistering heat. Vera had warned against travelling so openly across such terrain because they were utterly exposed. And there was still the matter of the dragons.
Hagan had tried to kill the drakonians’ beasts, the ones kept deep beneath the castle. But by the time they’d stormed the dungeons, the dragons had vanished, escaped. Or perhaps, Vera mused with a faint smile, someone had opened the gates for them.
She had stood in silence, watching as the winged titans fled into the night, the tunnels echoing with the thunder of their wings. Yet wild dragons still roamed these lands untamed, unpredictable, and Fireheart itself could unleash a few if it came to that.
Her gaze caught on a peculiar sight. A box, suspended mid-air between two witches, gliding along with quiet menace.
It wasn’t large enough to hold a body, but it was just sizeable enough to stir her suspicion.
What was Hagan carrying? What sinister little trick had he brought along like a gift-wrapped promise?
One glance at his purple eyes, glittering with malice, gave her the answer she didn’t want. She’d find out soon enough, and she’d likely wish she hadn’t.
‘Hurry along,’ Hagan called over his shoulder, his grin all teeth and cruelty. ‘We mustn't be late.’
…
The city of Fireheart unfurled before them like a tapestry of flame and stone.
A sprawling metropolis of labyrinthine alleyways and winding paths that could ensnare even the most seasoned traveller.
Its rooftops gleamed red as spilt blood beneath the light, while the bricks, sun-baked and time-worn, shifted subtly in hue as the day wore on, casting the streets in ever-changing shades of gold and ochre.
From high windows, the city revealed itself in quiet fragments: silken clothes billowed lazily in the breeze; pots of drakonian flora—petals sharp as glass and colours bright as flame—perched on sills; and figures leaned out, their expressions a mixture of curiosity and disdain as they observed the quiet below.
Drakonians were a people of sun and stone, accustomed to living life out in the open.
The women whispered beneath parasols, the children darted down cobbled lanes, and the men huddled at corners, wagering coin on games whose rules no outsider could ever hope to grasp.
Vera’s gaze caught on one such game, its pieces abandoned on a weathered bench in the main square.
It had been left mid-play, frozen in time the moment whispers of witches swept through the streets like an omen.
Doors had slammed shut, curtains drawn. A city brimming with life had stilled into eerie silence.
Hagan came to a halt before the temple, a grand structure carved from ivory-coloured stone, its tower rising like a sentinel above the rooftops. The platform at its peak was unmistakable—a roost shaped for dragons. Vera lifted her eyes, half-expecting the beat of wings to echo from the sky.
‘Hagan…’ she mumbled under her breath, unsettled by the hush that wrapped the city like a shroud.
But, as ever, he paid her no heed. He ascended the temple steps with the slow, deliberate gait of someone convinced of his own divinity.
Behind him, the crate—still levitating on that unnatural green mist—drifted silently, like a shadow tethered to his will.
Vera glanced back. Where were the drakonians? Surely they had gathered their kin, their most treasured possessions, and fled for safer ground? That would have been the wisest choice. And yet… she knew them. Drakonians were steeped in pride; they would rather turn to ash than run.
At the summit of the steps, Hagan turned, arms outstretched before his gathered assembly, a congregation he had dragged in chains or drawn with honeyed words, it mattered little.
Vera’s eyes scanned the crowd, searching for Allegra among the familiar faces, but all she found were eyes fixed on Hagan as if he were some celestial being descended to earth.
‘We have not come to slaughter you!’ Hagan proclaimed, his voice ringing through the square like a sermon. ‘We have come to bring peace, once and for all.’
Vera stifled a laugh, the sound bitter in her throat.
Peace. Was there anyone left foolish enough to believe him?
Hagan was no bringer of harmony. He had drenched his hands in blood magic, sacrificed an entire bloodline, and would not be sated by one kingdom alone.
His thirst was unquenchable. Power, once tasted, devoured the mind like rot.
And Hagan… Hagan had been drinking deeply for far too long.
‘This land is now ours!’