Page 217 of Brimstone

Should I—

He gave a single, firm shake of his head.Don’t touch your swords. If it takes umbrage with anyone, let it be me. Don’t move, Osha. Just . . . stayexactlywhere you are.

Smoke rolled off Nimerelle, thick and angry. If the dragon cared, it was impossible to tell. Like a dog waking from a long nap, it shook its giant head, sparks flying from its flared nostrils. The horns atop its head smashed awkwardly into the rough-hewn rock, and a large section of the ceiling sloughed away and came crashing down around the beast, rock turning to shrapnel where it struck the ground.

Run,my heart urged.What in all five hells are you doing, Fane? Fuckingrun.

I stood my ground, boots firmly planted, heeding Khydan’s command.

“Two thousand yearrrrssss have I lived. Never has a meal walked straight into my mouth,” the dragon snarled. Its mouth didn’t move. The wordswerespoken out loud—the walls wouldn’t have quaked so terribly otherwise—but it must have formed its words differently to Fae and humankind. Its tongue, forked and blackened, darted between its teeth, as if it was tasting the air. I’d seen plenty of dune asps do this back in Zilvaren. I’d never seen a snake lick a mouthful of yard-long yellowed teeth, though.

“You are notofthis place.”

“We are not.” The hall rang with Khydan’s voice. Clear and steady, he didn’t sound afraid. I sensed his fear, though. He didn’t try to shieldmefrom it. “We’re from—”

“I know the name of your home,” the dragon interrupted. “Do not speak it out loud.” It seemed to gather, pulling back, its neck arching and tucking into its broad, gleaming chest. The temperature in the ancient hall rose a degree or two. “Why have you come?” it demanded.

“We—”

“Theothermust speak!”

Me.Iwas the other. For some reason, it wanted me to answer. But I wasn’t as practiced an actor as my mate. Khydan’s hand tightened around Nimerelle’s hilt. The blade was kicking out so much smoke that it almost drowned out the light cast by our torches. Was it Khydan’s worry, bleeding into his god sword? Or was it the spark of Ren’s sister that still resided in the blade concerned for me?Don’t give it much, Khydan warned.Tell it we need to speak to—

“I hear you, boy,” the dragon snarled. “There is no dark corner where you may hide your whisperings fromme.”

Boy? How old was this thing that it would consider Khydan aboy? And, disturbingly, it could hear us speaking directly into each other’s minds? Could it hear ourthoughts, too? Our—

“I hear the grindings of the gears that drive the universe toward destruction. I hear all. I know . . .” Its tongue probed between shattered teeth, flickering back and forth in the air. “. . .all.”

The stone floor was formed of hexagonal tiles covered in husks and dried leaves and all kinds of debris. When the dragon spoke, the ground rocked so hard that the tile in front of me cracked into three pieces.

The beast breathed rancid smoke as it slowly advanced. “Youknow nothing, name breaker. Your mind is too young to even knowitself.”

“You’re right.” I felt my pulse everywhere. In my fingertips. The roof of my mouth. At my temples. I was going to throw up,for fuck’s sake. My very first confrontation with a mythical beast, and I was going to lose the contents of my stomach like a fucking coward. I wouldnotpiss myself. Just . . .no. “I am young. But at least I’m not hiding in the dark, waiting to do my master’s bidding.”

“Saeris.”This time, the warning was immediate. Out loud. Khydan’s tone suggested he thought I had lost my fucking mind. And maybe I had. Maybe a little madness was what it would take to make it through this situation alive. Who knew. But trying to approach this from a sane person’s perspective was beyond me. A sane person would never have stepped into that pool.

“What master do you claim rulesme, girl child?” the dragon hissed.

Lorreth hadn’t told me who ruled Diaxis when we had spoken of this place. Ren hadn’t, either, as he’d led us up the winding stairs toward our death. Maybe they didn’t know the name of the god who ruled these dark, dead halls. Or maybe they didn’t speak his name because, as I knew all too well, to speak a name gave it power. But Khydan spoke it now, his voice flat and cold.

“Styx. Lord of the charred aerie. King of dragons.Heis your master.Heis the one you must obey.”

The dragon had been creeping forward, lithe and sinuous. It was too big to conceal its approach, though. It stopped dead now, snarling at Khydan’s declaration.

“Who are you to speakhisname?”

“I am Kingf—” Khydan stopped himself. Old habits died hard. It was true—I had made the shift and referred to him by his true name easily enough, but something inside of me knew it was right. His whole life, Khydan had only known himself as Kingfisher. How much of a person’s identity resided in their name? How much of their soul? A strange thought. Khydan’s soul was the same as it had ever been. His personality, too.But . . . something fundamentalhadchanged inside him. It was subtle. It was because he wasfree.

“I am Khydan Graystar Finvarra. I walked these halls before, many years ago—”

“Little more than a Faeling, you were then. You were tortured here, I remember. You have come to exact revenge upon this place, then? To destroy my kind, and all who call this place home?”

“No. I come as an ambassador of my realm, as does my mate. We request an audience with Styx, per the rules of engagement between our realms. Etiquette—”

A jet of stinking, superheated air suddenly spewed from the dragon’s mouth, a plume of fire and molten rock chasing after it. There was no time to react. No time for anything. There was only the fire, and the heat, and our imminent deaths. Too late, I drew my shield, bigger and brighter than it had ever been before. It flickered and guttered as the brimstone tore through it.

We were dead.