Page 218 of Brimstone

We were fucking dead!

We were . . .

. . . hunched over, clinging to each other, panting breathlessly, but somehow still alive. The flames ripped over our heads, slamming into the wall behind us, flashing blue and green as they struck the stone. The beast had missed us. On purpose, it seemed. It could have easily engulfed us if it had wanted to; the fact that it wasn’t roasting us to char and bone must have been intentional.

Khydan’s heart sang in my ears. He cradled the back of my head, pressing my face into the front of his leathers, his blood spiked with adrenaline and panic. I could smell it roaring through his veins in the hollow of his throat; even now, with death sharing the same air as us, the scent of his blood was enough to drive me toward insanity.

I should have drunk from him. At least that way we’d both go out on a high. But that was a ridiculous thought. Selfish. We weren’tallowedto die. There was too much riding on us. Khydan and I held the future of Yvelia in our hands. More than that. If Zareth was to be believed, we held the futures of millions of realms in our hands. Billions oflives.

We stood at a nexus in the threads of fate. If we died, so did everything else. For a moment, I believed the dragon had seenthatin our minds, and that was why it had redirected its fire. After all, if it killed us, chances were it would die soon, too.

I clung to Khydan so tightly that my hands went numb. Then they started to tingle. No . . . huh. Strange. Only my right hand was tingling. The sensation was neither pleasant nor painful. It built until the unnerving feeling had traveled all the way up my arm and settled in my shoulder, blooming up my neck and prickling along my jaw.

The air was alive, as if a thousand flies were buzzing around a corpse. The brimstone kept coming. It spattered as it hit the wall, throwing burning gobs of glowing molten rock and metal in every direction.

Khydan stiffened, his fingers digging into my back, but he didn’t let me go.

A hollow thrum pounded inside of me. A hammering at a door. A second pulse that served no purpose. Magic. Unfamiliar. Unrealized.

The brimstone. My body was reacting to it. It drew me to it, but I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’treachit. And even if I’d been able to, I wouldn’t have known what to do with it once I had.

We would die soon. What else was there to do? My power over the quicksilver wouldn’t help me here. Khydan was more powerful than most of the Fae, but his shadows wouldn’t beenough to bring down this beast. The air burned, scorching my airways, but all we could do was endure.

Eventually, the torrent of fire stopped.

Mercy. The reprieve from the heat alone was a mercy . . .

“I am Arissan, keeper of this gate,” the dragon boomed. “And I havenotspared you out of mercy. That word does not exist in this place. Your lives are temporary. I have spared you for one reason, and one reason alone.”

“Why?” My voice echoed around the dragon’s lair.

Khydan reached out and gripped my hand. The muscles in his jaw ticked as he glowered up at the megalithic monster. Flames and smoke wreathed her teeth as it ducked its head and snarled. “Your mate knows the answer to this question. Don’t you, Khydan Finvarra?”

Slowly, Khydan nodded. “You’ve spared us so thatIcan be brought before your master for judgment.”

“And your criiiiime?” Arissan’s tongue dripped blue-tinged flames as it flicked back and forth through the air like a switch.

“I’ve committed no crime. I have done nothing more than defend my people and my lands. But you’ve seen my thoughts . . . and my past. You have seen me on the mountainside at Ajun. The undergods of Diaxis will charge me with murder—”

“The murder of my offspring!”The dragon roared. There was fury in the deafening sound, but also anguish. A pillar of flame erupted from Arissan’s throat again—though totally different from the thick, molten brimstone it had spewed at us just now. This was white hot hellfire. It bloomed against the ceiling of the cavern and fanned outward, rolling over the soot-stained rock as if defying gravity.

The heat swelled beyond imagining. Too much. Too hot. I was physically far stronger than I had ever been, but there were still limits to what my new body could endure.

As my vision tunneled, Khydan’s voice echoed inside my head.

Don’t speak. When you wake, for the love of all the gods, donotsay a single word.

Metal.

Hotmetal.

I knew the smell well. So well, in fact, that I could identify it in my sleep. I was back in the forge. Elroy was chiding me for spilling metal shavings all over the floor. I was—

Fuck!

I was upside down! I was hanging over a hall ten times the size of the one at Ammontraíeth. I was fuckingswinging. . .

Blood rushed in my ears. A thunderous swelling of sound, so loud my head spun. But it wasn’t my blood. It was thecrowd.