Page 112

CHAPTER FIFTY SIX

T he wind whipped around our bodies as Vesper launched us into the sky, her power still blazing from her while mine had begun to dwindle. I supposed there was no lack of desire on a battlefield to slow her down but the force of her gifts was staggering all the same.

I gripped her waist and she held my bicep tightly in turn, her free hand controlling the magic which propelled us skyward. There was a stiffness to her posture which only further enforced the words she’d pelted me with.

This was the last time she’d be in my arms until the moment I came calling to collect on our bargain and everything from her expression to the dark storm twisting in her grey eyes only punctuated that pronouncement.

I said nothing. I’d given her my truth and she’d hurled it back at me plainly enough. She didn’t care if I was alone in this world and I’d been a fool to believe she might have.

Everything between us had been based on this end. She’d been leading me here all along and I’d been nothing more than a beast in her chains.

The rush of the wind against my bare arms and face made an ache form in my chest and smoke tumbled up the back of my throat as the Dragon within me stirred.

I hadn’t truly flown in so long and the urge to spread my wings and take mastery over the sky was a constant draw. But that was only another thing that had been stolen from me by the ravages of time, my wing broken beyond use, my body betraying me with that fact.

I looked at Vesper, though she didn’t deign to look back.

Strands of pink hair whipped around her face, lashing at her cheekbones and tumbling across those stoney eyes.

I wondered once again whether she shared in my agony.

I knew far more about her kind than I suspected even she did and I knew that she was hiding a great deal of herself from the eyes of the world.

“Do you ever fully shift?” I asked her and those storm cloud eyes whipped to mine, thunder flashing through them which almost masked her flinch.

“No,” she replied darkly, only deepening my suspicions.

“Because of them?” I asked, jerking my chin towards the sky island which was now almost close enough to touch.

“Because of all of it,” she spat and I let the issue fall away beneath us.

We shot up the cliff face of the floating island and Vesper propelled us over the heads of the Fae gathered on its precipice. Most of them ignored us but a few caught sight of her pink hair and cried out in greeting.

“The Sky Witch lives!”

“She’s home!”

“It’s a blessing from Gemini themselves!”

“More likely a curse.”

She ignored every word, launching us beyond them towards a squat stone fortress which lay like a hulking beast at the head of the island.

“That’s Echo Fort,” she said darkly. “He’ll be there.”

A man clad in white battle leathers splattered with bright blood and smeared in soot tipped his head back to watch as we approached, his attention as sharp as an eagle’s as he looked not to her, but to me.

“Your master, I assume?” I sneered but she held her tongue.

Her silence burned, the sharp wit on her tongue no longer offered to me either. She was shutting me out and I was like a mutt with a door slamming in its face on a winter’s night, whining to be let back in.

The sting of her choice made my blood heat, the beast inside me pacing back and forth.

She hadn’t thought to dose me with the suppressant since we’d been reunited and in truth I’d tossed the lot of it into the river at the start of my journey to retrieve her anyway.

I wouldn’t be controlled again. Not by her and certainly not by the bastard whose cold eyes had just lit with something akin to triumph.

“You did it,” he breathed as Vesper lowered us towards him and her chin lifted, spine straightening like a dog called to heel.

“I did, Prince Dragor,” she agreed, her tone void of all emotion.

I looked at her again as the ground drew closer to our boots, willing her to turn her head, begging her to show me who she truly was beneath that mask.

But she didn’t turn to face me.

A smear of soot stained her jaw, blood peppered her tanned skin, mixing with the faint freckles which covered her nose.

Her full lips were drawn tight, not pliant and wanting as they’d been such a short time ago and her eyes, those grey eyes which refused to meet mine were so much darker than they’d been before.

Like a gale had rolled through her and was only growing fiercer by the moment, no sign of letting up at all.

Her postured tightened and I knew she could feel what I wanted.

Look at me. Just fucking look, you coward.

But she didn’t turn her head. She only dropped us to the gravel right before the man who had placed her on my trail.

The moment my boots hit the ground I felt the curse she’d tied me with shatter, the power her blood magic had held over me crumbling apart like a fistful of sand.

She felt it too, her throat bobbing on a swallow as I released her abruptly and took a step back.

Her hand fell from my arm more slowly, her nails biting into my flesh then fingertips burning a path right down to my wrist, palm, fingers…

Then she was gone.

A stone fell to the pit of my stomach, weighted there through years of solitude and captivity.

I knew that feeling well. I’d felt it in the dark moments when I’d tried to take count of the years which had passed me by.

I’d felt it in the ache my limbs had endured from being cramped in that cave for so long that time had lost all meaning entirely.

I’d felt it in the pain of every death I’d had to accept had come to pass without me there to bear witness to any of them.

My mother, father, aunts and friends, warriors and kinsfolk, each face I’d once known, no matter how briefly, all taken from me one, by one, by one.

My captors had been faceless, their features hidden beneath golden cowls which only enhanced my solitude. I’d had nothing and no one in that darkness.

Until there had been her.

Pale pink hair and tempest grey eyes which held all manner of otherworldly power. She’d captivated me in that first look and claimed me with the swing of a golden axe which spelled my freedom.

And now here she was, turning her back on me and condemning me to the same torture which I had endured for far too long before.

The man she’d named Prince Dragor stepped forward, his hand shifting from his pocket, a flash of green awakening a host of unholy memories within me and with a bellow of defiance, I tore free of my flesh and shifted in a flash of wild movement.

A Dragon’s roar escaped my lips as the beast within me was released, Vesper and her prince hurling themselves aside with barely enough time to be saved from the crush of my enormous body landing on them.

Screams broke out around us, warriors bred for battle and bloodshed crying out for mercy as they beheld the truth of what I was.

The Dragons had been lost to our lands a long time before I was born and the Fae here knew of my kind in nothing more than legend and fairytale. The truth was something far more ferocious than any could have imagined.

I was a beast ten times the size of any other they’d ever beheld, my gunmetal grey scales reflecting the flash of starlight and raging battle alike from their metallic sheen.

My mouth was filled with teeth the length of their bodies, fire blazing in my chest so hot that it could sear the flesh from their bones.

I was a monster among men, a legend forgotten to time and a beast which would never again be caged at the hands of inferior Fae.

Prince Dragor bellowed commands for his warriors to surround me but I blasted Dragon fire at those foolish enough to try, burning them to dust in the blink of an eye and causing the panicked screams to raise in pitch.

I reared up, my claws slamming into the side of the fortress which stood sentinel over its people and tearing a great chunk of stone from its wall which went crashing away across the island.

The great lump of stone made the entire island quake.

All who remained in its path were crushed into bloody smears of flesh and bone before it tumbled free of the floating land and hurtled down to the battlefield below.

“Dragon!” some fool screamed as if there were any around us unable to see the truth of what I was for themselves. I whipped my head towards him, incinerating him with a blast of Dragon fire that scorched the sky itself.

“Stop him!” Dragor commanded, running at me with his sword raised and though I pelted him with Dragon fire, his air shield held firm to protect him from my wrath.

A group of Fae rushed me from behind, throwing themselves at my tail in an effort to pin me down and I thrashed it wildly, cracking their skulls and spines alike, the long spikes on my tail gouging great lines into the dirt which were soon filled with their blood.

Swords crashed against my scales and pierced my sides, my legs, more and more warriors running to follow the orders of their prince and incapacitate me.

I thrashed harder, my wings snapping out like I might take flight but the broken one only partially spread, pain biting through me as I fought to force its compliance. I would burn the sky itself if only I could claim it as my domain once more.

A flash of pink hair had me whipping around, my jaws snapping at Vesper’s heels as she threw herself through the doors of the fortress to escape me.

I sent a flood of Dragon fire after her in my fury then launched myself at the building, my claws biting into the stone and tearing great gouges from its sides.

I tore at the front of the pale stone building, my tail thrashing against the ground so violently that the entire sky island trembled beneath the force, Skyforgers crying out in alarm all around me.

Echo Fort groaned as my claws pierced it, rubble tumbling from the wounds I caused it and falling towards the Fae at my feet who cried out and fought to shield themselves from the falling missiles with domes of air.

Blood spilled from my wounds, their swords slicing into my scales wherever they could reach me while Prince Dragor barked commands at them to refrain from using lethal force.

But that was a mistake he would quickly regret.

Nothing would stop me now short of death itself.

I would not return to the dark. I would not be a pawn to any Fae ever again.

I swung my head around, slamming my skull into the side of the fort and knocking more brickwork tumbling to the ground. My eye aligned with one of the windows and Vesper stumbled to a halt within the building, a dagger in her hand and her jaw tight with tension as she met my gaze.

We stared at each other for a lingering moment, the world quieting to the malice which echoed between us before it snapped like a chord as I parted my jaws and released a tremendous roar to the stars.

More Skyforgers leapt at me, launching themselves from the ground and clambering onto my back where they could strike at me with steel and magic alike. My scales were thick and rigid, their attempts to subdue me hindered by the simple reality of what I was.

Rage unlike any other captured me and I swung my head around to face the fools who dared to climb across my flesh like ants upon a blackbird.

I met the terror in their eyes with a torrent of Dragon fire so potent that it seared the skin from the bones of any who felt its kiss and sent them tumbling from my back like stalks of grass in the wind.

I threw my body into the side of the fortress, the walls cracking and splintering beneath the barrage. My tail crashed against the ground and the Skyforgers who hadn’t yet burned screamed as the dirt beneath their feet began to crack open.

I slammed my tail down again, the thunderclap of its connection with the earth sending a judder through the bones of the fortress and the entire sky island along with it.

Skyforgers shrieked in alarm as the land beneath them cracked and crumbled and I clawed my way up the side of the fortress as it fell apart with Dragon Fire pouring from my jaws.

“Echo Fort is falling!”

“The sky is burning!”

The warriors who had been set on attacking me ran for their lives as the island split apart beneath their feet, tumbling into crevasses and away to the land far below or launching themselves into the air in a desperate bid to escape the destruction.

I clawed at the fortress, tearing it apart in great chunks of broken masonry and sending it all crashing down onto the desolate battlefield below while fighting my way over the crumbling ruins.

Echo Fort was falling apart beneath me as I scaled it, the building groaning and quaking in protest to its demise.

I scrambled over tumbling towers and the screaming Fae trapped within them, my furious gaze locked on the woman who had blasted her way free of the debris, now hanging in the air before me with a wild acrimony in her storm grey eyes.

I released a roar which sent her hair flying back behind her shoulders but the fire which should have followed it didn’t come, my claws scrambling across falling stone as the world fell away beneath my feet.

The ruins of the fort collapsed under my weight and I dug my claws into its crumbling remains, letting its skeleton fall to the battlefield beneath me, my gut swooping as I plummeted with it and a defiant bellow parting my lips.

The wind tangled in the strands of her pink hair as she lurched towards me, her lips parted on a cry that might have contained my name.

The cliff rose up to snatch her from my view before I could confirm it and I plunged towards the battlefield amid a ball of Dragon fire and ruins, an echoing roar dominating the sky to draw all eyes closer in witness to my demise.