Page 17 of Echoes of Fire (Drakarn Mates #2)

SIXTEEN

RATH

Orla’s fear lingered in the market’s choked air like smoke. Vendors scattered as I stormed through the lower districts, my scales burning so violently they cast crimson shadows across the stalls.

“Where is she?” I snarled, slamming a merchant against his own spice cart. Cinnamon pods rained down around us, their sweetness clashing with the ozone stink pouring from my overheating glands. The Drakarn’s yellowish scales grayed at the edges, fear souring his scent.

“I-I swear, my lord, I saw nothing?—”

My claws dug into his tunic, singeing the fabric. “Liar.” The word came out a growl, my fangs inches from his throat. “Her trail ends here. Who took her? Krazath’s rats? Karyseth’s zealots? ”

A child’s whimper cut through the tension. I released the merchant, his wares scattering as he fled. The market’s usual riot of noise had died to a hush, stall owners barricading themselves behind crates, mothers yanking fledglings into alleyways. Even the river algae’s faint glow seemed dimmer, like the city itself feared my wrath.

I followed the fractured traces of Orla’s scent—honeyed panic undercut by an acid tang. My wings twitched, half-unfurled, as I stalked past a butcher’s stall. The proprietor froze, cleaver hovering above a lava eel’s thrashing body.

“You.” I gripped his arm, ignoring the eel’s blood dripping down my wrist. “A human. Dragged through here. Where? ”

The Drakarn’s throat worked soundlessly before he managed, “I don’t know! They went east.”

I was already moving, boots crushing discarded fruit as I sprinted toward the district’s eastern edge. The tunnels loomed ahead, their jagged mouths spewing geothermal steam. Orla’s scent spiked here—sharp, human sweat cutting through Volcaryth’s mineral reek.

Too clean.

I skidded to a halt, nostrils flaring. The trail vanished at a rusted grate, its bars smeared with fresh blood. Human blood. My vision hazed red.

My claws found purchase in the grate’s hinges, muscles straining as I wrenched it open. Metal screamed, the sound swallowed by the chasm below.

Empty.

No body. No scent. Just a scrap of fabric caught on a rust spike—purple, like the strands she dyed in her hair. I crushed it in my fist, the growl building in my chest shaking the walls.

They’d scrubbed her. Stolen her. Dared .

A guard approached, spear trembling in his grip. “Blade Councilor, the protocols demand?—”

I backhanded the weapon into the abyss, my claws leaving gashes in his shoulder plates. “Demand this ,” I spat, storming past him. “Find her. Or burn.”

I couldn’t blindly follow her trail, not when it disappeared. I picked up my pace, heading for a place that might have answers.

The council chambers’ doors loomed ahead when his stench hit me—rotten sulfur and ambition. Krazath stepped from a side passage, wings tucked in a mockery of deference, his scales dulled by ash.

“Looking for something, my lord?” His tongue flicked over the fresh scar on his throat—the one I’d given him days prior.

I didn’t slow. “Move.”

He sidestepped, tail lashing. “Or what? You’ll burn another market down?” His laughter echoed off the corridor’s crystalline veins. “Pathetic. The great Rath brought low by?—”

My claws sank into his throat before he finished. I slammed him against the wall, fissures spiderwebbing through volcanic stone. His pupils blew wide, but the smirk stayed.

“Where. Is. She.” Spittle hissed against his scales.

Krazath’s gills flared, struggling to draw air. “Already in the Pit,” he choked. “By dawn, the shadows will peel her soft human flesh while she screams your name. A fitting end for a false mate.”

The wall cracked deeper under his skull. Krazath’s bravado wavered as heat warped the air between us.

“Kill me,” he rasped, “and your human dies slower. The challenge demands both participants.”

My grip loosened.

He wheezed a laugh, blood flecking his teeth. “The priestess invoked the ancient rites—no bond, no trial. If you’re not in the arena at sunrise, they’ll feed her to the beasts piece by piece.”

I dropped him. He crumpled, gasping, but still sneering.

Krazath’s taunts chased me down the corridor—a jagged sound cut short by the click of claws on stone. Zarvash emerged from the council chamber’s shadowed archway, flanked by two scribes clutching slates.

“Rash actions won’t reclaim your mate,” he said. One scribe stepped forward, offering a slate displaying legal script. I smashed it against the wall, shattering the screen into glittering shards.

Zarvash didn’t flinch. “The challenge is a mercy. Would you prefer Karyseth’s alternative? A public execution by molten immersion?”

One of the scribes shifted, revealing Orla’s journal clutched in his claws. My vision tunneled.

“Give. That. To me.”

I lunged.

Mektar seemed to materialize from nothingness—a midnight-blue blur—his tail snapping around my throat. Scales bit into my windpipe as he wrenched me backward. My claws scraped stone, leaving furrows in the floor.

“Cease,” Mektar hissed, the first word I’d heard him speak in weeks. His spiked tail tightened, forcing me to my knees.

Zarvash plucked the journal from the scribe’s grip, flipping through pages filled with Orla’s cramped sketches and notes. “Fascinating. She documented our geothermal vents’ resonance frequencies. Clever for a primitive.”

“Primitive?” I choked out. “She survived all this world has thrown at her.”

“Barely.”

“She never agreed to this challenge, nor did I,” I snarled.

Zarvash shrugged. “Irrelevant. It proceeds at dawn. Fight beside her, and you might both survive. Fight me now,” he leaned down, copper eyes reflecting my twisted expression, “and she dies screaming, alone.”

Mektar’s tail loosened just enough to let me breathe.

“Choose, Flame Heart,” Zarvash murmured. “Warrior or fool.”

Darrokar appeared in the archway, Nyx at his flank like a steel-scaled shadow. The Warrior Lord’s obsidian scales pulsed with restrained energy, his gaze sweeping over my battered state. “Stand down, Rath.”

Mektar let me go. He and Zarvash made their escape.

I whirled. “You knew.”

Darrokar sidestepped, blocking the entrance with his bulk. “I didn’t sanction this.”

“Liar!” The word erupted in a shower of sparks from my overheating glands. “Someone on the council had to. You let them drag her into their sick ritual!”

Nyx shifted, his steel-gray scales rasping like drawn blades. “You don’t think that councilor just ran out of this room like his scales were on fire? Zarvash is a snake. But the challenge is older than the city; it can’t be avoided now that it’s begun. You know this.”

I rounded on Darrokar, my wings flaring wide enough to brush the corridor’s crystal veins. “I don’t see you volunteering to prove your bond with a human.”

Darrokar’s claws flexed, the only betrayal of his anger. “Terra earned her place through combat. You have done nothing to win over the doubters but hide away with your mate as if she’s a shameful secret.”

The accusation struck like a lava whip. My fist connected with his jaw before I’d fully decided to swing. The crack echoed through the cavern—bone meeting scale, blood meeting fire.

Darrokar staggered, blood welling from a split lip. Nyx moved between us in a blur, his tail slamming into my chest hard enough to bruise. Breath exploded from my lungs as I skidded backward, claws screeching against stone.

“Enough!” Nyx roared, planting himself between us. “Kill each other after the human’s safe.”

Darrokar wiped his mouth, staring at the blood on his claws in disbelief. “You think I want this?” he snarled, advancing on me. “If Orla dies in that pit, you unravel. And Scalvaris needs you whole.”

I spat at his feet. “Scalvaris can burn.”

Nyx’s tail snapped out, pinning me against the wall. “You’d abandon thousands for one?”

“Yes.” The word left no room for debate. “For her. Absolutely.”

Darrokar’s nostrils flared, the scent of my conviction thickening the air. For a heartbeat, I saw it—the same recklessness that once made him charge a lava serpent bare-handed. Then it vanished beneath the Warrior Lord’s mask.

“Dawn approaches swiftly,” he said coldly. “Prepare for your human.”

I laughed—a broken, sulfurous sound. “Or what? You’ll lock me in a cell too?”

Nyx’s tail withdrew. I shoved past him, my claws leaving fresh gouges in the council chamber’s doorframe. Darrokar’s voice haunted me as I walked away—a growl laced with something that might’ve been regret. I didn’t look back.

The city blurred around me. Drakarn fled into side tunnels as I stormed toward the training grounds, my wings scraping the floor.

The caverns loomed ahead, their arched entrance carved with reliefs of ancient warriors. I remembered the first time I’d walked these halls as a fledgling—pride swelling as my mother’s claws rested on my shoulder. Now, the stone faces seemed to sneer.

I seized the nearest combat dummy, its straw guts spilling as I hurled it into a rack of lava-forged spears. Metal clattered like bones. My tail lashed out, shearing through a target post. Splinters rained down, mixing with the acrid stench of my overheating scales.

“False mate!” The dummy’s head came off in my hands, its painted eyes mocking. I crushed it to pulp.

A rack of training swords collapsed under a wing strike, blades scattering like teeth. One skittered toward the arena’s edge, its hilt catching the faint glow of heat crystals. I stomped it into the gravel, the snap of volcanic steel echoing through the cavern.

“Weakling!” Another dummy met my claws, its torso ribbons fluttering to the bloodstained sand.

Memories surged—Orla’s kiss after I’d wiped the floor with the kervash I now couldn’t kill. I could still taste her on my tongue. Human. Fragile.

Mine.

The last dummy exploded in a shower of splinters. I stood heaving in the wreckage, sulfurous breath fogging the air. Across the arena, my reflection warped in a polished obsidian shield—a crimson-scaled monster haloed by destruction.

I ripped the shield from the wall and hurled it. The crash reverberated around me.

“Had enough?”

Darrokar’s voice.

I didn’t turn. “Walk away before I do something we’ll both regret.”

Silence. Then retreating footsteps.

Alone, I sank to my knees, claws buried in sand still damp from yesterday’s training bouts. The vents above hissed, their steam carrying the distant roar of the sacred river. Somewhere beneath that sound, Orla waited.

I pressed my forehead to the ground, inhaling the mineral tang of Scalvaris’s heart. Her face burned behind my eyelids—not afraid. Never afraid. Defiant. Clever. Alive.

When I rose, the training ground’s eastern wall bore fresh scars.

“If the city wants a challenge, I’ll give them a war.”