Page 18 of Echoes of Fire (Drakarn Mates #2)

SEVENTEEN

ORLA

I barely had time to lurch upright before the guards’ claws closed around my arms, dragging me into an opening so violently orange it seared my retinas. My boots skidded across sand still steaming from whatever butchery had occurred here last, and with each step, the heat rose in waves that curled the edges of my vision.

The arena hit me in layers—acrid sweat thick enough to coat my tongue, sulfurous vents belching toxic fumes, the metallic tang of old blood baked into volcanic stone until it reeked like rust and rot.

Cheers erupted from tiered seating writhing with Drakarn spectators, each pair of eyes reflecting a savage hunger. My knees nearly buckled at the sight of them, but the guards jerked me upright, their laughter vibrating through my bones, a cruel counterpoint to the crowd’s thunderous roars.

And there, in one tiny section, were my fellow humans. Selene, Eden, Kaiya, Vega, Kira, Lexa, Hawk, Rachel, and on the end was Terra, standing next to her hulking Drakarn mate, Darrokar. None of them were cheering. They looked like they were watching a funeral.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, girls.

“Run fast, leech,” a guard hissed, shoving me forward with a push that sent me stumbling across the scorched ground.

The gate slammed shut behind me, a boom louder than the entire crowd. I spun, heart hammering, taking stock through the adrenaline-fueled haze. Jagged pillars rose around me, their shadows crisscrossing over thin crusts of stone hiding lava’s glow. To the east, a geothermal vent coughed superheated steam in irregular bursts. My fingers twitched, itching for my journal’s grid paper to calculate patterns, to cling to something orderly in this bedlam.

A pebble clattered to my right.

I turned just as the ground erupted, a nightmare uncoiling from the shadows. The monster’s maw yawned wide, rows of serrated teeth glowing like filaments in a furnace. Its scales weren’t just black—they drank the light, a void edged with ember cracks that pulsed with each thunderous heartbeat. Steaming saliva dripped from its jaws, hissing where it struck the sand and sending up acrid plumes that seared my nostrils.

Acid spit. Great.

The crowd’s roar became a distant buzz as the lava lizard’s throat rattled. Its tongue lashed out, forked and flickering with actual flames, testing the air. I felt the heat of it from six feet away, a dry slap against my sweat-slicked skin. My thoughts scattered with a single directive: Survive first. Panic later.

It lunged.

The world blurred.

I threw myself sideways, shoulder slamming into a jagged pillar as claws the size of steak knives carved through the space where my throat had been. Hot stone tore at my shirt, branding my ribs. The lizard’s momentum carried it past me, its spiked tail whipping my thigh hard enough to bruise. A thunderous impact shattered rock behind me, bits of obsidian scattering like glass shards across the steaming sand.

A second predator exploded from a fissure to my left, smaller and faster—a juvenile, maybe, its scales dull gray but eyes burning with the same unending hunger. It scuttled sideways like a crab, claws click-click-clicking on stone, herding me toward the arena’s western edge. My pulse pounded in my ears; panic tried to grip my throat. I forced a shaky breath, stuffing that fear to the edges of my mind.

I risked a glance over my shoulder.

Bad move.

A third lizard dropped from a ledge above, all rippling muscle and furnace stink. It landed in a crouch, tail lashing, black claws digging grooves into the sand. This one’s scales shimmered with a nauseating oil-slick sheen, and a heat mirage rose from its spine like a ghostly halo.

They fanned out, driving me backward. My heel brushed something brittle—the sand here was thinner, the stone beneath glowing faintly orange through cracks. Something lay under there, and every inch of my body screamed that I didn’t want to find out what.

The juvenile struck first, springing with a guttural shriek. I ducked, its claws snagging my hair as I rolled. Purple strands fluttered to the sand, instantly singed in the heat. This was not good. The largest lizard charged, maw gaping, and on instinct, I dove between its legs.

Putrid heat engulfed me as I slid beneath its belly, scales scraping my back raw. Its underbelly wasn’t armored, just a leathery hide. I drove my elbow upward, aiming for a soft pocket. My bones shook with the impact.

The beast bellowed so loudly it shook stalactites. It bucked, tail slamming down where I’d been half a breath before. I scrambled upright, lungs burning from the sulfur stink.

“Come on, you overgrown gecko,” I snarled, voice trembling despite the bravado tearing through my veins.

The oil-slick lizard answered by vomiting a stream of liquid fire.

I hurled myself behind a pillar. Flame splashed against stone, droplets spattering my boot. The synthetic material melted instantly, searing my ankle.

I screamed, and the crowd cheered louder.

“Not fucking today.” I edged along the pillar, trying to suck in scorching air without passing out.

The nearest lizard’s tail lashed out. I scrambled upward, rock-climbing instincts kicking in as I scaled the unstable column. A claw snagged my boot heel, and I kicked hard, feeling scale crunch under my foot. The lizard recoiled with a shriek, buying me two seconds to scramble up as high as I could.

From this vantage point, the arena spread below me like some demon’s playground: cracked stone, churning pockets of lava, spouts of toxic steam. The crowd’s jeers shifted pitch. All three lizards circled, acid drool pooling, jaws grinding in anticipation of a meal. One began scaling the pillar, its toes finding purchase in the porous stone. Others prowled below, yellow eyes glinting.

I fumbled for Vyne’s vial. The acid sloshed inside, its surface shimmering like liquid rage.

One drop melts steel.

The lizard’s head crested the ledge, jaws unhinging. I hurled the vial. It was my only shot, and each heartbeat pounded in my skull as though time itself slowed.

It struck between its eyes.

The explosion of sizzling flesh drowned the crowd’s gasps. The lizard tumbled backward, its death throes scattering the pack. I slid down the pillar, boots skidding in gore-streaked sand. My hands shook, the adrenaline a sickening high.

There was no sign of the vial. I could yell at myself for wasting it later. If I survived.

Where the hell was Rath?

A hiss rippled through the arena—sharper, hungrier than the lizards.

I turned slowly, dread pooling in my gut. The ground beneath my boots trembled as a new shadow uncoiled from a deep tunnel, its scales clicking like a death rattle. It was like a living earthquake: pulsing, breathing, lethal.

I backpedaled, ankle screaming where melted boot leather fused to burnt flesh. The creature rising from the pit wasn’t lizard—not with those segmented metallic plates rippling along its thirty-foot length, not with the dozen articulated legs tipped in hooked barbs that screeched against stone.

Its head swung toward me on a serpentine neck, faceted eyes reflecting a thousand fractured images of my trembling form. Molten veins pulsed beneath pulsing yellow scales, casting hellish light through the joints in its armor. The stench of rotting sulfur and singed bone clawed at my nostrils as it hissed, spined tail whipping behind it in arcs that carved gouges in the arena floor.

A roar split the air—not the beast’s, but familiar.

Mine.

Rath dropped from the ceiling like a comet trailing smoke, wings folding tight against his back as he landed. Twin lava-forged swords blazed in his claws, their edges white-hot as he landed between me and the monstrosity. Sand vaporized where his boots struck, the shockwave knocking me to my knees. His scales glowed with an infernal intensity, veins of orange light flickering in the cracks along his arms and shoulders.

“Stay behind me!” he barked, voice rough, scorching. I’d never been happier to be yelled at.

The wyrm struck.

Rath’s swords met its jaws in a shower of sparks. I scrambled backward as acid-green blood rained down, eating pockmarks into the sand. The wyrm’s barbed legs scissored wildly, shearing off chunks of Rath’s armor. He didn’t flinch, driving a blade upward through its palpitating throat. A gush of fluorescent ichor splattered the closest rock face, sizzling on contact.

“Orla! The pillar!”

I turned toward his shout just as a wyrmling—smaller, faster—spewed liquid fire from above. Heat slapped my shoulders, singeing the ends of my hair even worse than before. I dove behind a stalagmite, fists clenched. The stone exploded behind me in a shower of fragments, shrapnel scraping against me.

Rath’s wing clipped my side as he soared past, snatching the wyrmling mid-leap. They crashed into the arena wall in a tangle of scales and snapping jaws. I didn’t wait—I snatched up a fallen barb the size of my forearm, its edge still dripping wyrm blood that sizzled against my palm.

“Stubborn human!” Rath roared, pinning the wyrmling with a knee to its sparking thorax. His free sword hovered at its shuddering neck. “I said stay?—”

The sand between us bulged.

We moved in together—Rath yanking his blade free, me driving my stolen barb downward. The emerging wyrm pup died with a wet gurgle, acidic blood spraying my forearms. I barely felt the new burns, adrenaline numbing everything but the will to keep fighting.

Rath’s claw closed around my bicep, hauling me toward a crumbling stone column. He wrapped his arms around me, tail securing me in place, and launched us up. The ground below vanished, swirling steam and predator eyes glaring with ravenous malice.

But there was no hope of escaping the arena. We were closed in, and I didn’t need to be told that the only way out was to win. Whatever winning meant to the Drakarn.

Rath carefully set me down on top of one of the pillars, obsidian shards scraping the soles of my boots. “Stay. Here.” His voice thrummed with command.

“Not arguing!” I shouted back, though my pulse hammered in protest.

But there was barely any sanctuary on top of the pillar, just crumbling rock and a panoramic view of certain death. Rath’s wings blotted out the arena’s hellish glow as he dove back toward the writhing wyrm. I stood alone with the sizzle of my burnt flesh and the acidic reek of dead reptiles filling my lungs, the noise of the crowd rolling in thunderous waves.

Something clicked beneath me.

I looked down. The stone under my boots swam with shadows—no, not shadows. Scales . Dozens of them, rippling up the pillar in a shimmering wave. Snakes. Their arrowhead skulls broke the surface first, lidless eyes burning with phosphorescent hate, forked tongues tasting my terror.

I dug in my boot, heart pounding like a war drum, yanking my dagger from my boot just in time.

The first strike came from behind. I pivoted, the snake’s fangs grazing my hip as I brought the blade down in a wild arc. Metal bit through scale and bone, severing a skull that rolled hissing into the abyss. Acid blood sprayed my wrist—agony, then a terrifying numbness that spread like wildfire.

They swarmed.

I became a creature of instinct—jabbing, sneering, kicking when teeth closed around my boot. A tail lashed my ribs. Another snake coiled around my thigh, its body searing like a brand. The sound of them—tangled hisses, the scrape of scales on rock—flooded my ears, drowning out the roar of the crowd for a moment.

The world tilted, and the ledge crumbled.

The pillar shuddered beneath me. The snakes’ bodies coiled around the column’s base, a living noose tightening as they gnawed through rock with fangs dripping corrosive venom.

The crumbling ledge offered less footing than a cliffside ice sheet. Below, a lava pit bubbled hungrily, shooting up flares of liquid rock that made the entire air shiver. Above, Rath’s battle cries mingled with the wyrm’s shrieks, savage echoes that slammed around the arena in waves of terror and adrenaline.

And the ledge gave way.

I caught a jagged outcrop one-handed, body slamming into the pillar’s searing surface. A snake clung to my boot, its weight dragging me toward the lava’s orange maw. The heat radiating from below scorched my cheeks. I tasted salt from sweat rolling down my lip.

“Not … a chance,” I snarled, swinging my free leg in a desperate arc.

The snake’s skull crunched against the rock. It released me, spiraling into the lava with a hissing pop. I hauled myself onto the outcrop, trembling arms screaming with exertion. Below, the remaining snakes writhed, their acid melting handholds into treacherous sludge, and the stench of dissolving stone added a bitter tang to the suffocating air. The largest snake struck like a piston, fangs glistening with fresh venom. I twisted, driving my dagger upward, praying it would hold.

The blade glanced off its armored snout but lodged in its eye.

It recoiled, shrieking, the dagger protruding from the snake’s ruined socket like a gruesome trophy. It thrashed, tail smashing the pillar and shaking the entire structure.

Rock exploded. I fell and caught the snake’s spasming body.

We dropped together, its acid blood eating through my sleeve. The lava’s heat blistered my cheeks, shriveled my lungs. I wrenched the dagger free as we plummeted, stabbing wildly. The blade struck a chink in its underbelly armor.

Green gore erupted, hissing in midair.

The snake’s final throes flung me sideways. I hit a sloping rockface and slid, shredding my palms on volcanic stone. The lava pool yawned inches away, each bubble a promise of burning finality.

Move.

I crab-crawled upward, dagger clenched between my teeth. Rath’s roar guided me—a beacon in the inferno. I launched myself the last few feet over a jagged lip of rock, vision spinning with exhaustion. I was still alive.

I crested the slope in time to see him grappling the wyrm, its metallic scales refracting hellish light. One of his swords lay shattered nearby, broken edges still glowing. The wyrm’s tail coiled around his torso, squeezing the air from his lungs.

“Hey, glitterlizard!” I hefted my blade, voice raw.

The wyrm’s faceted eyes pivoted.

I leaped onto its thrashing tail, driving my knife toward a gap in its plates. The impact jolted my wrist, and my grip slipped. My weapon spun away, clattering somewhere I couldn’t see.

“Orla, no!” Rath bellowed, baring fangs as he tried to twist free.

The wyrm shook me off like a gnat. I rolled, snatching a shard of Rath’s broken sword—still glowing white-hot. It scorched my fingers, but pain was an afterthought.

The wyrm struck.

I met its jaws with the shard.

Molten steel met crystalline fangs.

The explosion blinded me. A searing flash that devoured all sound, all light, all sense of direction. When the blaze in my retinas finally subsided, the wyrm lay twitching, its skull split by the shard wedged deep in its neural crest. Rivulets of sickly fluid seeped from the wound, burning channels into the arena floor. Rath stood over it, chest heaving, his remaining sword trembling in his grip.

Raw fury radiated off him in waves.

He stared at me, breath ragged, eyes blazing with the reflection of the crowd’s cheers.

I wiped wyrm guts from my cheek. “You’re welcome,” I rasped, somehow finding the breath to speak.

His tail lashed, stirring up a cloud of dust and ash. “You were supposed to stay on the pillar!”

“And you were supposed to duck.” I pointed to the wyrm’s barb embedded in his shoulder.

The arena shuddered—a deep, groaning vibration that traveled up through my boots and into my teeth. Rath’s hand closed around my wrist an instant before the ground split between us, superheated steam screaming from fresh fissures. The entire stadium pulsed with an ominous quake, as if the volcano beneath us throbbed with a living heart.

“Move!” he roared, yanking me sideways as a geyser erupted where we’d stood, white-hot droplets splattering across the stone.

Three lava-lizards crawled out of an opening near the geyser.

We crashed into the arena wall, my spine slamming against rock still hot from the wyrm’s acid blood. Rath’s body shielded mine as another vent burst overhead, raining scalding drops that sizzled on his scales. The crowd above howled for blood, their savage chants echoing across the ring.

Three vents formed a tightening triangle. I had an idea. “Drive the lizards into the steam.”

Rath’s answering snarl held reluctant approval. He lunged left, swords carving arcs that forced the three new lizards toward the nearest fissure. I scrambled up a rubble pile, torn boots slipping on loose shale. My burns screamed with every movement, but I forced my body onward.

The largest lizard wheeled toward me, jaws dripping. It leaped in a swirl of obsidian dust. I ducked and screamed, “Now!”

Rath’s blade slammed into the vent’s edge, diverting the steam jet directly into the creature’s face. The lizard’s death throes filled the arena with an earsplitting wail that harmonized with the crowd’s frenzied cheers, hunger for violence intensifying their mania.

We fell into rhythm—Rath herding, me hurling chunks of broken rock to trigger the vents. When the final lizard collapsed in a steaming heap, we stood back-to-back, shoulders heaving in sync. Blood—my own, and a nauseating medley of reptilian gore—dripped off me in rivulets.

The wyrm’s corpse chose that moment to slide into a lava pit, half-submerged, releasing a final gargle.

The resulting explosion of molten rock sent us diving in unison. Rath’s wing curled around me as fiery debris rained down, clanging off his scaled armor. His growl vibrated through my burned cheek, pressed against his chest. “Still alive?”

“Disappointed?” My lips cracked on the word, tasting ash and iron.

His fanged grin flashed in the flickering glow. Despite everything, a flicker of satisfaction sparked in his eyes—a warrior’s thrill at survival against impossible odds.

We were alive. We won.

Do you believe in our fucking bond now? I wanted to scream into the stands.

Across the bloodied sand, Zarvash rose from the spectator stands, his bronze scales polished to a taunting gleam under the shifting torchlight. His presence commanded the crowd’s attention, and the cheers fell into an eager hush.

“The Forge remains unimpressed!” he bellowed, ceremonial hammer raised high. A small section of the crowd took up the chant, dozens of claws pounding stone in rhythmic unison.

Unworthy. Unworthy. Unworthy.

The rest of the Drakarn watched in silence, tension coiling in the air like a serpent.

The ground beneath us groaned, fresh steam vents hissing open. Rath shoved me backward as a geyser erupted where I’d stood, the superheated blast singing his scales. Pain flickered across his features, a snarl following in its wake.

“Coward!” Rath roared, twin swords flaring brighter, red lines tracing the steel. “You hide while others bleed!”

Zarvash launched himself out of the stands and glided down, wings spread wide, each leathery membrane etched with golden runes. “Tradition requires proof , Flame Heart. Your human barely survived glorified hatchling trials.” His copper-tipped tail flicked toward the smoldering wyrm carcass. “The Forge demands a true sacrifice.”

I limped forward, ankle screaming like the flesh might peel away. “We just killed your murder pets. What more?—”

Zarvash backhanded me with his tail. A blow so swift that I barely caught the glint of bronze scales before it connected. He was fast, impossibly so.

The world whited out. I tasted blood before feeling the split lip, my skull ringing from the impact. Rath moved faster than thought—his sword at Zarvash’s throat, heat radiating off him in waves that distorted the air.

“Touch her again,” Rath growled, embers dripping from his fangs, “and I’ll mount your scales on my wall.”

The arena held its breath as the crowd leaned forward in eager anticipation. Even the lava vents seemed to quiet momentarily, their hissing subdued beneath the tension.

Zarvash laughed—a dry, rustling sound that made my skin crawl. He pressed forward until Rath’s blade drew blood. “Strike me down, and the challenge fails. It is not over until the gong chimes.” His tongue flicked toward the shadowed alcove where Karyseth’s priests lurked next to a massive bronze gong, arms crossed. They made it clear the gong would not chime until one or both of us were dead.

It might have ended there, blood spilled to feed the arena’s greed, but Darrokar approached with a thunderous stride, his black wings stirring the dusty air. It took little more than his furious glare for one of the priests to step aside.

Darrokar raised a scaled fist and rang the gong, the brassy note echoing across the volcanic arena like the final toll of judgment.

The challenge was over.

Rath spat at Zarvash’s feet, the hiss of saliva evaporating on contact. “You are a coward and the Forge Temple’s lackey. Meet me in the ring and repay this insult. Now .”