Page 38 of Kingdom of Darkness and Dragons (Empire of Vengeance #4)
T he moment my fingers lost their grip on Livia's hand, something inside me shattered like glass hitting stone.
I watched her disappear into the smoke and chaos below, her name tearing from my throat in a scream that was lost among the sounds of battle.
The sight of her face—pale, terrified, but somehow still defiant—burned itself into my memory as she vanished into the hellish landscape beneath us.
For several heartbeats, I couldn't move.
Couldn't think. Couldn't do anything but stare at the roiling darkness where she had fallen, my mind refusing to accept what had just happened.
Around me, the battle raged with supernatural fury, but all I could hear was the echo of my own voice calling her name.
Then, a rage unlike anything I had ever known surged through me, a white-hot fire that burned away all shock and despair, leaving only a single, murderous purpose.
My gaze found Valeria. She was wheeling her silver dragon away from the attack, a look of smug, venomous triumph on her face. She thought she had won.
Kill her. The command was not a thought but an instinct, a shard of ice plunged into Imperia’s mind. My dragon shrieked, a sound of fury that was a perfect echo of my own, and dove.
Valeria heard us coming. She twisted in her saddle, her triumphant expression curdling into shock and then defiance as we closed the distance with suicidal speed. “Traitor!” she screamed, her voice thin against the wind. “She was helping them!”
Her dragon breathed a bout of white-hot fire, but we were already past it, slamming into them with the force of a falling star.
There was no finesse in my attack, no strategy.
It was pure, brutal violence. I drove Imperia’s claws toward Valeria herself, not her mount, wanting nothing more than to tear her from the sky.
The sheer ferocity of the assault overwhelmed her.
Her practiced manoeuvres faltered against my bestial rage.
Seeing the murder in my eyes, she broke.
Her dragon dove sharply, using the chaos of the ground battle as cover, and vanished into a roiling cloud of smoke and living shadow.
Valeria was gone. And Livia was still down there, lost in the slaughterhouse I had helped create.
“Down,” I commanded Imperia, my voice breaking. “Find her.” We dove into the chaos, searching for the one light in all that darkness.
Below us, the battle had taken a turn for the worse.
Dark tendrils were rising from the battlefield like living shadows, ripping Imperial riders from their dragons with inhuman strength.
I could hear screams cutting through the night air as our forces found themselves facing something far beyond conventional warfare.
The smoke was a choking, acrid thing, thick with the stench of blood and burning flesh.
Imperia fought the turbulent air, her wings straining against updrafts of heat and pockets of unnatural cold where the shadows gathered.
My eyes burned, scanning the hellscape for a flash of obsidian scales, a hint of Livia’s dark hair against the blood-soaked earth.
Men screamed and died below me, their faces contorted in terror as the shadows claimed them.
Talfen warriors moved through the Imperial lines like wraiths, their blades reaping a harvest of legionary lives.
I saw none of it. My world had narrowed to this single, desperate search.
Every other life, every strategic imperative, my own survival—it was all dust compared to the need to find her.
"Livia!" I shouted, though I knew the sound would never carry over the din of battle. "LIVIA!"
There was no answer. No glimpse of familiar blue scales or dark brown hair. Nothing but the endless carnage of a battle that had spiralled completely out of control.
I found Cassius near the centre of the fighting, his sword gleaming with blood as he carved his way through a group of Talfen warriors.
His dragon, a massive gold-scaled beast named Filius, was using flame and claw to keep the enemy at bay while Cassius fought on foot—a risky manoeuvre that spoke to how desperate the situation had become.
"Cassius!" I called, bringing Imperia down in a bone-jarring landing that sent several enemy fighters scattering. "We need to pull back! Focus all available forces on clearing a path to the valley entrance!"
He turned toward me, his face streaked with soot and blood, his eyes wild with battle fury. "Pull back? Are you insane? We've got them on the run!"
"Look around you!" I gestured at the chaos surrounding us, where shadow magic was systematically dismantling our aerial advantage.
"We're being slaughtered! Look around you!
Half our dragons are already down, and the other half are being torn apart by things that shouldn't exist. We need to get our people out of here before we lose everyone. "
"I don't take orders from some pampered noble's son," Cassius snarled, his sword point swinging toward me with casual menace. "I've been fighting battles since before you learned to hold a weapon. We stay and finish this."
Around us, the sounds of dying men and dragons filled the air like a symphony of the damned. A shadow tendril lashed out not twenty feet away, wrapping around an Imperial rider and yanking him from his saddle with sickening force. His scream cut off abruptly as he disappeared into the darkness.
"I'm not asking," I said, stepping closer to him despite the weapon pointed at my chest. "Organize the retreat. Now."
“Who in Inferi do you think you are?” Cassius snapped at me.
“Some minor noble who thinks just because he rides a beast, he can give orders? We are not pulling back, not while we have the chance to scourge the earth of more of these demons. The mage will pull back, their magic doesn’t last long, and when he does-”
“When he does, there will be nothing left!” I shouted, the last of my patience burning away in a blaze of desperate fury.
Cassius laughed, a harsh, grating sound. “They are soldiers of the Empire! They will die for it if I command it! Your cowardice is noted, Wing Commander. Now stand aside before I have you arrested for insubordination.”
The world went silent around me, the sounds of war fading to a distant hum. There was no more time. No more choices. I reached up and ripped the leather cord from around my neck. The Imperial signet ring, heavy and cold, fell into my palm.
I shoved it in Cassius’s face. “Do you recognize this, Legate?”
He recoiled, his eyes widening in disbelief as he stared at the familiar crest of the Emperor. His gaze snapped from the ring to my face, seeing me for the first time not as a minor noble, but as something else. Something impossible.
“I am Jalius Tiberius Valerius, son of the Emperor and Crown Prince of the Empire,” I said, my voice dangerously quiet amidst the chaos. “And this battle is over. Sound the retreat, or I will see you stripped of your rank and executed on this field for treason.”
The blood drained from his face, leaving behind a mask of ashen shock. The sword wavered in his hand. “Your Highness…” he stammered, the title a choked thing in his throat.
“Now, Cassius.”
He straightened, some of his military bearing returning despite the chaos around us. "What are your orders, Your Highness?"
"Clear a corridor to the valley entrance. Use everything we have left—dragons, ground forces, whatever reserves are still mobile. I want a fighting withdrawal, not a rout. We protect our wounded and we leave no one behind."
Cassius turned and bellowed at his horn-blower, his voice cracking. “Retreat! Sound the retreat!”
The mournful blast of the horns echoed through the valley.
I didn’t wait to see the result. I vaulted back onto Imperia, my mind a singular, frantic prayer.
Livia. I needed to find Livia. Imperia turned, preparing to take flight, and I caught sight of a familiar face staring up at me with contempt and a calculating intelligence that told me he was putting pieces together far faster than I would have liked. .
“Marcus.”
His face was a canvas of dawning horror.
The shock of the revelation gave way to a cold, brutal understanding that settled in his eyes like a death sentence.
In that single, terrible moment, I saw him connect every dot: my inexplicable promotion, my tortured conflict, my presence at the head of this army.
He wasn't seeing a prince; he was seeing the son of the monster who had enslaved his family, the heir to the very system that had condemned them all.
The trust I had so carefully, so foolishly, tried to earn from him curdled into pure, undiluted hatred.
He took a half-step forward, his hand tightening on the hilt of a fallen legionary’s sword.
The shadows, which had spared him until now, seemed to recoil from the sheer force of his hatred.
In his eyes, I was no longer a rival or a conflicted commander.
I was the embodiment of the system that had enslaved him, tortured him, and was now trying to kill the woman he loved.
There were no words that could bridge the chasm that had just opened between us. My title, my blood, it was a brand that marked me as his enemy.
"It's not what you think," I said desperately.
"I'm not here as some kind of spy or political agent.
I'm here because—" I stopped, unable to find words that would make him understand without revealing more than I dared.
"Marcus, please. Livia fell. Valeria attacked Sirrax, damaged his wing.
They went down somewhere in this mess, and I can't find them. I need your help."
Marcus’s face remained a mask of stone, but his knuckles were white where he gripped the sword. The plea died on my lips, useless against the wall of hatred in his eyes. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to. His silence was a judgment, colder and sharper than any blade.