Page 69 of Of Blood and Banes (The Arterian #2)

Seconds or eons pass with my eyes closed, and when I open them once more I’m in a massive library, columns of glinted marble supporting shelves and shelves of colorful books lining the walls. The same library Cole, Marge, and I were in earlier.

I flip the page of the book resting in my lap, studying the next set of passages, when a roaring sense of rage fills me. Twitching my head to the side with my eyes squeezed shut, I fight against the roll of blazing fury.

“Vue?” I call out.

He snarls, white-hot anger ricocheting in my skull, forcing me to my knees as I wrap my hands around my ears as if it’ll stop the sound. “Vue, what is going on?”

He doesn’t answer me.

“Queen Elara?” Emerose calls in panic.

“Where…where is Vue?” I croak.

“Last I saw, he was in the hatching grounds, my Queen.”

“Take me to him. Now.”

We race to the hatching grounds, my head dizzy with the sound of Vue’s fury. He isn’t ever so ill-tempered, but something has changed recently. He’s become territorial and moody…I can only hope I’m not rubbing off on him.

But as Emerose and I spill out into the Stone Gods’ Garden with the hatching grounds in the next room, we find my brother. The second our eyes connect is enough to shatter my heart as I see the rawest agony drowning his features into something unrecognizable.

In his arms, limp and charred, is a small girl.

“If you have ever loved me,” Aaric half-snarls and half-cries. “You will find her justice. You will honor her life, cut short by your savage beast!”

My niece had died a tragic death—caught in the dragonfire between Vue and the commander’s dragon in the hatching grounds.

An accident. A heart shattering tragedy.

Aaric took his eyes off her for a few minutes before she wandered off from the Stone Gods’ Garden to the hatching grounds. He didn’t get to her fast enough, and by the time he did, she had already passed.

The missed opportunity to meet her before the incident has been haunting my every waking breath and every wicked dream. Everything’s falling apart, right between my hands, and yet I can’t do a godsdamned thing to stop it.

Tears creep to my eyes, and my throat constricts to a hard-to-breathe tension.

But everyone in the room is watching me, so I swallow back all the things I want to say and force my heartache back into a box I can unpack in a private setting.

Away from all the spectators waiting for me to break, hungry for more excuses as to why I don’t deserve the throne. To usurp me.

I need peace.

I need order.

I need stability.

“Elara!” Aaric roars again for my answer. “A life for a life! Your dragon for my daughter!”

“He bites because he grieves,” Vue rumbles. “I did not mean to harm the child, I swear it. Had I known she was in the hatching grounds, I would have protected her.”

“I know, Vue,” I whisper sadly down our bond. She was caught in the crossfire.

I can’t explain to Aaric why I can’t kill Vue. Only those bonded to dragons know of how intrinsically linked we are as riders and dragons. Admitting it would only expose us. Nobody needs to know our lives are tied together.

So instead, I whisper, “It was an accident, Aaric?—”

Avice—his wife—is at his side, her fingers wrapped around Aaric’s arm. She whips around, staring at the people lining the room, her eyes wild and teary. “How can you all stand here and say justice won’t be served? She wasn’t even two!”

The crowd is still. Frozen in fear and horror and uncertainty.

Avice turns a deathly glare at me, pointing with a crooked finger. “You are a monster! It was on purpose!”

Aaric turns to her, stroking her arm and mumbling under his breath as he shakes his head.

“You know it!” Avice screams, batting Aaric off her as she lunges forward.

Several of my guards raise their weapons, pointing at them in silent warning. Aaric drags her back away from me.

“Tell them! Tell them it was all in retaliation!” Avice shrieks, still fighting Aaric to get closer to me. “If the Baydens didn’t revoke their dragonblades, she would still be alive! This is punishment for our marriage! That we would not agree to your annulment!”

The crowd gasps, wide-eyed exchanges pass between the rows of citizens, soldiers, and nobles who’ve been invited here for a customary meeting.

This is only getting worse. My panicked breath rises, my skin bubbling hot and slick with sweat as I wipe the back of my hand across my forehead. The room spins slowly until it catches a rhythm, and I fall out of my chair to the marbled tile with a hard thud.

“Queen Elara?” someone calls.

“Oh, Gods! Someone, quick! Get the healer!”

More black swarms my vision, pulling me into the shadowed depths away from all other sensation and thought.

A new wave of mixed panic and pain washes over me before the black gives way to the pattern of stacked stones. I’m racing for my life down a set of stairs, using the handrail attached to the exterior wall to pull me down faster.

Faster. I must get there faster.

I clear the last few steps of the spiral staircase and dash across the bridge, through the dragonfire-lit hallways, the royal crypt, and the Stone Gods’ Garden. Vue roars, though this time it shakes the walls. Bits of dust and rock pelt me in the head and shoulders.

“I’m almost there, Vue!”

“Don’t bother. I’ll take care of this quickly,” he snarls.

“Don’t hurt her! She can’t die!’ ” I command through our bond. It’ll destroy Aaric more than he already is. “I’ll talk with her ? —”

“She’s not here to speak!”

I burst into the hatching grounds before screeching to a halt. Vue’s scales gleam white against the shadowy cavern, his head low and teeth bared as his black eyes are narrowed at the woman standing several feet before him, her hand pointing a jagged blade straight at him.

Avice.

She slingshots forward, swiping the blade out as Vue dodges left. Her blade grazes Vue’s tail, and he roars again. Black blood trickles out of the wound, and the sword flares blue.

Dragonblade.

“Avice!” I cry. Gathering my skirts, I race into the icy-cold pool separating me from the two of them. “Stop this! Stop this now!”

Mercifully, Vue listens. He could easily demolish her with a swipe of his claws alone.

But instead, he slips farther back into the cavern.

Avice affords me a glare and spits in my direction before she chases after him.

Just as I climb up out of the water onto the rocky, black shore, Avice advances on Vue who’s cornered.

She swipes again, and Vue ducks out of the way, barely in time from getting sliced in the throat.

“Avice! Please, let us talk!” I cry, clambering across the hatching ground in a wet, heavy dress.

“We have nothing to talk about!” she screams back. “A life for a life. It is as fair as any!”

I race forward, pushing through the pounding in my head and all the whispers telling me to stop.

Time slows, and I manage to clear the space between Avice and me as she lifts the dagger again, aiming for Vue.

On her downward swing, I snatch her forearm, squeezing it tight and bracing all of my strength into stopping her.

The raw power beneath our feet, vibrating in the walls around us, hums to me. Whispering to let it free.

Avice’s hateful stare turns from Vue to me, setting fire to something inside of me. She redirects the blade toward me, its menacing tip dipping lower and lower toward my throat.

I’m weak. Far too weak. I haven’t been able to keep much food down for the last several months. Haven’t been able to sleep with the stress, nor my niece’s haunting death. Deteriorating my health even further. And I can’t pull with the Bone Ring, either.

She throws her weight entirely into me and knocks me back onto the ground. My breath saws out of my lungs, and a sting like live fire splits through my chest.

Vue roars with everything he is and snaps forward, knocking Avice clear off me and onto the ground. But I can’t breathe around the blade in my chest. Everything is on fire, and despite my multiple gasps, I can’t pull in a solid breath.

The two of them turn into fighting spins of flesh versus scales until Vue swipes a taloned paw toward her, knocking her off her feet. Before she can escape, he pins her down and snaps his mighty jaws around her head before ripping it clean off her body. My slight relief is drowned out by despair.

Oh, Gods, Aaric. Aaric won’t survive this ? —

“V-vue!” I manage to gurgle aloud.

“No!” my brother’s scream ricochets throughout the cavernous expanse, breaking into a thousand pained echoes, followed by his hurried footsteps somewhere off behind me.

Vue slinks over to me, his black eyes filling my vision. “I shouldn’t have listened to you...I should have killed her quicker. This would have never happened.”

The bond between us begins to thin as it tightens, like a thread being stretched near the point of breaking.

One of Vue’s front legs buckles before he straightens back up with trembling effort.

His eyes lock onto something in the distance with a growl, and black blood seeps from the corner of his maw.

My vision grows dark at the corners, and the heat in my chest constricts. “Break the bond…save yourself.”

“Never. There is no me without you.”

I reach out for him. Longing to brush my hand across his warm, brilliant-white scales one last time. My own breath comes shallower and quicker with a spidering numbness crawling throughout my extremities.

It’ll only be moments now.

“Tell Aaric to save the baby.” I slip the Bone Ring off my finger, smearing blood across my hand . “Break the bond, and give the babe your blood.”

Vue swings his attention down to me at the mention of the one I carry. “You trust your brother to keep it safe?”

“Wait! I still need him!” Aaric’s cry is loud. Close. Though, he won’t be quick enough to save either of us.

Before Vue can respond, a single tear slips as I say, “I love you.”

The bond between us snaps to an endless void as everything fades to black. And then…white.