Page 28

My drakes and I stumble through the towering white door into a subterranean wonder. The scent of ancient stone and strange growing things floods my nostrils as we move forward, into a forgotten hall deep underground.

I’ve seen nothing like it. As towering columns and vaulted archways spread before us, I realize we’re in some kind of natural cavern, carved and built up to create an underground chamber that soars above us, its ceiling lost.

Massive, that hall spreads like some kind of strange, luminous paradise underground, as glowing phosphorescent vines, moss, and tiny white and blue flowers devour everything as far as the eye can see.

Luminous green and white butterflies flit about, with strange spiky orange dragonflies that exist nowhere else in the Twilight Realm. Geckoes that glow blue with acid green spots skitter up ancient, luminous silberskrae trees, which grow right up through the hall’s stone floor.

Those trees tower to the cavern’s ceiling. The only reason we can see the ceiling at all, their strangely luminous silver-white bark is dotted by purple phosphorescent mushrooms, which grow right to the very top .

The glow of the ancient trees, mosses, and vines creates a strange light which whispers through the space. It’s not like natural daylight, more like a mesmerizing moonlit euphoria, but it’s enough to have grown this magnificent paradise in the underground hall.

Everything here wild and strange.

Unlike the ruined city above, however, this space is hale. The massive, semi-dark hall of alabaster and sky-blue stone features carvings of Blood Dragons cavorting and flying, just like on the doors, everywhere we look.

Ornate and almost Fey-like, though sturdy in ancient Blood Dragon style, the towering columns and archways house a kind of space I’ve never seen our ancients create, even in places like the Hollows of the Damned.

Even in my deathlike exhaustion, the mystery is intriguing, because it’s not the Blood Dragon usual. Not to mention that the entire place is absolutely coated in gold and silver runic sigil-script, though none of it glows, cursed or otherwise.

I get the sense it’s a massive history as it shimmers across the walls, columns, and floor in the strange fey incandescence, written here to preserve for generations. I want to read that ancient tale.

But we need to last the night first.

A pair of small fountains burble from the wall, flanking the doors at the entrance to the underground space. They create a small stream that flows through ornate channels in the hall’s floor, from which the roots of the trees and the vines get freshwater; my drakes and I head to the nearest stream now, because water is life.

Kneeling down, everyone drinks their fill, with no clue when our last drink was. Blood Dragons can survive a lot, even on very little; but after all the metaphysical craziness rescuing Mikkel, the fighting in the palace, then battling for our lives against Emil Beck, Litha, and the Black Dragon itself, we’re in bad shape.

We sink to a seat on the moss-covered stones of the ancient hall now, our backs up against a tree growing beside the open doors. Baldur’s still out cold in his strange stasis. His heart beats only twice a minute as I press my fingers to his pulse now, his breath coming even more seldom than that.

Closing my eyes, I feel him, way out in the Void. As I check in with him, I feel his dragon gathering more power, out where our Ancestors live.

He’s not there completely, but damn close to it, as I put my hand on his bare chest over his heart. I feel the sluggish way his blood moves through his veins, as caustic black and burned crimson oilslick sigils still writhe through his arms and legs.

They’re the ones Mikkel and L?rke were too exhausted to finish pulling out of him. I pray they can be eliminated completely, as I sigh hard now and rest my forehead against his.

Kissing his lips, and once again thanking him for his sacrifice.

“Rikyava. I am so sorry.”

Mikkel’s rough voice makes me open my eyes. I sit up slowly because I’m fucking beat and having a hard time staying conscious from everything we’ve been through. I look at him.

Mikkel’s dark eyes are the sorriest thing I’ve ever seen as he watches me. Beautiful, haughty, broken, a thousand apologies pour from him as he watches me in the hall’s fey light.

Naked and beat to shit, he’s covered in barely healed lacerations from everything he went through during his torture. I watch him for a long moment, tempted to be cold—but something inside me thaws as I feel his sincerity through our bond.

And I feel how much he’s hurting, deep inside.

It’s not a pain of the flesh that devours my Third Drake, as I feel his sorrow in the underground hall. It’s a pain of the heart; that I might reject him now for everything he’s done and all it’s caused.

Mikkel fears I might cut him loose for everything that’s happened. Because it was all thanks to his black-as-shit dragon that we even got into this mess in the first place.

He’s afraid I might give him the ultimate rejection now, as I shun him and maybe even separate him from our Bloodbond. He fears he might never become the better man his bright copper magic indicates, that place he so desperately tries to hide, deep inside. He despairs that I’ll turn away from him now, because he’ll never fit in with my heroic band of drakes.

I reach out a hand—offering him hope instead.

Mikkel startles as his dark eyelashes flicker. He gazes down at my hand, hesitating, before he takes it.

I feel it as the massive iron wall inside him comes down. Tears roll down his face for the second time today; Mikkel doesn’t sob, but I feel his terrible heartbreak as I offer him love instead of wrath.

I scoot close to him now as he hitches a hard breath, then another. Sitting, I spread my legs and cuddle around him like a monkey, as L?rke cinches close to our side, shushing him and combing back her brother’s hair.

We hold Mikkel in the fey underground hall, she and I. He doesn’t quite break down this time, but I feel the tears that roll down his face as he presses his cheek to mine now, heaving devastated sighs.

“What could I ever do to make this right?” he asks, as L?rke and I hold him. As he grips my arms wrapped around him, Strom scoots close to us, touching Mikkel’s thigh.

Even Bjorn has come into our huddle; though he’s not touching Mikkel, he’s scooted close to my back to be my chair as Mikkel rests on me. It leaves us in a cozy pile, as I reach out one hand now to touch Baldur, resting nearby.

Baldur’s chest rises and falls in a deep sigh.

As his heart compresses for me, once.

“You can start by not being an idiot. And tell us next time if you feel you’re going to go Wraith so we can pin you down and stop you,” L?rke answers as we all touch and grieve. Her sad chuckle is everything as Mikkel barks a ruined laugh. Pressing his forehead hard against L?rke’s, he sighs.

“You are a gem, sister. Maintaining your composure when I just fucking lost my shit,” Mikkel says as he keeps his forehead against hers.

“Rikyava’s the gem.” L?rke pulls back now, fire in her pale eyes as she narrows them at Mikkel in the wan light. “Your Bloodmate did everything for you these past days. From making sure the Storm Dragon King didn’t end you, to all the shit she went through in Iceland, then Bloodbonding and life-mating a complete stranger… she performed miracles to rescue you. Even standing up against the Black Dragon to get us the fuck out so we all could be alive to even fucking chit-chat right now. You’d better say you’re grateful.”

“I am grateful. I am.” Mikkel twists to look me right in the eyes, holding my gaze.

“I know.” I squeeze him around the waist, letting him know I already forgive him. How could I not, when I feel his remorse pouring through him, so deep and agonized?

“It wasn’t me who got us out, though, when it counted,” I say now, as I know deep inside my heart who the real credit goes to. Turning, I look at the partially healed Bjorn, wondering how in seven hells he used Baldur’s dying magic to make the portal that got us all out of Copenhagen, stat.

“I did what any good warrior would do to protect my life-mate,” Bjorn says with a growl now as he nuzzles my nose, then kisses me. That kiss is long and deep as he wraps me tighter in his arms, so tight it’s almost uncomfortable, though there’s no way in hell I’m ever leaving it.

Despite my crazy exhaustion, I feel Bjorn’s kiss do something to me as it sends tingles all through me. It’s like the light within me rekindles to his touch as he kisses me.

I revel in it now, needing him more than life itself. Everything inside me leaps to Bjorn’s love, and his furious righteousness and protection of me. It doesn’t escape me, however, that the impossible magic Bjorn pulled out of his ass today saved us all—most especially me, when I had been gone inside my Bone Magic.

Blacker than black.

Mikkel might be a liability with his unpredictable wrath, but I’m the worse liability. I know it’s true because something deep inside me calls to the Dragon of All Souls—something that is the worst part of me, and always will be.

Not only that, but everything today nearly went catastrophic when I tried to control that fell beast with the most horrible darkness inside me. I still feel it as I sit here now with my drakes.

Something in me told me I could command it. Something deep within my very blood and bones still tells me I could best that creature and wield it, if I only tried harder.

Despite there already being somebody who can command it better than me.

“Litha. She’s Ruta… somehow,” I say as I suddenly recall what I saw on Litha, searing across her forehead today during the battle. As I revive that memory of Litha’s blistered scar that exactly matched Ruta’s when I broke my Excommunication by the Black Dragon Knights, I feel it get shared with my entire Bloodbond. Even L?rke gets a little, as Bjorn growls and Strom inhales, and Mikkel sets his jaw.

Knowing that somehow our enemies, Ruta Bein and the Bloodwalker Litha, are the same.

“The Black Dragon Knight’s High Council is compromised,” Strom says then, as he inhales, deep. “Rikyava, you saw the damage your Excommunication recoil caused on Ruta when you and Baldur broke it in Iceland. If you saw that same scar on Litha, who we now know is a Bloodwalker and a fucking ridiculously strong one to be able to command the Black Dragon and have Emil Beck as a Bloodmate, a Bloodwalker in his own right… then it’s time for the Council to know.”

“We thought the Council was our enemy before, when they were trying to fuck with you, Rikyava, and come after Strom, Mikkel, and L?rke as Bone Mages.” Bjorn is ferocious as we hash out our situation in this unknown, ancient space. “But it’s far worse than that. They’re compromised, right to the very top—allowing Litha to wield them in disguise as Ruta. Litha has an agenda to bring down all of Blood Dragondom with the Black Dragon, and save only Bloodwalkers and their mates to build our Lineage anew. With herself and her drakes right at the very top.”

“And with Emil Beck leading the Jarldom in Copenhagen now, I’m sure,” L?rke spits as her pale eyes flash murder.

“You heard Emil; he’s no friend to us or to King Erdhelm.” Mikkel’s dark eyes burn in the half-light. “With the former Jarl of Copenhagen dead, Emil will take that position if he hasn’t already. It doesn’t matter that the Black Dragon killed the Jarl rather than Emil. The Danish Jarldom is ridiculously strong, even with their palace decimated. They have heaps of militia all around Denmark. With Emil, Litha, and the Black Dragon leading the charge with perhaps the entire False Black Dragon Knights behind them as Litha pretends to be Ruta… the King is fucked.”

“Mikkel’s right,” Bjorn growls as his recovering dragon suddenly thunders, shuddering the greenery nearby and stirring the wispy light all around us. “We have to get back to the palace. We have to warn King Huttr?—”

“I’ve got a better way,” Strom says as he pulls from our cuddle and shakily rises. Determination is in his eyes as he regards me, then smiles wryly.

Strom turns away and begins to hunt around the fountains, then narrows his eyes as he peers into the overgrown vines and tree roots for something.

“What are you doing?” Something about his manner has got me tingling now, and not in a good way, as I push up to standing in the dim hall.

Though I barely make it in my exhaustion.

“My great-grandfather needs to know everything we’ve discovered,” Strom says stubbornly now as I see he’s pushing aside piles of dried leaves from the ancient trees, as if looking for something.

Gazing at the pillars all around us, backed by a luminous, dark forest inside the hall, he spies something and a smile lifts his face. As he steps over, bending to retrieve it, I see it’s a small but tarnished silver knife, probably left behind by whoever occupied this place last.

Strom returns, bouncing the silver blade in his palm.

“What are you going to do?” I ask him now, as I eye that silver knife. Hardly more than a letter-opener, it’s not a find to be terribly excited about, as there are probably tons of ancient artifacts scattered throughout this place, left by whoever was here last.

Strom’s eyes are triumphant, though.

In a way I don’t trust, as I lift a scathing eyebrow at him.

“Strom,” I say, giving him a severe eyeball. “What are you going to?—?”

Before I can even finish my sentence, Strom plunges that little dagger right into his chest. He cries out, falling to his knees as I surge to him in furious shock, steadying him.

I see he’s thrust that small silver knife right into the lone good eye of his last crimson tattoo drake. I watch now, as that roiling red dragon viciously comes to life upon his skin.

As Strom’s blood flows down over the tattoo, his ancient Eriksson Bone Mage inking comes alive in the fey dark—twisting from his flesh as it roars and takes to the air. I know Strom’s sent his last dragon of protection to his great-grandfather and Jarl, even before it evaporates. Because his great-grandfather is also the leader of the True Black Dragon Knights.

Who needs to move into battle, at last.

“They have to know. The True Knights must know what the False ones are up to. They have to protect the King—they can’t leave him fighting all this alone!” Strom gasps now as I hold him up from collapsing. Bjorn gets beneath his other arm, shoring him up as his legs give out. The dagger wasn’t long enough to pierce Strom’s heart, but he’s definitely hit a lung with that thrust.

As we now have someone entirely new to worry about.

Bjorn, Mikkel, L?rke, and I are already pouring everything we have left into Strom to get that lung puncture to heal fast. The last thing we need is to lose one incredible drake over something so fucking infinitesimal, all because he was too exhausted to heal it himself.

“You fucking idiot. I thought you could only do that with burning silver?” Bjorn growls at Strom now as we ease him down to his back on the hall’s stone floor. But even I can tell Bjorn is impressed as he pours healing energy into Strom, everything we can spare, though we’ve already given most of it to save Baldur.

“It just has to be silver. And fucking hurt. A lot,” Strom says with a humorous grin, despite everything. “And you’re welcome.”

As we settle in to finish healing Strom, I can feel the last of the evening’s daylight waning outside. Night is taking over now, though the strange luminosity inside this underground hall doesn’t change.

“Well, I suppose we’re here for now. Wherever here is.” I look around for some kind of better shelter than sleeping by the fountain on the moss-covered flagstones, beneath the silver trees. “Do you have any idea where we are, Bjorn?” I ask him now, because he’s the one who got us here.

“No fucking clue.” Bjorn scowls, then glances around with me. “I just made the portal… and it took us wherever it took us. By the looks of it, we’re in some kind of underground ruin leftover from the ancient wars. An entire city, though a small one.”

I wonder now what connection Aesa’s Truthstone and my ring from my ancestor who made the Black Dragon might have with this place, since they flared together to open the door. But it’s a mystery to figure out another day, as we focus on survival now. Because though we’ve completely lost the day against the Jarl of Copenhagen, Emil Beck, Litha, and the Black Dragon, we’ve survived to tell the tale.

And that is win enough in my book.

“Right now, we just have to focus on surviving the night,” I say, feeling how devastatingly weak we are, barely able to heal a simple puncture wound between the six of us. We’re hanging on by a thread and we’re in unfamiliar territory—a place we’ve found water, but little else so far.

“More water, food, and someplace proper to sleep. That’s what we need tonight to power back up.” I glance around. “Everything else can wait, as we figure out where we stand—and trust that Strom’s tattoo-dragon can get to the True Knights to protect our King.”

“To protect everyone, while we’re down for the count,” Bjorn growls now as I feel the barest edge of his natural rage rise. “I hate being in this position, but you’re right, Rikyava. We can’t do anything for our people, much less our King, when we can’t do much for ourselves. We rest—and live to fight another day.”

But even as I cuddle close to my drakes and L?rke in the underground hall, finishing healing Strom, I pray we can all survive the night. Because I feel how Baldur’s curses from the Black Dragon are still pulling at him, draining all our flesh.

He’s fighting them as hard as he can out in the Void. But like the touch of those curses once did upon me, the remaining curses still singed into Baldur’s beautiful flesh are pulling on all of us, hard, through our bonds.

And it doesn’t bode well, as we all fight to stay conscious now.

“I’ll find food for us and someplace warmer to sleep. Be back soon,” Bjorn says as he struggles to his feet, stubborn as the night is long.

“Like hell are you going alone.” L?rke struggles up to stand beside Bjorn, wavering on her feet but holding steady. “I’m the least bonded to your group; I’ve got more left than anyone else. If you faint while out looking for a decent spot to bed down, you need someone to carry your ass back. That someone is me.”

For a moment, Bjorn looks like he’s going to tell L?rke to piss off. Then I see him sigh as she stands tall in the wan light, tossing her long ultra-white hair back and daring Bjorn to defy her.

The smallest smile quirks Bjorn’s lips.

And then he’s bending, placing a sweet kiss on mine. “Back in a trice.”

“You’d better be,” I say with a twist of smile now as I feel the deep love that flows between me and my First Drake. Bjorn is my first love, and the first person I ever life-mated. That bond shores us up now when all feels lost as I stare into his ridiculously beautiful golden eyes.

And see nothing but love there for me, too.

“I will be,” Bjorn says, as love and pride for our Bloodbond surges through him. And then he’s off, turning with L?rke to go find some place decent for us all to crash overnight, a place smaller and less drafty than this gargantuan hall of ancient trees and carvings.

I’m left with Strom, Mikkel, and the incapacitated Baldur, still unconscious on the floor. As our healing of Strom gradually wraps, he sits up, rubbing the closed but still ugly dagger-wound in his flesh. As he looks at Baldur, frowning, we all gaze around.

Feeling those bone-deep curses still eating away at Baldur’s flesh—devouring all of us.

“Think we can last the night?” Strom asks now, as we watch the unconscious Baldur and feel his curses draining us.

“We have to,” I say, just as stubbornly as Bjorn, as I look at Baldur. “You, Bjorn, and I weathered this before, with me being heart-cursed by the Black Dragon when Maryse died. We survived it then. We can this time, too.”

“But that was different.” Storm glances at me, knowing. “You weren’t heart-cursed by the Black Dragon; Maryse was, and you tried to pull it out of her after her death. This time, you actually did pull Baldur’s heart-curse out before it could kill him. You can counteract the Black Dragon’s worst spell, Rikyava—have you ever thought about that? Maybe the reason all this is happening with the Black Dragon… is because you are the only person who can counter its heart-curses, breaking that behemoth’s final spell on dragons. The one that kills them for good.”

As shock hits me to hear Strom’s words, I feel a blaze of light sear to me from the Void.

From Baldur.

Strom’s right, Rikyava, Baldur says to me now through our bond, though he hasn’t moved a muscle in his inert state on the floor. It’s as if he’s been listening to our conversation as he chimes in now, however, and we all hear it. Whenever my sister dreamed of you, she always said you had a special power. An ability to undo the worst curse the Black Dragon creates—the heart-curse it puts on dragons, which causes their ultimate death. Because that curse is something more than just a terrible way to kill them. Though my sister didn’t know what it actually does… she did know it needed a shining knight to come and break it.

“I’m no knight.” My throat chokes and my heart grips to feel Baldur’s unshakeable belief in me. “You saw me in that hall. I nearly became something like the Black Dragon myself when I shot up into my Wraith, trying to command it. Something beyond awful. Something diabolical, making you all Wraith out, as well…”

But then, the sweetest light curls all around me. Baldur’s voice comes to me like the brightest sunlight now, pouring through my body as he kisses me gently from his stasis.

I have faith, Rikyava, Baldur says, as he smiles at me through our connection. His dark blue eyes sparkle with their bright diamond-white and fire-opal fighting color now, fierce. I have faith that you can kill the Black Dragon and take Litha down for good. That you can hunt the False Council until every one of them comes to their reckoning and raise the True Knights back to their original hunt. That you can save your King, and all of Blood Dragondom, from blackest death. And that you can liberate us all, and free us from the immense shadow of this terrible beast.

With that, Baldur’s voice sighs away, but not before he leaves one last burning kiss on my lips.

Beautiful.

Everything inside me sears white then, like a thousand suns blazing, at Baldur’s words and his kiss. Despite it all, despite everything we’re up against and how horridly powerful our enemies and the Black Dragon are, he’s given me the most precious gift of all today .

It’s the kind of gift every warrior needs to keep soldiering on; the gift I once gave to Mikkel when I showed him his true light.

And Baldur just showed me mine.

I suddenly feel hope that we might win the day—if we play our cards right. I settle down in the fey hall, cinching close to Mikkel and Strom now as we cuddle in next to Baldur, waiting for Bjorn and L?rke to return. And despite everything, despite how much our chips are down right now, I feel a fierce spirit blaze inside me.

Because I’m not giving up—even though everything sucks.

That fighter’s spirit is just what we need, as Mikkel snarls now in the fey hall, and Strom chuckles darkly, the slightest smile even touching Baldur’s lips, as Bjorn growls from far away. That growl fills me up like wildfire, as I cuddle close to my drakes, determined to survive this night.

Because I know we’ll fuck up the black Dragon of All Souls and all our enemies tomorrow.

And tomorrow, and tomorrow…

However long our tomorrows might last.