Page 8
Chapter 8
IN A LIFETIME, THERE ARE an endless number of rights and wrongs that can stack up for or against you. The tallies on either side can haunt your memories, bolster your greatest accomplishments, or leave you standing in an uncomfortable puddle of ambivalence.
I don’t have a track record for getting things wrong.
Mistakes, all too often, are a death sentence, either for me or for those I care about. The luxury to make poor choices isn’t one I’ve had very often. But as I stare at the two scions, one a winter blizzard, the other a dark thunderstorm, I wonder if the winds have changed for me and wrong is now the only way I know how to step.
The Noctis brothers share a look, one loaded with silent communication, but I’m ill-equipped to decipher what they’re wordlessly tossing back and forth.
It can’t be good.
Then again, it can’t be that bad either, because they’re not setting me on fire or tearing me limb from limb. I was so fucking certain they would too, and yet here I am, skipping past wrong street, licking a wrong popsicle in the middle of what-the-fuck-is-going-on lane. What’s worse is I can’t seem to escape this fucking place no matter what I do.
I was wrong about the ambush that got me and Ren taken. Wrong about whether or not I would survive my swan dive off a cliff. Wrong about my ability to run from The Horde. And now I’m wrong about these assholes killing me the second they discovered what I am.
A wave of restless energy ripples through the drakes surrounding me. Discernable impressions of shock, dismay, and suspicion are evident on some of their faces. Others have their reactions locked down tight. It’s an impressive display of discipline. One I can’t say I particularly care for at the moment because it makes too many of them hard to read, and that makes their actions hard to anticipate.
Corrugated metal walls, chilly cement floor, and flickering lights are the perfect backdrop for my spiraling thoughts. The drakes around me look stoic, but I can feel their unease. It’s as though they’re waiting for me to rear up, use my affinity to steal all of their power, and then slaughter them where they stand.
If I could, I would, but they don’t need to know, thanks to the curse, that I’ve never revealed my dragon, I don’t have an affinity, and can’t do shit to any of them.
“A Syphon?” Aeson Noctis asks, his bright blue eyes breaking from his brother’s and returning to me.
“The one and only,” I bait somewhat flatly.
The skeptical look the spare is wearing tightens with unamused disapproval. The commander rises from his crouch in front of me, grabs the toppled chair I knocked over in my efforts to get away from his knife-wielding brother and sets it back on all fours. “Sit,” he orders before striding over to stand next to Lorn.
I scowl up at the brothers, fighting the sudden need to spend the rest of my life right here on this freezing floor now that I’ve been commanded to do the opposite. However, my ass is going numb, and I’ve spent way too much time in the last few months on the hard ground of a dank cell. I’m not going to make myself suffer when I don’t have to.
I take my time getting up and brushing myself off before, once again, claiming the solitary seat offered to me. I cross my legs, and both brothers track the movement. Aeson’s eyebrows dip infinitesimally when his eyes trace the long scratch still on my thigh.
“I find your claim…interesting,” Lorn contends, studying me contemplatively. “King Tenebrae didn’t have any daughters, only sons. And we would know, they were our friends.
I study the heir just as intently, but I don’t discover the slightest hint of what he might be thinking. He’s alarmingly calm, they both are. It’s putting me even more on edge. After a moment, I nod in agreement. Not with the no girls allowed part of his assertion, but I know he and Aeson were close with my brothers before they were murdered. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that they knew my kindred better than I did.
My throat grows tight and I struggle with what to say, with how to explain. Habit has my mind whirring with ways I can skirt around sensitive truths I know won’t be easy to swallow. It feels wrong to start spilling secrets after everything I’ve done to keep them under lock and key, but trying to keep things buried is pointless. I’ve been on a collision course with The Horde from the moment I woke up in the hospital. Now it’s time to see what can be made of the wreckage.
With a sigh, I press my palms against my stomach to calm the eclipse of moths churning within.
“No. Queen Tenebrae didn’t have any daughters,” I correct. “But the king did. He had me.”
Indignation undulates like a billowing sail in the room. The drakes around me remain silent, but I feel their offense nipping at my skin like hungry dogs out for blood. I’m no longer staring at stoic faces and censorious body language. Now their eyes scream liar , and fury strains the lines of their frowns. I don’t blame them. If I were in their shoes, I’d question everything coming out of my mouth too.
“You want us to believe that you’re the product of an affair?” Aeson counters, arms testily crossing over his chest while pique pulses through his clenched jaw. “Hate to break it to you, little Syphon , but we knew your father. He wouldn’t have done that to his Bonded Mate.”
I nod again, unexpectedly touched by the way the commander and many of the other drakes are coming to my father’s defense, refusing to think the worst of him. I didn’t expect that from a Noctis, much less any of the others.
It’s…confusing.
“I’m not the product of an affair, and you’re right, my father would’ve never disrespected his Bonded like that…not without her permission anyway.”
Lorn shifts his weight as though uncomfortable with the burden of that revelation. His eyes flick to the Thrasher off to the side, the male sifting through my words and everything else he can in search of deceit.
I pull in a fortifying breath and square my shoulders, knowing I’m about to score a hit against The Horde, and dragons aren’t the type to turn the other cheek. “For lack of a better term, I’m the product of a breeding program ,” I supply evenly.
Quiet wraps itself around my confession, and I try not to fidget or do anything else that might hint at my discomfort. I wait for the pieces of the puzzle to fit together and for the picture to become clear, but instead, the scions stare at me like I’m no longer speaking a language they understand.
I rub at my temples, trying to pacify the throb building there. All of this is too much. The Tainted, the blood brokers, the cliff, The Horde. I should be dead. None of this should be my problem, and yet here I am, stuck in the middle of all of it, despite every effort not to be.
“What?” Lorn demands after a beat, disbelief warring with confusion.
“The numbers of Syphons were dwindling dangerously low,” I try again, attempting to connect all of the dots. “My father and the elders worried that unless drastic measures were taken, the Syphons would go the way of the Surgers and die out altogether. They went back and forth, desperate for a solution for a long time, but in the end, it came down to needing more births than deaths. So it was decreed that all Syphon males would procreate as much as possible in hopes of more births. Our females played their own part by bearing as many babies as they could…and, of course, looking the other way when their mates were called to do their duty. Like I said, a breeding program.”
With that, anger and outrage ignite all around me, burning through the professional facades of the surrounding drakes.
“She’s covering for the duke! Don’t believe a word out of her mouth!”
“It’s been over sixty years since the wyvern rebellion; where has she been all this time?”
“I don’t see a dragon mark. She doesn’t smell like us. This is a trap!”
“Female, or not, she deserves to lose her tongue for such lies.”
I level a challenging glare at the drake who spews the last comment, daring him to try it.
Lorn raises a hand, and all the hissing and accusations instantly stop. He searches my face carefully, methodically. At first, I think he’s trying to gauge how bat-shit crazy I am, but then I realize he’s looking for hints of my father in my features.
I meet his gaze head-on, knowing he’ll find his proof in the shape and color of my eyes, the high angles of my cheeks, and the solitary dimple I have when I smile—not that he’ll ever see that. Everything else is courtesy of my mother, but I doubt the scions knew her. We were only invited to the keep once. The day everyone died.
A small, sharp, almost imperceptible intake of breath alerts me to the moment Lorn Noctis sees the truth. It sits like a snare between us, one that can’t be avoided, and yet there’s no way around it either. No matter where any of us step from here, we’re going to get tangled up in some shit, and people are going to get hurt.
He turns away after a beat and shares another charged look with Aeson. I’ve never wanted to be in anyone’s head as badly as I’d like to root around in either one of theirs right now. Their lack of a murderous reaction to everything I’m saying coupled with the fact that they seem more intent on answers than persecution has me completely thrown.
Dragons killed my people. The wyverns and the sorcai played their part in it too, but the final blow, the one that sealed my fate, belongs to our kind. Even if the Burners weren’t directly responsible for King Tenebrae’s death or the wyvern rebellion, all of the clans have been picking off Syphons for ages.
It was the same for the Surgers. Syphons and Surgers were once part of the Render Clan, but dragons and other Arcs hunted both to extinction because they coveted our affinities or felt threatened by them. Surgers were sought after for their ability to either boost others’ power or use it at will. For Syphons, it was because we could take away affinities both temporarily and permanently. Our kinds were collected and destroyed for no other reason than greed or fear.
The weak always swipe at the strong when they think they can get away with it. That’s our reality, maybe even the nature of most beings. They know it, and I know it. Which is why all of this is even more confusing. Why aren’t the scions taking a swipe at me now when they’re outraged, I’m outnumbered, and I have no way to stop it?
Maybe executing me is above their pay grade? I suppose that might be something only the king can order. But if King Noctis was in league with the wyverns and the sorcai like we’ve long suspected, why wouldn’t his sons be in on it too? They were young when the uprising happened, but they aren’t anymore. They’d have some idea of what their father’s been up to, wouldn’t they?
Unless we’ve somehow got it wrong.
Noctis was my father’s second. He benefited the most from King Tenebrae’s murder, but there are others who quietly celebrated the extinction of the Syphons. Far too many dragons eagerly stepped in to claim a slice of power when their competition was conveniently eliminated.
No, I can’t rule out the king and his kindred just because they haven’t ripped my head off like I expected. Only a small circle of dragons would have had access and the ability to organize and execute a coup. Kathal Noctis is, and has always been, at the top of that list.
“Where have you been this whole time? Why not come home before now?” Lorn demands, and I’m taken aback by the anger and frustration inundating his deceptively simple questions.
The indictment written all over his pretty face has me loading caustic words on my tongue. I take aim, prepared to make it crystal clear to the heir that The Horde isn’t my home and never will be, but my rancor is immediately doused when a snarl shatters the otherwise quiet night.
The roar is so loud I feel it in my bones. It quakes the ground I’m sitting on and rattles the walls of the building. Another dragon bays a warning, but a jarring explosion cuts off the sound before magic-shrapnel and bullets begin to rip through the structure surrounding us.
Chaos erupts everywhere and I’m thrown to the ground by a heavy body. A blast of cold air tells me that the building protecting us has either lost some walls or part of the roof. Loud pops of weapons and detonating magic are almost drowned out by the drakes yelling orders to reveal , open the jump portal , and kill whoever the fuck is attacking us .
The sickening smell of compromised magic reaches me, and I bite back a heave of disgust and fear.
The Tainted.
The scent of their putrid power haunts my fucking nightmares, but none of the scrambling drakes seem to notice the rotten scent. I shove a hand over my nose and mouth to help block the stench and push up from the ground, needing to confirm my suspicions with my own eyes.
It doesn’t make any sense. The blood brokers would have to be suicidal to try to take on The Horde, but that familiar reek and this level of fire power has my stomach tightening with trepidation.
A menacing growl sounds in my ear as I try to sit up before a large hand tugs me back under the body pressing protectively over mine.
“Think I’m going to let you flag your friends down?” a deep, irate voice accuses.
“Fuck you, Commander,” I snarl, trying and failing again to push him off of me.
Why does he have to be so bloody big?
“What?” he snips. “No thank-yous for saving your ass?”
“The only thing you’ve done is make me a sitting duck,” I grunt. “Get off me!”
Shock rings through me like a gong when Aeson actually listens, his profound weight and body lifting from my back. My surprise is quickly replaced with affront when the handsy asshole grabs me off the ground by the waist and starts carrying me through the mayhem, tucking my back to his chest like some weakling in need of his protection.
Alarmed shouts and outrage ricochet around the now dusty and debris-filled air. Two Shields are holding a massive translucent barricade around those of us still inside the building, both of their faces tight with strain. Bright yellow magic assaults the protective veil, viciously trying to burrow through it to get to us. Bullets hit the clear barrier, creating small ripples of warning with their impact, and outside the shield, drakes are revealing their dragons faster than I can gasp in shock.
A challenging roar rips out of the mouth of a red dragon as it streaks past a huge opening that’s been blown into one of the walls. Acid sprays from the massive beast’s open maw, and screams fill the air. The yellow magic trying to breach The Horde’s protections instantly cuts off.
“Secondary protocols!” Aeson bellows, and the two sorcai I noticed when I was first led into the hangar scramble to open a portal. They pour dazzling silver magic into the gateway until a jump portal blooms at the center, unfurling quickly until it touches every rune-covered stone in the large arch. I barely get a peek at the destination on the other side. All I catch is a flash of blue before my view is blocked.
Drakes covered in various colors of scale armor surround Lorn Noctis and hurry him toward the now open portal. Their scale armor has been fully extended to cover their heads and faces, making them look as though they’re trapped halfway between drake and dragon. Horns and ridges on the armored faces hint at what their dragons look like when they’re fully revealed. It’d be an intimidating sight if I wasn’t envious as fuck right now.
Lorn’s guards collectively press through the portal, the heir at the center of their circle of safety. Captivated, I try to watch the jump, having never traveled via gate before, but my line of sight is cut off when I’m set on my feet and then roughly spun around until I’m face-to-face with a very pissed off Aeson Noctis.
“Are they here for you?” he growls, his armor-covered face inches from mine.
Thicker plates now cover the bridge of his nose in a herringbone pattern that rises up the center of his forehead. Small spikes protrude on each side of the V-shaped plates, growing bigger until they’re cut off by two horns. The horns tilt back from his head, making his armored mask look even fiercer, and his angry blue eyes practically glow against the pitch black of his scales.
He’s an enigma. And for a second, I feel myself being drawn in by it like he’s a black hole and I’m some orbiting ship with no choice but to succumb. I drop my gaze, unable to think or process when he’s this close, glowering down at me.
Bodies of fallen drakes litter the ground. Pools of blood and gore now spatter the floor, painting a macabre picture that I’m alarmingly desensitized to. Aeson shakes me until my eyes once again find his.
“Did you set us up?” he barks.
His words take a moment to register, but when they do I recoil, his insinuation like a stinging slap.
“No,” I answer, appalled. “They’re not here for me. I want them dead as much as you do. More even.”
The horns, ridges, and scales of Aeson’s inky black armor begin to peel back, revealing his face. He kneels in front of me, strong hands grabbing my hips, and before I know what he’s doing, the commander leans forward and licks the thin line of blood from the scratch on my thigh.
Heat blooms low in my stomach, and I try to jerk back from the searing touch of his hands and tongue. I don’t get far before he’s once again towering over me, grabbing my arms to keep me close.
“I have your blood now, Syphon , so don’t even think of trying to run, because I will find you.” He presses forward and I’m too stunned to do anything other than back up to make room for him. “I don’t care who you are or what you’re the last of—if you cost me any of my Wing, you’ll beg for death long before I grant it.”
The commander’s features harden with the certainty of his promise, and something in my depths wants to rise and meet his challenge, maybe dole out a few threats of my own. Magic skitters over me like shards of ice, and I realize he’s herded me toward the portal. Onyx scales climb up Aeson’s throat, his cheeks, and then the rest of his face until he’s once again donning an impenetrable mask.
“You will shift and land where the others go. Do you understand me?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer before he brutally shoves me.
Realization grips me too late as I fall back into the frigid magic of the jump portal. Horror slams into me like a tsunami, and I scramble for purchase, clawing at the commander’s arms. His hard, slick scale armor keeps my desperate fingers from finding purchase, and all too quickly gravity rips me away, a scream spilling from my lips.
I fall.
Blue skies and creamy clouds surround me like a happy lie as I plummet. The portal I was just tossed through rapidly slips further and further away. On the other side of the magical opening, I watch as Aeson Noctis sprints fearlessly into the fray. One step he’s a drake, and the next a breathtaking, bone-quaking black dragon tears free.
The bellow that thunders out of the scion promises death and pain. It resonates in every part of me, and for the first time since I was taken by the blood brokers, I sense the faintest call of my own dragon. It’s nothing more than a slight tingling surge, but I’d know it anywhere.
I can barely breathe with the shock of feeling it again. I’ve been trying not to think about the absence of this part of me, of what it might mean long term, but it’s back. Fast as a bolt of lightning, I wrap myself protectively around the weak flicker, terrified my dragon will disappear again. I will the weak glimmer to grow, beg it to consume me until this part of me finally claims its rightful place and my dragon fully reveals.
But like blowing too much air on the flames of a newborn fire, the fragile embers blink out, and my dragon withdraws. I should have known better. I’ve been here too many times, trying to weld the broken pieces of myself together to no avail. No matter what I do, it never works.
Not for me.
Not for any of the other Syphons.
For the second time in a matter of days, I fall through the heavens with no ability to shift or save myself. I’d laugh at the fucked-up full circle of this moment, only this time, I know I won’t be waking up in a hospital after this crash.
The portal, now far above me, is a night-filled gash in the middle of a bright cerulean sky. My rapid descent into another part of Drameric has the magical window turning into nothing more than a sliver as I drop too far to continue to see what’s happening on the other side.
I twist and flip until I’m no longer facing the gate but staring head-on at the high-rises and keeps below, my death painted on their eaves and turrets. The last view I’ll ever have spreads beneath me like a mocking grin. One I’ve longed to see again, but not like this.
Paragon City…we meet again.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8 (Reading here)
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47