Page 24 of The Dragon Queen (Ember: Queen Of Dragons #6)

EMBER

Every second that ticks by is torture. We try to rest, and at my mates' insistence, I even manage to choke down a granola bar. My stomach roils, though, and it's not morning sickness. My anxiety eats at me.

We decided to give our friends an hour head start. That should put them within striking distance of the altar of the Shadow Queen's Tomb. The area will be highly guarded. Rook, Rhiannon, Mariutza and Delaynie have plans to obscure their approach until the last possible moment, but there's always a chance that things could go wrong.

We agreed that there would be no communication between us. They all left their phones at home, and we did, too. Their signals are too easy to track. And that was smart. It was a good plan.

But right now? I hate it.

What if they've been spotted? What if the Shadow King's forces have already taken them prisoner--or worse?

My pulse races, my breaths too short.

It's only my mates' presence that keeps me from going out of my skin. They keep tapping the cords of our connections, sending waves of reassurance vibrating through my consciousness. But they can't hide their own nerves, no matter how hard they try.

After what feels like an eternity, the minute hand on Jianyu's old-school, analog watch finally points to twelve.

I vault to my feet.

"Oh, thank the Gods," Rafe mutters under his breath.

"Come on." I beckon them all to my sides, and none of them resist.

But Malik puts a hand on mine. "You're sure you're ready?"

Is he kidding me? I'm dying to get going.

But his concern is echoed across all four of my mate-bonds. He's not talking about my eagerness.

He's asking about my mental state.

We don't have any time to waste, but it's stupid to rush in.

I force myself to take a few breaths, closing my eyes and centering myself. My connections to my mates are all bright, gleaming tethers. I draw my strength from them.

When I open my eyes again, I'm ready.

I take the locket in hand. Its low hum of magic vibrates something sleeping within me. For a second, there's a pang in my chest. I miss that spark, that purple fire thrumming through my veins.

But that's all right. We're going to get it back.

I look to each of my mates in turn. They reach out, hands extending to hold onto me by my shoulders, my waist, my wrist.

I open the locket.

The universe leaks out. Wispy and tenuous, but there.

"The Shadow Queen's Tomb," I murmur, holding the vision from the children's book of fairy tales in my mind.

A place where darkness enshrouds ancient marvels of water, fire, stone and air. Where the last vestiges of magic left behind by the mother of all dragons lie in wait.

The locket's energy expands. It's sputtering, nearly exhausted, but I hold onto it with all the power left inside of me. It yanks at my hands, pulling and disintegrating, and oh gods--what if there isn't enough? If this was all for nothing--

And then the gap between time and space opens with a shredding tear, and we're hurtling into it. We're falling, spinning. Darkness overtakes us, and the Shadow Dragon within me roars.

The deep magic of the Shadow Dragon Kingdom awakens a violet spark within me that I didn't feel when I was brought there against my will. Now that I've Emerged, it shines with a bone-shivering crackle of energy.

We've crossed over.

"Ember--" Jianyu's voice breaks through the howling winds of the portal, alarmed in a way that speaks to more than just our entrance into Shadow Dragon territory.

And then we're crashing into hard rock. The impact punches the air out of my lungs, and there's a sharp crack to the back of my head.

I cry out as something cold scrapes the back of my palm.

I glance around frantically. We're in a cave, the entire place dimly lit from above by cold, pale cracks of light--barely enough to see by.

But I can see the rock that's encased my hand.

The crystals of it cresting from the walls themselves.

The floor comes alive. Stone rises over my feet, and sudden panic claws at me.

"Ember," Jianyu shouts again, and my connection to him is screaming. He flings his arm in my direction, but I can't reach.

My other mates are crying out. Cold horror rushes down my spine as the rock devours them as well. Stone tendrils arc toward my throat, and my heart jackhammers against the inside of my ribs. I struggle to free myself, but there's no moving, no breaking free.

And that's when reality dawns on me.

This is the Shadow Queen's Tomb.

And it's about to be our tomb as well.

JIANYU

We planned for this. We knew it would happen, and we trained and worked and strived.

The Crown Of Cinders is hidden where it can only be reached by someone who can access powers of fire, stone, water, air and shadow.

We thought we were prepared.

We're not.

My pulse is a galloping horse against my ribs. Rock creeps from every surface of the cave, descending from the ceiling, even. It's encasing Ember. Rafe is trying to fend it off with fire--to mixed results. Storm floats above it, but it claws at him. Malik is already sinking into deep, black obsidian, and it's pulling at my feet, but it has no purchase on me.

But I have no command over it.

I push it back with every bit of magic inside of me, but the stone refuses to yield. It's painful and cold, dead in a way that the living, breathing earth has never been for me.

And I remember this.

The Shadow King's Citadel was blanketed in the same rock. It felt wrong when I approached it. It grated at my magic and my senses; I couldn't peer through it or feel the structure within its walls.

My pulse rockets higher. I can't get in a full breath of air. My bond to Ember is black and molten and rippling with liquid fear, and I have to do something--anything.

Again and again, I try, but Ember's throat is closing. I can't think. Malik is buried to mid-thigh, Storm's hands locked from above. The rock that Rafe has melted with his fire reforms around him, and he screams.

This is stone, but it's stone corrupted by Shadow.

It can only be beaten back by the combination of Shadow and Stone.

I lurch forward, and the ebony rock around my feet chips and fractures.

I take a step and another step, and my connection to Ember is shrieking. She can't breathe. I have to move faster, but I'm wading through stone, and panic isn't serving me. I won't.

I force myself to close my eyes. Take a breath.

Everything goes quiet and still.

When I was a younger man, I was accused of being made of stone. My father wanted me to be that hard, that heartless.

But inside, I was always an inferno.

All that anger I kept inside roiled like lava within my chest. I feared it was a weakness. I needed to keep it contained.

I needed to hold back all of my feelings.

Stone dragons are patient. Analytical. They wait until their moment to strike.

That moment is now.

I open my eyes.

I am not cold. I'm not heartless or repressed, I'm not calculating or cruel.

The burning fire within me is not fueled by anger alone.

A love so hot it could melt the hardest granite flares to life.

All those years of holding back disintegrate beneath my fingertips. And my bond to Ember ignites.

She awakened me from all the lies, and rescued me from the loneliness that had threatened so many times to pull me under. She and Rafe and all the others reminded me that it's not the Stone Dragons against the world. We don't have to be hard, protected behind our walls, pushing the rest of the world aside.

We can let the world in.

Just like I let her in. I showed her the most vulnerable pieces of my soul, and she accepted them--she loved them.

She loves me, and I love her.

With one final lurch forward, I close the gap. Just as the rock threatens to fold around Ember completely, I clasp her one free hand in mine.

And it doesn't matter that she lost the Shadow Bracer, or that she has less raw power in her human form. In that moment, as our fingertips touch, all the love trapped in our bond erupts in an avalanche of pure light.

Dark purple plumes of magic flow out from our palms, and the dead, black rock shivers and ripples. It cracks.

In a shuddering gasp, the stone falls away. It dissipates from around Ember, crawling back from her other mates in waves of clattering rubble.

As Ember sucks in a breath that sounds like dying, Malik coughs, clawing his way from the hole the retreating rock has made around him. Storm flicks away the glittering, obsidian shards in a gust of wind, and Rafe lands on the ground, his eyes ablaze.

"What the fuck," Rafe growls.

Ember falls into my arms, and I hold her too tightly, but I can't keep myself in check.

"That," Malik says, heaving in rough breaths as he collapses to the ground. "Was our first test." His gaze connects with mine, one brow twitching ever so slightly upward. "Congratulations. You passed."

EMBER

Malik's assessment of the situation settles over all of us with a wash of fear that fades into a grim determination.

He's right.

The bitter tang of adrenaline lingers in the back of my mouth, jangling through my body and leaving me on high alert. It's only Jianyu's grounding presence that keeps me tethered and in control.

What would have happened if he hadn't acted so quickly? We were dropped into this situation with no warning. Caught unawares, we were all fighting for our lives with immovable rock, but Jianyu flung himself into the fray. His magic combined with mine in a brilliant burst of power.

Even now, it's crackling in my veins, and oh--I've missed this. The heady rush of magic is exhilarating. I haven't felt anything like it since the Shadow Bracer rejected me.

My fingers twitch with the need for more. The bracer that Fang reconstructed for me is still lifeless on my wrist, but there are ghost-like echoes of the magic it used to yield, scintillating up my arm. It isn't hard to imagine them coalescing into something bigger.

Something darker.

I clench my hands into fists against Jianyu's spine, pulling away. As I do, I meet his gaze.

Lines appear between his brows. "Are you okay?"

I'm pretty sure he's referring to the fact that I almost got eaten alive by a literal pile of rocks, but maybe he can sense the weird energy that just danced through me.

The best I can, I shake it off, nodding. "Yeah." I force a half-smile. "Thanks to you."

"Barely," Rafe mutters, dusting himself off.

"Ignore him," Jianyu urges me, tugging me back in again. He dips his head to press a gentle kiss to my lips. More shivering sparks skitter through me, my toes curling in my boots. I want to sink into the kiss, reaffirming our connection--reveling in the magic we just shared.

Thanking him.

There's an openness to him as he releases me. It would have been hard to imagine, back when we first met, but it's unmistakable now. My heart clenches with feeling, my admiration and my pride in my mate almost overwhelming for a moment.

But this isn't the time or the place to bask.

"Guess we'd better take a look around." I reach for my pack and grab my flashlight. The beam is painfully bright, now that our eyes have adjusted to the dimness of the cave, but it sure does help to be able to see all the cold black rock that was trying to kill us.

I shudder, not quite trusting my steps as I trace the perimeter of the space. It's surprisingly large, the ceiling rising at least thirty feet above our heads. The cracks of light seeping in might be daylight or they might be something else entirely; it's impossible to tell.

That isn't exactly reassuring. For all we know, we could be directly under the altar where even now, King Erembour is starting his wedding--and his ritual.

My abdomen sucks in, and yet again, I hate being so cut off from everything. But my rational mind reassures me: if he had begun his attempt to steal the magic from the rest of the dragon world, we'd feel it.

Right?

"Careful," Storm advises, coming up beside me, shining his own flashlight around. "We shouldn't split up. Just in case..."

"What?" Rafe asks gruffly. "The cave tries to eat us again?"

"Basically." Jianyu jostles Rafe as he passes him, wiggling his fingers as if he could unleash the rock surrounding us at any moment.

He can't, though. I draw my brows together, feeling outward with my admittedly limited senses. The stone is as dead and still as it was in the Citadel. As disquieting as that is, it's a lot better than it attacking us. For now, at least, the threat has passed.

But that doesn't mean we're safe.

"Over here," Malik calls from just ahead.

My stomach dips as we follow him into a corridor that was hidden in the rock. There's a smooth black stone just at the junction, carved with characters that send a chill up my spine.

"It's writing of some kind?" Storm suggests.

Jianyu frowns. "I don't recognize it."

Neither do I, but as I step forward to take a closer look, the characters glow with a faint purple light.

The words appear in my head, spoken by a deep, female voice that makes my skin crawl, and yet which also feels...safe.

I open my mouth. The voice that comes out of me is my own, but deeper. Darker. I still can't read the words, exactly, but their warning flows through me: "Those who seek the Grand Throne must pass through the trials of the Mother Of Dragons."

"Uh..." Storm puts his hand on my arm, but I shake my head, my eyes going unfocused as the writing dances before my vision.

"Buried in stone," I recite, "cast to the wind, sunken deep beneath the sea, the Crown has been devoured by the flames of Dragon desires. Only the heir may set its power free."

I exhale with a whoosh, the unearthly voice suddenly going silent in my head. I glance around at my mates. Storm's eyes are pinched, and Malik's mouth draws down into a worried frown.

"Well, that wasn't creepy," Rafe mutters.

"Ember..." Jianyu takes my hand.

I shake my head. "I'm fine. Just--" I gesture at the characters. The glow has receded from them, leaving them as simple carvings, but the echoes of their power ripple through me. "I guess that was supposed to be the entrance."

"Silly us," Storm muses, trying to put on a brave face. "Teleporting in and skipping the welcome sign."

"We managed," Jianyu says. "But I suppose the warning might have helped."

"Seriously." I swallow, my throat tight. "Well, at least it's good to know we're in the right place."

Rafe crosses his arms over his chest. "Less good to know that there's definitely going to be at least three more things trying to kill us."

"Nothing you can't handle," Jianyu says, needling him, and somehow, it's almost reassuring that they can still be goading each other, even when we're in the most dangerous situation we've ever faced.

Malik seeks out my gaze. "So we continue on, then?"

"It's not as if we have much choice." I shrug, trying to hide the shiver that courses through me. "Our friends are counting on us. And besides."

I touch the locket hanging from my throat.

I felt it the moment it transported us to this cave, but the empty silence of the pendant still grates up against something inside me. I open the locket, just to be sure. One faint, purple spark traces the rim of the black metal before dying away completely.

"There was barely enough magic to get us here," I remind them all. "There's nothing left."

In other words: there's no way out.

The gravity of the situation is a weight, pooling in my bones, but if my mates feel it, they give no sign.

Storm shakes his head, too intense. He places his hand over mine, gently snapping the locket closed. "Ember. You always have a choice."

I start to laugh, but I stop myself. He's deadly serious. They all are.

My throat bobs.

"So?" Rafe asks.

Storm is right. I always have a choice. Right now, it's either forge ahead or retreat and try to find a way to get both us and our friends to safety.

I put a hand to my belly.

But there's nowhere safe.

Breathing out, I square my shoulders and turn back toward the cave. "So. We forge ahead."