Page 35 of The Princesses of Ruin (The Princesses of Ruin #5)

Chapter thirty-three

Kazimir

T he wind is my only ally. It carries me forward with pure violence aligning our goals. To whip and slice and cut.

Alyse’s voice bounces off my mask. I can’t spare her pleas a thought. I must get the scale.

I slash through the air, my scythe singing just in front of the child. His face contorts and his body expands into that of a dragon once more. He flaps his wings, but I pull the very air out from under them. The dragon’s eyes go wide and it hunkers under my next attack.

A zap of blue heat arcs from the end of my scythe up to my elbow. My arm goes numb at the spot and the weapon clatters to the floor. I curse, shaking out my hand as if it’ll return feeling to it.

I cut the air with an overhead strike aimed at the dragon’s neck. Another bolt of bright electricity hits the end of my weapon. I release it and roll, grabbing the scythe from the ground. I swirl and sweep low. The dragon leaps straight up. He’s so agile, like a cat.

He flaps his wings again, trying to get distance between us. I hammer him from above with compressed atmosphere. He thumps to the ground with a yelp. I don’t hesitate, swinging hard for the beast’s neck once more .

The dragon retracts its head until its scales overlap thickly. My blade hits and tangles in his horns with a loud clank. Sparks fly as a sliver of the scaly bone flakes off.

Electricity travels up my arm to my neck. I can’t let go of the handle. My face burns, the silver urictsa mask heating beyond pain into sheer agony. My throat aches as lightning connects from weapon to collar to mask.

The anguish ends abruptly and I collapse.

The dragon’s eyes are focused on something behind me. I grab the blade at my thigh and throw myself forward. The ground erupts beneath me. I slam into a stony wall and crumple, the blade slicing through my hand as I go down again.

The wall morphs in grumbling, stuttered movements until I’m in a prison with bars and no escape. I summon the air and cut at the cage, but the rock withstands every slice.

“Be still, you irrelevant imbecile!” the elder dragon roars.

I gasp for air I haven’t been breathing and scream at my jailer.

The rocky prison turns, shifting me to face—

“Alyse.” I gasp her name through my raw throat.

She’s holding a blade to her belly, tears streaming down her red cheeks.

“What are you doing?” I try to say, but my voice is all used up.

The blue dragon shifts back to the boy shape, his hands raised.

“Don’t hurt her, please,” he says.

“Then don’t hurt him. I cannot raise this child without him. I cannot live without him. So please, don’t make me do something we will all regret.” She stares into my soul as the magic in her eyes diminishes. “That goes for you, too.”

“How could you sell her?” I ask. “Our baby? ”

Alyse stands tall and squares her shoulders. “There will be no sale . She is not a thing to be traded for a purpose.”

My eyes burn and tears collect in the crevasses of the silver mask.

“Then your people will die,” the blue dragon says.

“I propose a deal. A chance for a chance. There is no guarantee that with your scale we will survive, and just so, there should be no guarantee that you will have our daughter as your mate.”

“Mate!” I roar, my voice cracking.

The boy sneers at me. “What did you think I wanted her for, a meal?”

I throw myself at the bars of my cage. It tightens around me until I can’t move.

“Your proposal, princess,” the green dragon says as it comes to sit next to me. His clawed hand comes over the top of my cage, and he slides a talon around my throat, making the message clear.

The knife is still poised to plunge into her gut. “You will get the opportunity to court her—”

The blue boy hisses. “She will never choose me.”

Alyse is patient. “You will get the opportunity to court her. If she is your mate—the one that your kind cannot be apart from—she will sense it, will she not?”

The dragon is quiet.

“Elder?” Alyse asks, looking to the green.

His throat vibrates with a thoughtful hum. “If it is true—”

“It is true,” the blue spits.

The green chuffs. “Then perhaps. She is not a dragon, and she may not feel the same sensations of a life-bond. But she will be drawn to you.”

Is this the will of the gods? A cruel fate? My child will be bound to a beast of the air ?

Alyse’s gaze meets mine, then darts up to the dragon caging me. The dragon’s talon slides away from my throat.

She sniffles and blinks away fresh tears. “When she comes of age at twenty, we will host a ball. Suitors will be brought before her. You may choose when you will be presented to her.”

“This is all you offer me?” the blue demands. “A paltry chance?”

“I don’t see dragon-kind coming down from the mountains,” she roars, the blade poking into the fabric of her thin shirt. The muscles in her jaw flex and she exhales hard through her nose. “We ask only for a scale.”

The blue dragon looks back at the green. He clicks and moans deep in his chest, a rhythmic cadence that could very well be communication emerging.

“Will you please release my mate?” Alyse asks with fear in her voice.

“Put down the blade,” the green dragon says.

She throws the dagger aside, out of my reach and hers.

The bars of my cage drop away and I scramble to my feet. Despite the pain searing my face and numbness affecting my left arm, I run to her. She sobs into my chest and I cradle her there.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask, my voice as broken as my heart.

Her words are halting and full of tears. “I tried. I tried s-so many times. I’m…so sorry. Zephrom said…”

Zephrom. That meddlesome fucking cunt.

I grab a fistful of her hair and pull her head back, locking my gaze with hers. “You do not hide these things from me. Ever. This was a breach of my trust.”

“I know,” she whimpers. “Never again.”

The tight band constricting my stomach loosens for the first time in hours .

“Please, let me in,” she says, her tear-stained lips quivering. “It’s too loud without you.”

I release her hair and grab the edge of my mask where I can deactivate the runic binding. I pull and agony blooms through my face. The air is punched from my lungs as I try again, only to be met with even sharper hurt.

“Kaz, stop,” she cries, putting her hands to my mask.

Panic splices my thoughts. Trapped. I’m trapped forever without her.

I pull again.

Harder.

She grabs my numb arm and tugs me back to her. “You’re hurting yourself!”

“I can’t,” I say, terror muddling my thoughts.

“It’s the runes, my love! They’re malfunctioning. Please, stop pulling!” She grabs my other hand and pulls it to her chest.

“Just breathe with me,” she says.

My gaze locks on her eyes and my hand feels her heart.

I focus on the breath passing through her lungs, swirling inside her, coming out warm and wet.

I breathe with her. She pulls my hand lower until it’s resting on the little lump that is our child.

My heartbeat syncs with Alyse’s, and my mind returns to me.

“You’re all right. When we get home, Adrik can help you remove it,” she says.

I’ve always been able to sense the urictsa in the mask, the quiet voice of the sentient object coming to life with all my magic poured through it…now it’s more than a whisper. I sense the mask’s desire to be part of me and never leave.

“What if he can’t?” I say, my voice shaking .

She cradles my mask…my face. “You’re my heart and soul, mask or no mask, voice or no voice.”

I swallow the emotion building in my throat as I remember the audience behind us. They’ve stopped speaking their draconic clicks and groans. I half turn with Alyse still in my arms.

“I will accept your offer with additional terms,” the blue dragon says.

“What are those?” Alyse asks before I can spout vitriol at the creature.

The green dragon speaks. “The child and I will not be hunted. We will be provided with roosts in your kingdom. We will be given offerings of meat every dark moon for the rest of our lives. If we are hunted, you and your lineage will defend us. If your defense fails, we have the right to defend ourselves to whatever end is necessary.”

Gold swirls in Alyse’s eyes, and I can tell she’s reaching out for her sisters. She stays immobile, reaching, for a long moment. The silence that surrounds us is tense. It makes me want to scream.

Finally, she rouses from her trance with a gasp. “My sisters are otherwise occupied, but I will make this promise.”

“One last thing,” the blue says, and the green dragon snorts at him in frustration. He transforms into his boy shape once more. “I will be allowed to meet her first. The day before all other suitors will be mine.”

“The hour before will be yours, unless she refuses you sooner,” Alyse counters.

The boy growls, his jaw working. “She will not.”

I palm Alyse’s stomach. “That is for her to decide.”

“Fine.” The boy holds out his right hand. It crackles with white-blue lightning. “Agreed. ”

Alyse reaches out, her gold magic spiraling down her arm and collecting in her palm. They shake hands, and a tattoo-like lightning band appears around her wrist, and his.

“You as well,” the elder dragon says, looking at me.

I scoff. “I don’t see how—”

“You will betray me otherwise,” the boy snaps.

He’s not wrong, though it’s not what I was going to say. “I’m not a high-blood magus. I cannot make a pact like this. My magic isn’t strong enough.”

“Mine is,” Alyse says, her hand still grasping the boy’s. “Place your palm on top.”

I give her a pleading look.

She shakes her head.

Fuck.

“It will be my daughter’s choice. Anything less and I will kill every dragon in the realm. That is my promise.”

I plant my palm on top of their joined hands. Alyse’s magic wraps around my hand and yanks it down, sealing my skin to theirs. Blue lightning forks up my wrist and lassos it in a tight bind that becomes a brand.

“What is your name, dragon?” Alyse asks.

Her eyes glimmer gold and then she chuckles. “I’ll never be able to say that.”

“No human can speak our draconic names,” the green dragon says.

“Then what should we call you two?”

So I know what names to curse in my nightly prayers…

“Grawmir,” the green says in a rumbling voice like a rockslide.

The boy looks at me, defiant fire dancing in his stormy eyes.

“Raenkor.”