Page 92 of Wrath of the Dragons (Fear the Flames #2)

Chapter Sixty-nine

Elowen

Green and silver flames slam together and stretch high above the trees, pushing against each other, mingling and melding, as black-and-white sparks rain down.

Within the fire, I listen to the mage scream under the weight of my dragons’ power as she desperately tries to remain strong.

Sorin and Calithea continue blowing, but instead of remaining on Sorin, I slide down his wing.

This is our fight, together.

My power pulses under my skin and I close my eyes, picturing a building wave, letting it start out as nothing more than a crest along the surface and watching it become a tidal wave strong enough to swallow a mountain.

I am made of fire, and I do not fear it; I become it.

I open my eyes again, calling Sorin’s and Calithea’s flames to me as I stand evenly between them.

Silver flames coil around my left arm and green around my right, and pool in my hands.

I meet my father’s gaze though the dragonfire as the tidal wave crashes on the shore, shattering the earth beneath its might.

My hands shoot out on either side of me before I slam them together as Zale did back on the ship, and a blade of green-and-silver flames forms between my palms.

It flies forward, and the wards shatter into what looks like a thousand glass shards.

My dragons jut their wings out to protect me, the membranous tissue illuminated by the blast, and don’t move from their position until they’re sure I won’t get burned.

I step forward as they slowly slide their wings back, keeping them close to me as Sorin snarls low in his throat.

My eyes glow gold as I stare down at the group of five sprawled out in the snow.

Calithea bites the head off the mage while Sorin swallows her body.

Asena told me not every mage has the ability to portal, and I doubt she did or she likely would’ve done so while surrounded by fire, but I can’t risk Garrick being whisked away.

Queen Aveline of Thirwen clings to King Fallon where they’ve collapsed, and a woman shrieks and sobs while grasping at Garrick’s cloak. Ah, his new wife. She doesn’t show signs of pregnancy, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t.

“Don’t fret, lady,” I say. “I didn’t plan on calling you mother. I had one of those already and well…let’s just say the name is a bit of a curse coming from my lips.”

“Don’t speak of your mother,” Garrick states, the first words he’s said to me since I fled Imirath over a decade ago.

His voice raises the hairs on the back of my neck, makes bile churn in my stomach, but I show no outward sign of being bothered.

Never again will I let him think he has any power over me.

“Or what?” Though I’m looking at my father, it’s through the eyes of an orphan.

I never watched his dark hair begin to gray.

I never noticed when the lines in his face became etched over time.

He may have sired me, but he’s no father of mine.

He stands to his full height, which isn’t that impressive, and doesn’t bother offering his wife a hand up.

“I see you’re just as charming as you were when I left.

” I chuckle. “I thought you’d be taller. ”

The other rulers manage to clumsily get to their feet. Fallon keeps a protective arm around his wife. His long blond hair clings to his face, wet from the snow, and her dark hair does the same.

“What will you do to my children?” Queen Aveline asks, her blue eyes blown wide as she glances between the dragons.

“Their fate is not mine to decide. That duty is allotted to your son.” I look to Fallon.

“Prince Zarius. Heir to the Thirwen throne.” Fallon’s lips part in a snarl, but before he has the chance to spit vitriol, Calithea shrieks to drown out his voice.

“Have some manners, Fallon. Threaten or insult me, and my dragons will be quick to end you.”

“And you won’t?” my father’s wife asks, the tremble in her voice evident.

“I prefer to toy with my prey.”

Stones from the castle continue falling all around us as I look at my father again.

It seems fitting that both he and his precious castle will share the same fate on the same day.

It’s said that captains go down with their ships, and my father will forever haunt the decimated and broken halls of this place.

I order Calithea through the bond, and everyone takes a step back when my eyes glow gold again. She resists, not wanting to leave me while in the presence of the enemy, but I hold firm in my command. She nuzzles her snout into my side, and I caress her scales without taking my eyes off Garrick.

Calithea closes one claw around Fallon and Aveline, and another around my father’s wife, giving me one last look before taking to the skies to carry them back to our camp.

They scream and beg for mercy they won’t find from me.

I need Thirwen’s soldiers to see their king and queen have been captured, and for Imirath to see my father’s wife.

It’ll get into their minds and fester, and no matter the state of the battle, they’ll have nothing to fight for because they’ll know they’ve lost. Swords will grow heavier, swings less precise, and eventually their blades will slip from their fingers as they begin the journey to the underworld.

Garrick lifts a brow, the first change in his stoney expression since I’ve seen him. “You sent a dragon away.”

I unsheathe the blade at my waist. “I’ve never needed flames to kill you.” He remains still and stone-faced, not moving to grasp the blade strapped across his back. His pristine armor makes me laugh. “That’s a lovely costume but I think you’re a bit old to be playing knight. Draw your sword.”

His nostrils flare, but he obeys. The hilt of the golden blade is encrusted with purple amethysts, and I wonder if he’s ever used it. “What I did, I did for the good of Imirath.”

“And how’s that decision working out for you?”

“The prophecy has come to pass,” he hisses. “You have destroyed the seat of our house and sullied yourself with a bastard.”

“Your house,” I amend while twirling my blade. “My name is Elowen Veles, and I’d rather be the queen of a bastard than daughter to a king who couldn’t hold a throne that was handed to him. Even now Cayden is on the battlefield while you try to scurry away like vermin.”

“But you will always be my daughter.” I grit my teeth. “You will always be an Atarah, no matter your name. Your heirs will be Atarahs. You will never escape the blood that runs through your veins.”

“Perhaps not.” I tighten my grip on the hilt. “But you shouldn’t be so concerned with my blood when yours will soon coat my blade.”

I don’t wait for him to advance and swing my sword.

He juts his forward and the steel vibrates, sending small shockwaves up my arms. I’d love to draw out his death, make it last for days, keep him in a cell and make him beg, but his death will end the war.

He’s not worth losing sleep or peace for.

He’s just a pathetic little man with poor footwork.

It’s clear he’s never truly faced a skilled swordsman.

He moves as if fending off an instructor, not fighting for survival.

Sorin growls as we circle each other, no doubt hating having Garrick this close to me.

Sorin has always had a protective streak woven into his soul, even before he bit off Garrick’s pinkie; it would show whenever my father was nearby.

As a hatchling, he would perch on my shoulder and scream his head off whenever Garrick was present.

I still have the scars on my shoulders from his tiny talons sinking into my flesh without him realizing.

I move again before Garrick can react, utilizing the full capacity of my skills and cutting him across the thigh. He cries out through clenched teeth but manages to stay upright as he juts his sword at me. I spin away with ease and click my tongue while slicing just above his chest plate.

“If you’re going to be a warmongering cunt, at least have the decency to practice your swordsmanship.”

He swipes for me again, summoning some force within him, but he’s still no match for me. “You hate me so much, and yet we are so similar.”

I raise my brows. “I’m much prettier.”

“I heard you killed Ailliard,” he pants. “I would’ve done the same thing. If someone tried to take my crown from me, I would’ve brought war to them.”

“And yet only one of us knows how to win a war.” I shove him back with our locked blades, and swing again, severing his bone.

His four-fingered hand thumps on the ground as his screams thunder throughout the forest, mingling with my laughter spilling through clenched teeth.

This is the man who chained me. This is the man who ordered my torture.

“Where’s your boldness? Does it disappear when I’m out of shackles?

There is no one for you to cower behind, Garrick. There is no one to save you from me.”

I slice his other hand clean off and jam the hilt of my blade between his shoulders, sending him tumbling into the snow. “You’re pathetic.”

I command Sorin to wrap his claw around Garrick and hoist him into the air, squeezing and squeezing until he’s choking and sputtering, begging for release.

Drool dribbles down his chin as his eyes bulge out of his head.

Sorin releases him a fraction, just enough for him to find reprieve, and tightens his claw again.

As he’s extended in the air, I slice through his boots, adding his feet to the appendages littering the ground. “Just in case you had hope of escaping.”

Sorin lowers Garrick so he’s at eye level with me. “Throw him down.”

Garrick’s arm snaps from the force of the impact, made worse by landing on what might’ve belonged to a wall of the castle.

He screams, and I watch as tears run down his cheeks.

Just as I did with Robick, I commit this image to my memory.

This is the man who should have loved me, and instead spent years of my life torturing and hunting me.

He sent men into my cell to break me and only stepped in when they wished to rape me because he wanted to sell me off to the highest bidder on the marriage market.

“I want you to know something before you die,” I say.

Sorin’s head stretches above mine as he spreads his wings on either side of me.

“If you had been different, I never would’ve fought against my kingdom, but the prophecy was true.

” His eyes find mine, gaze flickering between me and my dragon, flooded with fear.

“I am the ruination of the old Imirath, your Imirath, the Atarah’s Imirath, and I will bring its salvation through my reign.

I would have lived in peace, but you started a war between us, and now it’s time to end it. ”

“Elowen—”

“Do not speak my name.”

He gurgles on his blood, but it’s not enough. I need to hurt him more.

I drop my blade and call upon the fire that lives within Sorin, summoning it through his scales.

A web of green flames stretches between us and weaves around my fingers.

I press the fingers of my free hand into the hollows of Garrick’s cheeks and force his mouth open as he sobs, keeping the green flames burning in my other hand well within his sight.

“I hope making an enemy of me was worth it, father.” I tighten my grip when he squirms. “You’ve lost. Imirath is mine, and it belongs to House Veles.

I’m loath to teach you an invaluable lesson mere moments before you die, but if you’re going to order an execution, be the one to swing the sword.

If not, you risk failure, and nothing festers hatred quite like time. ”

“The prophecy—”

“Do you know what happens to a rat when it’s burned, father?” I chuckle, cutting him off. “The same as it does to everything else.”

I slam my hand over his mouth, commanding the fire to grow through him like vines.

He jerks and screams as I force the fire to continue burning him alive.

It floods his veins and boils his blood.

The skin of his face reddens and splits, veins burst and blister as I continue shoving my power into him until he’s unrecognizable.

His final whimper presses against my palm, and with his eyes on mine, Garrick Atarah dies within the remains of his castle.

I let his lifeless body fall to the ground as I stand over him.

It’s over, I tell myself. He’s dead.

It’s so strange looking down at him now.

When I was a child, I used to think he was the largest man in the world, an unshakable force, but I beat him.

I survived him. I thought I’d feel relief, but I don’t.

I think it’ll take me some time before I can accept Garrick is no longer alive.

I spent so much of my life protecting myself from him that I don’t know what it is to live without armor.

Sorin attempts to curl his talons over my shoulder, but they’re as tall as me now. My dragons are safe. A small smile curls my lips, and I reach up to stroke the scales of his wrist. “You’re far too big for that now, my sweetling.”

Flames continue billowing along what remains of the castle, and the ground rumbles as more stones fall.

Cayden once promised me that he’d help me rip it apart brick by brick, but dragonfire devoured everything Garrick loved.

I hope his last sight of this world haunts his soul in the underworld, for it was a scene conjured from his nightmares.

A queen returning to reclaim her throne with a dragon at her back and others in the sky.