Page 96 of Wrath of the Dragons (Fear the Flames #2)

Chapter Seventy-three

Cayden

Every path I’ve walked has always led to Elowen, and as I push myself up from my knees with the hilt of a sword I pry from the fingers of a corpse, I turn in the direction of her again. The decimated army is all around me, and yet I feel nothing but grief. Devastation.

My chest physically hurts despite my only wound being a slice on my bicep.

I don’t recall someone cutting me. I barely even notice it now.

Blood leaks from the gash and down my arm, and I hope whatever parts of me soak into the earth find Elowen and keep us together where life has torn us apart.

Flowers will grow from her spilled blood whereas mine will leave behind a barren land to starve anyone who hopes to find any shred of mercy.

She is blessed by life, and though I’m the one with air in my lungs, each breath I take brings me closer to death and I’m thankful for it.

I trudge through the bodies and forest, needing to be with her again.

Elowen’s curls spill over Finnian’s lap, and Ryder does his best to console a screaming Saskia, but he’s in no state to offer strength. They look at me when I emerge, I see it in the corner of my eye, but all I care about is my dead wife.

My wife.

The woman I vowed to protect. The woman who was my only happiness in this world.

Twigs snap as Ryder and Saskia approach.

“Don’t touch me.” The words are raw, hollow. Clawing their way up my throat that feels like sandpaper. The last person I held was Elowen, when she screamed in my arms. I grit my teeth, dragging my hands through my hair and pulling at the roots, welcoming the pain.

“I’m so sorry,” Ryder whispers.

I shake my head, unable to hear any of this. I can’t speak of her as if she’s dead when her love lives within me like a flame.

Saskia tries to open her mouth to say something, but a whimper cuts her off.

I step around them, returning to Elowen’s side. Nyrinn must have removed the final arrows after I left. Finnian’s vacant eyes stare forward, entirely drained of hope. Venatrix lands behind her and roars. What was once mighty is now broken, and I understand the beast more than I ever have.

Finnian doesn’t move as I lift her, cradling her in my arms and walking back to camp.

One by one, as if setting loose a wave of devotion and devastation, soldiers drop to their knees at the sight of their lost queen.

The sky opens, weeping for her, and Sorin screams. I wonder how much he understands about what’s happening, if he knows Elowen sacrificed herself so that he would live.

“We can take her, Your Majesty,” a woman steps forward. “We can clean her.”

“Nobody touches a hair on her fucking head,” I darkly state. “And whoever follows me will be slain on sight.”

I walk through the camp, not stopping until I make it to an abandoned cottage along the road. It’s quaint, smelling of cinnamon and firewood, and I duck under a low-hanging beam to a room in the back. I kiss her forehead while placing her on the bed and begin drawing a bath in the en suite tub.

“I know you hate the feeling of blood on your skin after it dries,” I say, moving to the small armoire in the corner.

Whoever lived here must’ve left in a hurry—everything seems untouched.

My heavy hand tugs a simple lavender gown off the hanger with bell sleeves lined in white fur.

The same kind Elowen always wears. “I don’t think I ever told you that lavender is my favorite color.

It has been since the moment I saw you in the gown you wore to your first dinner in Vareveth.

Ever since then, I think of you whenever I see it. ”

I keep my back to her, and for a moment I pretend that her big brown eyes are fixed on me, hanging on to every syllable and waiting for more.

“I didn’t know how to speak my feelings aloud, but I’d hear music when I looked at you.

I have sheets upon sheets of melodies I’d conjure from the simplest moments we spent together. ”

I squeeze my eyes closed, resting my forehead on the wood after I slam the door shut.

She’s not here. She’s not fucking here. She was supposed to survive and run to me like she did after the battle in Galakin.

I can still picture her in the upcoming summer, making bouquets with the flowers she grows and sprawling out on the grass with her dragons.

I remove my armor until all I’m left in is a black shirt and pants, and gently strip her leathers and armor off.

Pain shoots through me at the sight of her blood-covered torso.

Black markings from the poison stretch across her chest but have begun to fade now that it’s done its job, I suppose.

I press my lips together, hoisting her in my arms again and testing the water before placing her inside.

I run soap through her hair, detangling the curls matted from the wind and blood. So much blood. “I’ll take care of you. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

The words taste like acid, and I turn away from her to retch into a bucket.

The bile burns my throat, and I wipe my mouth and rinse it before finishing what I started.

The first thing she does after every fight and battle is strip out of her leathers and bathe.

I dry her body and place her back on the bed to dress her wounds with a roll of gauze.

My hands shake as I wrap her. I don’t know how to not take care of her.

I don’t know how to let her go. I don’t know how to accept that she’s not just sleeping.

I drop to my knees after sliding the gown up her body and settling it on her shoulders.

“Always so beautiful.” I run my knuckles down her cheek. “Elowen, love, I won’t survive this.”

I take her cold hand in mine and bow my head to rest it against her stomach, my tears soaking the fabric.

I thought I had nothing once, but I would take the days of endless fighting and starvation over this without a second thought.

I feel as if I’m a rotting corpse with a heartbeat, like fate has bestowed upon me the one enemy I can’t draw my sword against.

I look out the window, to where the sun paints the sky red as the darkness of the eclipse and shadows remains.

There must be something I can do to help her, to bring her back.

I force my mind to conjure everything I read on necromancy when I was younger.

In most cases, mortals bargained with the Goddess of Souls, Mercy, and Destiny to save a loved one from death.

A red sky.

Where have I heard that before?

In Galakin.

Mae’s prophecy.

The sun will be bathed in blood and the shadows will shroud the day.

Something sparks within me. What else did she say…

I force myself to think beyond Elowen, sending my mind back to Galakin.

I didn’t seek Elowen out all those months ago because of the prophecy that she would be the ruination or salvation of Imirath.

I believed in facts, one of them being that the woman bonded to five dragons hated the same man as me, but I’ll take anything right now.

Even if it makes me a superstitious fool.

Ashes to be washed away by the waves.

Could that be the rain over the battle? The ramparts of the castle? My hands washing the gore from Elowen? Does it even matter?

Old eyes watch and new eyes shut.

New eyes…Elowen. Pain lances through me again. “Old eyes,” I mutter, dragging my hand through Elowen’s hair. The oldest eyes of Ravaryn would be the gods.

Have my powers awoken something? Someone? Desperation will make a person believe in anything, I suppose.

The earth rumbled as I screamed, and the gods feast upon the sorrows of mortals.

I’m moving before I even know what I’m doing, but I must do something .

I lift Elowen in my arms again, carrying her out of the house, and follow the sounds of wailing dragons. A hand clasps my shoulder, and I balance Elowen in one arm to draw my sword, pointing it at the neck of whoever approached. Feeling more animalistic than human.

“It’s me.” Ryder holds his hands up in surrender, more tears falling from his eyes as he takes in the state of me, the state of Elowen. I must look as deranged as I feel. “Where are you going?”

“I’m getting her back.”

A helpless sound crawls up his throat. “She’s gone, brother. I’ll build her pyre with you.”

“She will not burn!” I roar, tightening my hold on my sword despite it being at my side as Finnian and Saskia rush forward.

I lock eyes with her best friend, maybe the only person who will understand my anguish.

“She wanted me to tell you that she loved you.” Tears glimmer in his eyes and he chokes on a sob and drops his gaze from Elowen. “I’m getting her back.”

Saskia steps forward, and I clutch Elowen tighter, my protective instincts flaring up, intertwining with possession.

Saskia’s eyes latch on to mine, and she holds up a single purple flower in silent permission.

I breathe slowly, nodding only once, and she steps forward to tuck it behind her ear and kiss her forehead.

“I will miss you every day that I live,” she whispers.

“I’m getting her back.” I need to believe that this will work.

I need to try. If I lose hope now then I’ll take her back to Vareveth and dig our grave behind our house, not a pyre.

I’ll keep my eyes on hers as I pierce my heart and curl my body around hers.

One day, when someone finds us when we’re nothing but bones, they won’t know where I start and she ends.

Too intertwined to ever be separated. Decay and time will attack our mortal flesh, but our souls will reside somewhere sorrow can’t find us, and I’ll keep her there, loving her until the very essence of what breathes life into our bodies is snuffed out.

“Please,” Ryder says. “Don’t force us to live with the loss of both of you.”

“I’m already dead.”

I stride past, ignoring him as he calls out my name, only turning around when the sound of struggling replaces his pleas.

Finnian shoves him back, not allowing him to follow us, and Saskia drops to the grass to bury her head in her hands.

A flash of silver rushes forward, and Zarius drops to his knees beside her.

“Don’t look,” he says, forcing her to turn around.

“Cayden!” Ryder calls out from where Finnian pins him against the earth. “CAYDEN!”

I feel nothing.

Not a shred of regret or remorse.

And I turn away.

The dragons must sense where Elowen is because they land in a circle around me, snarling and snapping their teeth. Maybe I should be afraid, but I’m not. It would be a mercy to be relieved from the torment within.

“Help me,” I whisper. “Please help me.”

I know they can’t understand me—the only person they can understand is Elowen—but she swore they could sense emotions and perhaps my devotion to her. I’ve ridden Basilius before, but to my surprise, it’s not he who lowers his head, but Venatrix. The fiercest of them all. The red queen.

I climb up her wing and settle us in the saddle, keeping Elowen’s body cradled against mine as I grip the saddle horns.

“The Etril Forest,” I say as she takes to the skies.

How she knows where I need to go is a mystery that I don’t have the energy to think about.

She flaps harder, flying us over the scorched and bloodied earth, leveling out as we make it to the beginning of the forest behind the castle that Elowen and I ran through.

When she first summoned Sorin and I swore I was looking at a goddess.

Snow swirls around the peaks of the Seren Mountains that sharply cut through the clouds.

“I should’ve grabbed you a cloak,” I mutter, pulling her into my body to try to keep her warm, covering her hands with mine and breathing onto them now that Venatrix is level. “I can feel you pulling me to you, beckoning me, and I’m going to find you, angel. I promise.”

Venatrix calls out to the others, dipping low to land on the forest floor at the base of the temple ruins. The sky is just as bloodred as it was over the battlefield, and shadows still cling to me. I don’t know what’s happening, and I don’t have even an iota of curiosity.

I think about the last smile she gave me.

I think about the kiss before the battle.

I think about every fucking regret, and I form them into blades in my mind, sheathing them at my side, and carry her into the temple.

Wind whips through the broken pillars, scattering the bits of white rock that must’ve chipped off of them when they cracked.

Some still stand, but others stretch into the forest. They might have been reclaimed by greenery at one time, but now are smothered in winter.

I force myself to set Elowen down, her dark curls splaying through the unmarred snowfall like a sleeping angel.

I will see her again.

I unsheathe a knife as I walk toward the altar, slicing my palm open and letting my blood dribble down. “I, Cayden Veles, King of Vareveth, summon the Goddess of Souls, Mercy, and Destiny to strike a bargain.”