Dianthe did a double take as Tobias pulled Sabrina into his arms and kissed her like it was her last day on earth. A few whistles came from nearby vamps, but as Dianthe watched, she realized this was more than a kiss. Sabrina’s cheeks turned as pink as a fairy’s. And when her lips tucked into his neck, she saw her sip blood from his skin. Sabrina and Tobias weren’t making out, he was feeding her.
By the time she pulled away, she was positively glowing. “Mmm-mm good. See you later, baby.”
“There’s more where that came from. Finish this without making me shift, and it’s all yours.”
She gave him a reassuring nod and then jogged to the center of the arena, waving to the vampires who booed her arrival.
Dianthe tugged at Sylas’s arm and gestured toward a box at the front of the arena. A vampire entered, wearing a tailored black suit decorated with red cords. With his jet-black hair and eyes, his very presence was foreboding, even from her spot across the arena. But it was what he carried in his hand that had caught her eye. A scepter in his grip was topped with a glowing red orb.
“By the Mountain,” Sylas said. “I guess Sabrina was right about him keeping it close.”
“Let’s pray Sabrina wins this thing and we have the opportunity to plan how we might pry that thing out of his thousand-year-old grip.”
“I don’t think he’s a thousand years old.”
Dianthe scoffed. “At some point I imagine you stop counting.”
A portcullis on the other side of the arena rose and Zaruki jogged in, waving to the now cheering crowd. She was dressed in leather with spikes around her neck, waist, and shoulders.
“Interesting fashion choice,” Dianthe whispered.
“It looks like this is hand-to-hand combat. I don’t see any weapons or shields. That fashion statement is Zaruki’s way of wearing her weapons into the ring. If Sabrina tries to grab her, those silver spikes will make her bleed.”
“That’s an unfair advantage!” Dianthe protested.
“I don’t think this competition is meant to be fair.” Sylas folded his arms across his chest.
Demidicus stood, and the arena went silent. “What is your name, stranger?”
Dianthe swallowed down a wave of fear-induced nausea for her friend.
“I am Sabrina, master of the Lamia Coven. I came here to request an audience with you, Master Demidicus, to speak about what is happening in the five kingdoms. If you would grant me your ear, I would be happy to explain.”
The laugh that left the master’s mouth was nothing short of cruel. “Am I to conclude that you challenged Zaruki to circumvent her authority in these matters?”
“Yes,” Sabrina said flatly.
Dianthe’s hopes rose that the master would now agree to meet with them without requiring Sabrina to fight.
But Demidicus only laughed harder. “Let’s leave it to fate then. Battle Zaruki. If you win, I will entertain your request. If you lose…” His eyes drifted to the three of them huddled on the ramp to the arena. “My vampires will enjoy a snack before tonight’s banquet. I’ve never had dragon’s blood, but I hear it is one experience a vampire never forgets.”
Sabrina lowered her chin. “What are your house rules?”
“We have no rules.”
“Do you like Zaruki?” The dark quality of Sabrina’s tone sent a chill along Dianthe’s spine.
Zaruki looked positively bored.
“What has that got to do with anything?” Demidicus asked.
“If possible, would you like me to let her live?”
The master snarled at her. “Zaruki, finish this quickly. I’m famished.”
Zaruki sprang into the air, her boot rounding in a kick toward Sabrina’s head. Avoiding the strike, Sabrina lunged right, snatched her ankle out of the air, and quickly changed direction, sending Zaruki’s face plowing into the mud. Splatters of dark brown sprayed across Sabrina’s pale face. She smiled.
The blond vampire leaped to her feet and attacked, this time with her fists. The movements became so fast Dianthe could barely follow them—strike, duck, kick, block, hook, dodge, uppercut. For close to a minute, neither vampire appeared to land a punch.
“Apparently the master isn’t used to things taking this long.” Sylas pointed a chin toward Demidicus. His frown was growing more pronounced.
Sabrina dropped and kicked straight up, catching Zaruki in the pelvis. The blond vampire soared across the arena and landed in a heap on the other side. As she struggled to her feet, now completely covered in mud, the arena grew so quiet Dianthe could hear the thwuck of each muddy footstep.
Zaruki scrambled to her feet, and a collective gasp left the audience. All her spikes were gone. Dianthe’s mouth dropped open. Her gaze darted back to Sabrina. Red ponytail swinging, she held up a bouquet of sharp silver.
“Looking for these?” With a wicked smile, she tossed them all into the side of the arena, eliciting a gasp from the lowest rung of nearby seats. The spikes sank two inches into the stone.
With a mighty roar, Zaruki hurled herself at Sabrina in a blur of vampiric speed. Sabrina sidestepped so quickly it looked to Dianthe as if she blinked out of existence and reappeared, sinking her knee into Zaruki’s gut.
A groan came from the crowd, but the blond vamp wasn’t giving up. She grabbed Sabrina and held her close, punching her side, her back, her kidney, the side of her jaw. The blows landed, and Dianthe had to believe they hurt. Sabrina might be the faster vampire, but Zaruki had figured that out and was making the most of it.
“How can he be so calm?” Sylas whispered. He was staring at Tobias, who had his arms crossed and was watching with cool, unflustered pride as his mate got pummeled.
“He knows she can do this,” Dianthe said. “He believes in her.”
Sylas frowned. “Believing in someone can’t save them from everything.” The ghost of something dark and evil floated like a cloud through his expression. “I used to think that death was the worst thing that could happen to someone I loved. I know better now.”
A murmur rumbled through the crowd. Sabrina successfully caught Zaruki’s wrist. With the blonde holding Sabrina close, the two looked like they were ballroom dancing. Both were covered in mud now, with the exception of Sabrina’s ponytail, which still swung bright red behind her.
“What happened to you, Sylas?” Dianthe watched the fight, but her mind lingered on her mate and that ghost she’d seen pass behind his eyes. Why hadn’t she considered before that there was something more behind his recent change in behavior?
His eyes glazed. He was gone, lost somewhere in his own thoughts.
Sabrina pushed Zaruki with her chest, snaked her arm between them, and twisted. The thrust and snap that followed was too fast for Dianthe to see, and when Sabrina tossed something aside, it took her a second to realize it was Zaruki’s arm. Dianthe brought both hands to her mouth and gasped. The bloody scene was grisly, something out of a nightmare. Zaruki fell face-first to the arena floor, her blood flowing and mixing with the mud.
The arena erupted into groans and a din of horrified voices. A young vampire near them gagged and turned her face away.
Zaruki tried to get up, but Sabrina had a knee at the center of her back. She raised her hand and struck, breaking through the blond vampire’s rib cage. Dianthe didn’t have to have a close-up view to know what Sabrina was doing. With her hand inside Zaruki, it was clear Sabrina had wrapped her fingers around the other vampire’s heart. All she had to do was pull her hand back, rip the organ from her body, and this would all be over. Under her, Zaruki made a pathetic attempt to rise, her remaining hand slipping in her own blood.
“Do you wish for me to spare her, Master Demidicus?” Sabrina’s voice carried across the arena. It had gone silent again as the vampires accepted the loss of their champion. “I cannot serve as your second. I only wish to meet with you, master to master. If you speak now, I will release her.”
“I need her,” Demidicus said quickly.
Sabrina
slipped her hand out of Zaruki’s body. Dianthe heard an unnerving splat as the blond vampire flopped into the mud and lay still. Sabrina stepped away from her, turned toward Master Demidicus, and bowed.
“I trust that you can provide rooms for my friends and me to get cleaned up. I’d prefer not to meet with you like this.” She gestured at her filth-covered body.
Master Demidicus snapped his fingers, and the portcullis behind them rose.
Chapter Nineteen
This time it wasn’t guards who escorted them from the arena but three young female vampires dressed entirely in white. Sylas thought they moved like a troop of ballerinas. He followed them into the halls of Nightfall, forcing himself to smile and participate in the mindless chatter they initiated. Dianthe looked exhausted, and Tobias was too busy clinging to Sabrina to bother with diplomacy.
He was relieved when they were shown to a suite of rooms connected by a central seating area. Tobias and Sabrina disappeared into one of the bedrooms immediately, giggling all the way. Which left Sylas and Dianthe staring at each other across a set of wingback chairs.
“I think I’d like to take a bath and a nap,” Dianthe said. “The welcome crew said Demidicus invited us to join him at a banquet later tonight, and unlike the three of you, I need to sleep.”
He pointed a hand at the open room. “It’s all yours.”
She took a step closer to him. “You could join me.”
His inner dragon perked up inside his torso. There was nothing Sylas would rather do than bathe his mate at that very moment. His body was instantly ready. He wanted her. He always wanted her.
But there was something broken between them. He saw it still in her eyes. A connection that used to be there, a mutual respect, was somehow missing. He wanted to get it back. He was certain he could if given enough time. But it wasn’t going to happen in the next five minutes. Something told him that making love now would do more harm than good. It would be empty. She might even end up resenting him for it if she felt the emotional schism between them.
He removed his pack and set it next to the chair. “As much as I’d like to take you up on that offer, I think I should prepare what I’m going to say to Demidicus. It’s my responsibility to get this right.”
Dianthe dropped her gaze to her toes, her mouth bending into a frown that broke his heart. “Okay.” Without another word, she disappeared into the room and closed the door.
Sylas’s knees gave out, and he landed in one of the wingbacks, thanking the Mountain it was sturdy enough to handle the abuse. Leaning forward, he rested his head in his hands. Would things ever be right between them? Would they ever have what Tobias and Sabrina had? Would it ever be how it used to be?
He leaned back in the chair, closed his eyes, and prayed to the goddess that one day it would be.
The symbol Eleanor had forced Sylas into on the floor of her ritual room radiated heat. Born in the heart of a volcano, dragons were rarely bothered by heat, yet this burn seemed to sink straight through into his bones. This was magic, dark and evil. He tracked her movements as she paced around him.
“You would dare lead a rebellion against me?”
He should remain silent. Admitting his role in the Defenders of the Goddess was a stupid idea. But whatever his mother had in mind, he doubted he’d be making it out of here alive anyway.
“What you’re doing to the five kingdoms is wrong. The other species need their independence if they are to have a chance to thrive. The taxes you are imposing are draining them dry and leaving them in squalor.”
“It’s not like I don’t give them a choice, Sylas. If they bow down to me, I will ensure they are taken care of.”
“And strip them of their culture and identity.”
She scoffed. “Culture and identity?” She waved a hand dismissively toward the ceiling. “How awful that the fairies won’t be able to celebrate every blink of light in the sky. The vampires will have to live in dwellings approved by Paragon instead of a hole in the ground. Poor elves, I’m sure they’ll weep when we finally fill in those fucking sacred pools in Rogos. Good riddance. They’re pests, Sylas! Dragons are the superior species, and once I rule all five kingdoms, everyone will accept that. They will have to after I ascend.”
“What do you mean, ascend?” Ice formed in his veins despite the heat.
“I will defeat the goddess of the mountain and take her place.”
Sylas jolted at the blasphemy. He looked over both shoulders, sure that a fist would drop from the sky and crush his mother into bloody bits. But nothing happened. If the goddess existed and could hear her, she’d chosen not to act. “What makes you believe you could do such a thing?”
She filled a silver vessel with liquid from a cauldron on her workbench. His gaze fell on a massive diamond there. Was that a dragon heart? Whose? He shivered.
“I have tricks up my sleeve that you’ve never dreamed of, dear boy, not in your most dizzying nightmares.”
Her mouth twisted into a truly wicked grin as she approached him again. She tipped her head in mock concern. “This is going to hurt.”
The silver vessel tipped, and blood spilled onto the symbol. Pain flared through his body as purple fire engulfed him. He opened his mouth to scream, but the intensity gripped him in a crushing fist, all his air contained within it. The magic tore through his flesh, tugged at his heart and his internal organs. Sharp, slicing agony followed, and then his hand was yanked toward the edge of the symbol.
He wanted to curl into a ball, anything to ease the suffering the spell had ignited. It rattled his teeth and slithered through his skull. It pounded his bowels, tore through his liver. He could feel it nibbling, ratlike, on his bones.
But the magic held him in place. He watched in horror as his mother slipped his ring from his finger. A dragon’s ring was far more than a piece of jewelry. The ring formed around his finger the first time he shifted as a child and held the inherent magic that allowed him to be both dragon and man. All his natural abilities resided in that ring: to ward his treasure, to become invisible, to shift, to fly. It was as much a part of him as his heart.
Now he watched the deep red garnet leave him, clutched in his mother’s clawlike fingers. With it went a piece of his soul. Air rushed into his lungs. Finally he could scream, and scream he did. He screamed until his throat was raw. She’d taken his ring. His riiiing.
The fire died and he slumped to the floor, his cheek pressed against the smooth stone. She pushed him with the toe of her boot. He watched her place the ring inside a box and then slide it behind a book, The Saddle of Arythmetes.
“Do you remember being forced to read this drivel as a child?” she asked. “Arythmetes felt much as you did after traveling the five kingdoms. He called for peace, cooperative independence, democracy. He, too, wanted to preserve the cultures he witnessed. He found them beautiful. What an apt place to keep your soul. He died you know, a tragic and lonely death.”
He stared up at her as she towered above him, as helpless as a wingless bird, and hated her with every fiber of his being.
“Guards, take him to the dungeon. By decree, no one shall speak of him again.”
Hands gripped his shoulders… shaking… shaking him.
Sylas woke with a start to find Dianthe hovering above him, her hands on his upper arms.
“You were screaming in your sleep.” The unadulterated concern on his mate’s face brought him fully into the moment.
It took him a few breaths to realize where he was. He’d fallen asleep in the chair in their suite in Nightfall. He sat up and glanced toward Tobias’s room.
“I don’t think they heard you.” She placed a hand on her throat. “Your voice was muffled, more breath than scream. I only heard you when I came out of the room.”
Thank the Mountain for small favors. All he needed was for Tobias to know he was still having nightmares about his time as a prisoner in Paragon. The dragon would likely want to put on his doctor’s hat and try to analyze him.
/> He sat up straighter. “You look nice.” Dianthe practically glowed in a midnight-purple dress with diamond beading. “Where did you get that?”
“Our hosts provided it. You have an outfit too.” She pointed toward the room where she’d dressed. “With any luck, we’ll actually get to have the conversation we came to have later tonight. I wanted to look presentable. You should maybe get changed as well. There’s mud on your boots, and it shouldn’t be long now.”
He ran a hand through his hair and nodded.
“What were you dreaming about?” She rested her hands on his chest as he stood in front of her.
He sidestepped around her and snagged his bag from the floor. “I don’t remember.” He didn’t sound convincing even to himself.
“I think you do. You said today in the arena that you now understand that there are fates worse than death. I’ve never heard you talk like that before.”
He shrugged. “War changes a person. That’s what this is—war. It’s the silent part. The unseen bubbles before the pot boils over and we line up troops on the battlefield.” He rubbed his chest. “With any luck, we’ll find all five orbs and the witches will end this.”
“I pray so… if the goddess of the mountain is on our side.”
He looked down at his hands. “I’m not sure the goddess of the mountain exists, and if she does, I’m certain she’s unwilling to intervene on our behalf. Circe told us as much. The gods can’t get involved. If we want change, it’s up to us.”
Dianthe frowned. “We’re here, Sylas. We are doing what needs to be done.”
He nodded once and slipped into the room, unable to face her a moment more with the lingering memory of his dream burning like acid in his brain.
Chapter Twenty
Everything Dianthe had experienced with her mate the past couple of days churned in her brain. She narrowed her eyes at the closed door between them, a persistent thought niggling in the back of her mind. How much had they really talked about anything since she’d collected him from the Obsidian Palace? He’d spent weeks in the dungeon and months before that traveling the five kingdoms for the rebellion, yet when he came home, every discussion they’d shared had revolved around Aborella.
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