by Jack Whitney
His love.
His Queen.
Dead because of the child she’d carried of his.
Dead because of the fear the people held of his kind.
It was the first time he’d been away from the Forest for the start of the Dead Moons. He longed to hear the comforting cries of the Noctuans. But as the noise of someone’s footsteps filled his ears, he knew he wouldn’t have to wait long.
“You’re late,” Draven told Dorian upon his reaching the tower.
Dorian paused on the top step and pulled the horn from around his back along with a pail of water. “Would you like me to go back? I can wait and show up another night.”
Draven’s jaw clenched and he exhaled an audible breath, watching Dorian cross the room to him. “Thank you,” he said as Dorian placed the horn in his hand. “Get your sister and get out of here. Hide below the Belwark Temple and do not come out until sunrise. They will not know the difference between friend and foe.”
Dorian nodded. “What will you do?”
Draven stared past him towards the open doorway that led to nothing below, and he clenched the horn in his fist. “Burn it to the ground.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
THE FIRST SONG he played on his horn was of Samar’s.
The water in the pail rippled, the wind encircling him. He watched as Samar’s figure assembled itself, first with bone, then with muscle, and finally with flesh. When she took her first step out of the bucket, her eyes opened, and a look he was not accustomed to being greeted with by Samar filled her features.
Tears.
“She is gone, isn’t she?” Samar whispered.
Draven’s hand clenched around the horn. “Will you help me?” he asked softly.
Samar’s velvet touch lingered on his hand, and she nodded. “Anything.”
He asked her to turn the water to the waters that ran through the Forest of Darkness. He would need such waters to call on the Wyverdraki and Rhamocour. Samar poured the pail onto the floor, and she crouched down, her hands pressing into the wet stone as she muttered words Draven did not hear.
The water warmed beneath his feet. She stood and once more faced him. “Your hand,” she said, holding out her own. He placed his hand in hers, and she drew a deep cut into his palm.
“You are ready,” she told him.
Draven’s weight shifted. He curled his bleeding hand around the horn, and then he brought it to his lips.
The sound of the Wyverdraki call pulsed through the horn, followed by the great song of the Rhamocour.
And then he waited.
Samar sat across from him in the cell as Draven leaned his back against the wall. He wasn’t accustomed to her being so quiet, but he knew why. He knew she’d come to love Aydra during her time in the Forest.
All Draven could think about was the promise he’d made her.
It was two hours before he heard the cries of the Wyverdraki echo in the night air. His heart constricted as he was reminded of their song. The tears that stung his eyes, he pushed away.
Samar picked the lock on his door, and it creaked open.
“They await their orders, my King,” she said with a bow.
Draven’s hand tightened on the horn, and he remembered the bellow Duarb had taught him the night before. His lips pressed to the end of it, blood on his palm, and he closed his eyes as he blew through it.
Fire cut through the sky.
The tower shook, and he felt the Rhamocour wrap herself around it. Her great roar made a chill run down his spine. Purple flames erupted in the air above him. He could feel its heat on his skin, and he closed his eyes.
He blew through the horn again. Shrieks and screams filled his ears from the shops below. He stepped to the edge of the archway and looked out of it to watch the Wyverdraki family’s fire burn through the streets.
The Rhamocour curled her head down to him. He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against her nose, his hand reaching up and stroking her face.
“For her,” he whispered.
The beast’s apple green eyes blinked deliberately at him, and then she lowered her head. Draven lifted himself to her neck. He pressed the horn to his lips again, and they dived into the darkness.
Draven had never ridden on the back of the Rhamocour before. It was a new sensation, feeling the wind on his scalp and wrapping around his body as the dragon’s wings cut into the air. He wondered if this was how Aydra felt when she would ride on the Aenean Orel.
The Rhamocour circled the kingdom. He watched people running in the streets, the same people he’d seen stone his love earlier in the day. An anger pulsed through him that he could not control, and he sent the fire bellow through the horn.
Her body heated beneath him, and purple flames filled the streets.
He had the Rhamocour drop him into the Throne Room after a few more turns around the kingdom.
His feet hit the stone floor. Arbina’s tree was blackened where Aydra had burned against it earlier. He brought the horn to his mouth—
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”
Arbina’s scream echoed off the Throne Room pillars. Draven tightened his fist around the horn, and he glared back at her.
“You’re the reason for all this,” he seethed. “The reason your children have all betrayed one another. The reason the love of my life had to die on the orders of her own brother’s… all because she loved me. All because you—you decided to take out your hatred for my giver on your own daughters.” A tear slipped down his face, and he swallowed hard. “How could you?”
Arbina’s arms wrapped around her chest, and she stared haughtily at him from the middle of her pool. “My daughters have never lived up to their full potentials. They—”
“Never lived up…” Draven shook his head at her, not believing what she was saying. “You are jealous of them. Of their strength. Of their freedom. So you had your sons torture them into thinking they were less than what they were.” He turned around full towards her as the Rhamocour’s cry filled the air, and a small smile spread on his lips. “I bet Aydra scared you senseless.”
Arbina’s nostrils flared. “Aydra should have learned her place.”
“What to sit on the throne as nothing more than a trophy? An accessory?” His jaw tightened, and his heart thudded in his chest. “She could have ruled over the entire Echelon.”
“Then maybe you should have kept your hands off her.”
“I loved her!” he cried out. His knees hit the rock floor at the edge of her pool, and his voice caught in his throat. “I loved her.” His words were barely a breath as the tears filled his eyes again. He could see Aydra’s face reflected back to him in the water, her smiling eyes…
As his hand clenched around the horn again, and he felt the emptiness of her death pour through him, Arbina’s slow laugh consumed his ears, and his body began to shake.
“You poor, poor, dear…” she mocked, now coming closer to him.
The Rhamocour circled the room.
“Begging for her life… You look just as your giver did before I had Haerland curse him.”
His eyes shot up to meet hers. “What?”
Arbina’s wicked smile filled her face. “He thought he could get away with what he did to me. With betraying our love for the love of his pitiful night creatures… Imagine my glee when Haerland caught us during an argument and took my side.”
Draven slowly stood to his feet, his heartbeat pulsating in his ears at what he was hearing. “Everything you’ve ever gifted your daughters with… the hearing of creatures, the child she could bear with only a Venari… all because he didn’t love you? For revenge? You gave two just so you could use your daughter as a pawn?”
She gave him a deliberate once over, chin rising high. “And I will continue to do so until he is nothing more than a shriveled skeleton in the forest.”
Draven lunged.
—The phoenix shrouded around his body just as his skin grazed the poisoned waters. He was thrown back o
nto the stone floor, head hitting the steps.
“YOU!” he heard Arbina shout.
The phoenix landed at his feet and straightened, its black flames and smoke enveloping the floor. Draven looked through the haze of his stumble, seeing Arbina’s face paled at the sight of the black phoenix in her room.
“Where did she come from? How—how is she here?!” Arbina shouted, eyes flickering to Draven, but hardly leaving the phoenix. Draven had expected this reaction from Arbina. Of her seeing her mother Sun in her creature form.
The Rhamocour’s talons clenched onto the gallery above the Throne Room. The stone crumbled beneath its weight.
Draven stood deliberately to his feet, his hand trembling as he moved beside the phoenix, and the great bird nudged his arm. Draven met her searing amber eyes, and she gave him a slow blink. He took her nudge as a sign of her approving his deed, and his stomach knotted. He gradually brought the horn to his lips once more. Arbina continued to shout and scream, but he ignored her as she nearly stumbled in her own waters.
“Don’t you dare!”
He bellowed the fire command once more.
And purple and black fire poured onto Arbina’s limbs.
Draven stood in the Throne Room and watched the purple and gold Noctuan flames engulf her. He watched Arbina flee and cripple herself into the poisoned waters she so prided her tree with.
He stood at the edge of the room and stared down the side of the sloping cliff, allowing the flames of the Wyverdraki as they poured their fire onto the shops and homes below.
Magnice was burning.
But the noise of feet bolting up the steps startled him. He did not think anyone would venture out into the open of the castle.
So when he turned and found Rhaif standing at the top step, an adrenaline pulsed through his body and made his heart constrict.
His fist clenched at his side. His chest began to heave.
Rhaif’s hands turned black, and he lifted his shirt off his head as the lightning streaks of ash climbed up his body. Blue flames erupted on his muscles. Rhaif cracked his neck and crouched low.
“You will scream just as she did… Hunter,” Rhaif snarled.
A gust of wind wrapped itself around Arbina’s tree and blew the flames out.
And then the phoenix landed behind Draven.
He felt its beak nudge his neck, and a chortle emitted from its throat. Draven reached up and gave its great nose a soft pet.
Rhaif’s flames flickered as his eye darted between the two. “Fight me like a man, you coward! Not with your creatures.”
Draven almost laughed as he handed the horn to the phoenix. “Is that what you want?” he asked, slowly stepping towards Rhaif. “To finally have the chance to fight me as you have so wished to do for twenty years now? To finally prove yourself just as good as your sister?”
“Leave my sister out of this.”
“If you wanted your sister left out of it, you shouldn’t have burned she and my child.”
“Your child…” Rhaif’s nostrils flared, and he shook his head. “A creature that would have ruined our would.”
“Since when have you ever cared about this world?” Draven growled. “You sit on your throne, ignoring the reality of the war on our shores, the troubles of your own people. You know nothing of what your brother and sister have done to secure the safety of your kingdom from—”
“Your kind?” Rhaif spat.
Draven’s fist curled in on itself. “The Infi are not—”
“You are no better than them. You brought your curse onto my family, onto my sister. You are the reason she is dead!”
Draven lunged.
Wind whipped around him and blew Rhaif’s flames to a minimum as Draven launched into him. He grabbed his legs in his arms, picking him up off the ground and then slamming him into the floor. Rhaif jerked upwards at the break of his back, crying out with a wail rivaling that of the dragons’ around the castle. Draven launched himself on top of him, beating Rhaif’s face with his bare fists.
He could feel the heat of Rhaif’s flames trying to grow again, but the wind ensnared them both, and Rhaif struggled beneath Draven. Rhaif’s knee kicked up into Draven’s injured back. Draven yelped, his attention averting just enough that Rhaif could get a punch in.
Draven felt the agony sear through his bones. He grasped Rhaif’s throat in his hands and picked him up, just to throw his head back into the stone. Once. Twice. Blood trickled on Draven’s fingers. His entire body shook as he screamed in Rhaif’s face.
And then he pressed his thumb into Rhaif’s remaining eye.
The noise of Rhaif’s shrieks bounced into the night sky. Blood pooled beneath Draven’s finger. He moved his hands to Rhaif’s throat and pressed into his trachea.
“Beg, Sun boy,” Draven growled. “Beg as you wanted her to.”
Rhaif cried out in agony, his flames attempting and failing to come to the surface as the wind whirled around their bodies. Draven could feel Rhaif’s pulse beneath his strained fingers, feel as his life drained towards the Edge and his flames begged for air.
But he released Rhaif’s neck the moment before he snapped it between his fingers. He watched Rhaif’s facade break, his head lolling on the floor slowly, side to side, almost in slow motion. His eye trickled with blood.
“Kill me—take your revenge—” he heard Rhaif say. “Do it!”
Draven slowly stood off him as saliva emitted from Rhaif’s mouth, as though he were in agony of the thoughts that had just flooded him. Rhaif’s face was askew, and he struggled to roll himself up onto his elbow.
“KILL ME!” he begged through the sobs.
Draven stared at the faltering king on the ground, at the tears that couldn’t evacuate Rhaif’s now absent eyes, instead forcing the angst of his failure to converge itself into the pile of wailing saliva dribbling from his mouth and onto the floor.
“TAKE MY LIFE!”
Draven forced his breaths to even, and for a moment he considered obliging, taking the life that had condemned his love, the one who had blamed Aydra for his mother not loving him…
But the shame in her face the night she’d told him about it all entered his mind.
And his jaw tightened at the weeping man before him.
“That’s not what she wanted,” Draven forced himself to say.
The phoenix purred beside him, her head sniffing Rhaif’s struggling body. She tilted her head to Draven. Draven took the horn from its beak, and the bird shook out a piercing cry that made his ears throb. Cold black flames swarmed the Throne Room.
Draven pressed the horn to his lips again.
The Rhamocour’s roaring bellow filled the air.
And fire once more engulfed Arbina’s tree.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
DRAVEN’S CORE WAS empty.
He ached for the Edge, for this day to be done, to see Aydra’s face again.
His feet led him up the steps to the high tower.
Back to the place he knew would take him from this land.
He slowed as he reached the top step, the large archway on the opposite side of the room staring back at him. The window to the Edge.
He took his boots off his feet and allowed his toes to feel the cold stone beneath him. Wind wrapped through the tower, and he stepped to the archway.
Screams. Fire. His dragon kin.
Their wings flapped mercilessly in the air as they splayed the kingdom with their flames.
The tower suddenly shook, and the roar of the Rhamocour bellowed through the land as it wrapped itself around the tower.
He wished he could tell her goodbye.
“Are you sure about this?” came the voice of Samar at his back.
Draven didn’t turn. His fist tightened around the horn, and a great exhale left him.
“I am,” he told her. His head tilted down slightly, and he glanced over his shoulder. “Send them home once I am gone.”
He could see Samar’s head bow slightly. “I
will. And the horn?”
Draven swallowed hard as he stared at it in his hand. “I do not wish for any of my future brothers to have to bear the hurt of losing such an equal. I will take the horn to my death. Perhaps without it in the world, future Venari will not as easily fall as I did.”
The wind whipped his body again, and he closed his eyes.
Aydra’s smile radiated through his bones, and he felt a tear stretch down his face. His toes curled around the edge of the stone floor, and he pressed the horn to his chest.
“Nothing less,” he whispered.
Wind met his falling body.
And the only noise of his death was the splash his body made in Arbina’s pool.
The Rhamocour cried out only once more.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
MAGNICE WAS LAID in ruins.
The shops and homes of the bottom levels were nearly unrecognizable. Rubble crowded the streets. Some Dreamers and Belwarks had managed to get to safety below the Temple where Lex had forced Nyssa and Dorian to hide.
Two boats arrived in the dark of the morning two days later.
It was Lex and Aydra’s old company that met the strangers on the beach and struck them down. Lex spared one for interrogation. Dorian was the first to meet them on the beach.
He slowed his horse upon seeing Lex pointing her sword to the throat of a stranger, men’s bodies strewn across the sand.
“Find the King,” he instructed Corbin.
Corbin lingered only for a moment and then set off towards the ruins of Magnice again. Dorian hopped down off his horse, his blue cape billowing in the wind from the beach as he strode across the sand to Lex.
“How many?” he asked Lex.
Lex’s jaw was taut. “Two boats. Fifty,” she replied.