by L J Andrews
After so many terrible moments filled with Bron’s agonizing shrieks, Teagan released him, letting him crumble in a pitiful heap. Teagan backed away, his expression contorted in frustration. “He should be dead. I can feel my energy wipe out his, but no matter what I do, he won’t die,” he snarled.
Swallowing hard, my heart plummeted into my stomach. It was glaringly clear what had to happen. “It’s because fate does not want you to kill him. Bron is meant for me to take.”
“No, I don’t care. We’re making our own fate,” Teagan hissed, sounding much like Thane. “You told me you wouldn’t lose me; I’m not losing you.”
My hand clasped his face, and I didn’t care that tears fell down my cheeks. “Some things even the most powerful energy cannot change. Since this war began, it has always been my destiny to protect our people from Bron’s betrayal.”
“You don’t know that it’s meant to be you,” Teagan whispered.
“Who else, then?” I replied, my eyes brimming with more tears. “I will not live cursed, son. You have become the mage I knew you would be. You are more capable than I’ve ever been to keep the dragons and mages safe. You don’t need me.”
“I don’t need your energy, no. But I need you,” he gasped. My heart trembled in agony. “I need to try again.”
Bron laughed weakly, burns coating his face and twisting his once handsome expressions into something wicked. “You cannot fight powers that are beyond even your control, Dragon Mage. Gaia and I were always meant to end this life together.”
Teagan raised a hand, and Bron grunted as my son’s energy wrapped around him, pressing on his body long enough Bron’s breaths grew labored and painful.
Gently, I touched Teagan’s arm until he released Bron. Jade moved quickly, holding one of the gold blades against the back of Bron’s neck, holding him still while I forced Teagan to listen. “Teagan, I have thought this through to the end. He cannot live, you know he will go after your family now. It is my destiny to end him, to protect my family from my mistakes so many years ago.”
“Mom, you are not going to do this because you feel like you should have stopped him the first time. I won’t let you. We’ll find a way to keep him trapped, something, but not this.”
Bron laughed, but I didn’t meet his eye. “Consider me, Gaia. Be my wife again, my High Priestess.” Teagan’s expression seemed ready to slit Bron’s throat if he spoke another word. I felt much the same. This was what I needed to do. His presence caused such rage inside my heart, I would accept death if I simply had the chance to kill the man for all he’d done to those I loved.
Jade gasped, and for a moment I thought Bron had overpowered her and harmed her somehow. Teagan wheeled around, and I lost my breath when I looked over his shoulder.
Bron was struggling to breathe. A long blade had stabbed through his back, cutting straight through his chest. Covering my mouth, I dropped the stone sword that pulsed the power of the elements through the web of the sanctuary. Every element vein took more of Bron’s cursed energy, dissolving it into the ground—away from me. Away from Teagan. Fate had different plans than I’d imagined.
Thane’s powerful hand wrapped around Bron’s neck, and his angry face leaned against Bron’s ear, though his eyes never left mine. “Mages might be connected; I suppose it’s a good thing I’m not a mage then. She will never choose you, and you were always mine to kill. Go to hell, Bron. Burn, and as you burn,” he snarled. “Think of me. Think of Gaia in my arms. You weren’t enough of a man to hold on to such a woman, but I promise I’ll never let her go. You’ll never burden us again.”
Thane wrenched his blade from Bron’s back. The silver eye color that once fascinated me locked with my gaze. Like a flickering light, slowly all the hate-filled energy filtered from the brightness. Blood coated Bron’s chin, his neck, and all down his chest until he finally fell back. His eyes locked on the sky. Lifeless and finally gone.
Chapter 33
Teagan
My father stood over Bron’s body, his shoulders heaving slightly as he let his powerful sword drip with blood along the surging power of the sanctuary. Jade clutched her stomach, shock written in her expression as, slowly, I inched toward Thane’s side. When the battle began, I’d been overwhelmed with the gut-wrenching darkness that followed Bron, but now, like the sun breaking through stormy clouds, it was gone.
I placed my hand on Thane’s shoulder, and my father’s gaze slowly turned toward me. His arms were covered in deep claw marks.
“Rule number four,” I whispered.
The grip on his sword trembled. “Striking from behind—I found no need for warrior rules when it came to Bron.”
I wondered if he wanted to smile, but simply couldn’t. Thane’s face was buried beneath black smoke and sweat, but his piercing blue eyes studied me, taking in the gilded markings along my body now. His jaw tensed, and it seemed he couldn’t find his words. Jade trembled behind him, her emerald gaze following my every movement. Squeezing Thane’s shoulder and offering what calming, reassuring energy I could, I released him and rushed to Jade. In three steps I had her in my arms. Jade buried her face along the crook of my neck, her sobs desperate as she clutched to my tattered shirt, her hands trailing across my chest, arms, wrapping around my neck as though she needed to ensure I was solid and alive. I noticed for the first time a large, bleeding gash along her collar bone. It was new and must have come as she’d fought against Bron.
Pressing my lips against her temple, I crushed her tightly in my arms, breathing in the sweet vanilla scent of her hair, although she’d battled as fiercely as anyone. I never wanted to move. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched my parents embrace. Thane clutched Gaia as desperately as I held my own mate, though he still said nothing. I wondered if it were possible for warrior wyverns to go into shock. His age-old enemy was dead by his hand. Bron had torn our family apart—he’d tried to cut out my father’s heart. I would imagine the fact that it was over would come as some sort of shock.
Jade peeled her swollen eyes back from my chest, her fingertips tracing the burning marks that had engraved in my skin. “Your energy faded, and you still live. You didn’t believe you would live.” Her voice trembled so fiercely she had to swallow several times to finish her thought.
“I know,” I whispered, my lips brushing across her forehead. “It’s over now.”
“No,” she said with more power, her fingers clutching my armor with a passionate grasp. “No, Teagan, it isn’t over. You chose to leave me—you chose to make that decision for our family alone. Don’t you…don’t you see, without you my heart would have shattered? You kept this burden on your own. I’m…I’m your mate, but you tried to…” Jade couldn’t finish. Her voice broke, and the skin beneath my armor burned as her boiling tears drenched the surface.
The blaze in the back of my throat brought me to a level of shame, but also such furious relief I couldn’t think straight. I stroked her hair as she clung to my body, spilling all her own relief into my heart. She cried; I shed my own tears. Jade could be upset with me—she had every right. I’d been angry she’d taken the burden of the lindworms on herself, and yet I’d just done the same, except I’d told my mate I intended to die. Her agony was warranted, for if the tables were turned, I would have been left a broken man. Still, I smiled against her hair. I would take an angry, frustrated Jade as long as I could hold her—love her—in the peace I knew was finally possible.
“Teagan,” Thane spoke, his voice hoarse and exhausted. Jade kept her hold on my waist, but together we turned our faces toward my parents. “We need to get to Malik,” Thane insisted. “Mitch was heading there, he sensed something was happening.”
Urgency flashed through my heart—and I knew Jade was overwhelmed in panic when she pulled back, her body shifting in a single breath. I jumped onto her back, never sitting, just standing along her shoulder, straining my gaze toward the hidden barrier where we’d left our son. The closer we came, I absorbed dark energy. The power
filtered strangely through my body now, lighting along the golden mage markings and spilling every emotion of a raging battle through my heart. I’d never absorbed energy so fiercely before.
Jade, it was attacked, I shouted through my thoughts. I didn’t wait for her to land. She wasn’t that high, and somehow I knew I wouldn’t be harmed should I jump.
She roared loudly and dove overhead until she lowered behind the trees. I raced the short distance, one blade left in my grip. My heart was throbbing as I dreaded what I might see. Smoke billowed from the barriers, and I skidded to a stop when I saw what lay around the haven I’d designed.
Jade was rushing toward a burning ring of flames—her flames. I watched her walk through the fire in her human form without a shriek of pain from the heat. Thane was gasping at my side when he and Gaia broke through the trees. Gaia covered her mouth but moved swiftly to where Mitch was sitting on one of the white stones that had surrounded the sanctuary.
The numbness in my hands lifted when Jade raised a bundled Malik from the center of the fire ring. She cried, kissing his head over and over, but her smile found mine. Breathing a sigh of relief together, Thane and I tore toward Mitch.
Gaia was inspecting several bloody wounds seeping from Mitch’s chest and face. Mitch seemed stunned—too stunned to move. I counted the corpses littering the ground. There had to be at least fifteen dark mages dead outside the stones.
“Mitch,” I gasped. “What happened?”
His eyes found me, and his brow furrowed. “What happened to you?” His voice came slow and dazed. I knew humans could go into shock, and by the looks of my brother, he’d been in shock for too long. Quickly, I pressed my hands against his head. Energy swirled with little effort, and after a few moments, the haze clouding Mitch’s mind lifted, and his eyes took on a strong focus when he glanced at me again. “Teagan, I had to come help. Somehow I knew the mages were coming for Malik. There were too many of them for just Eisha. I had to come help.”
Scanning the area, I kept a healing palm on Mitch’s shoulder. His knives were bloody, even the hilts were soaked in dark blood.
“You fought all of them?” I gasped.
“We both did,” he muttered, his brow furrowed and his playful eyes filled with the agony of battle. “It was like everything I’d learned, just came out. I don’t know how I survived, but I got hit with their energy a few times and…I just didn’t die.”
Gaia hugged his shoulders, holding him tightly against her. “As I’ve told you, you are stronger than you know. Your energy, your instincts and desire to protect Malik, protected you. Never doubt the strength of love and family bonds. You are part of this family as much as any of us.”
Thane smiled—small still—but he smiled. “You fought like a warrior today.”
When Gaia released him, I wrapped Mitch fiercely around his neck with one arm, emotion tight in my chest. It was hard to breathe as the weight of what he’d done washed over me in a fiery wave. “You were willing to die for my son,” I gasped. Mitch’s hand clapped me in the center of the back, and I felt his face tense as he tried to fight back his own tears. “I’ll never be able to tell you what that means, Mitch.”
He chuckled softly, shoving me away playfully and wiping at his eyes. “Yeah, well I swore when he was born I’d be his favorite uncle, so…” Mitch offered a sad grin, clutching one of the soaked knives as he hid his eyes from us. Mitch was always the calm, steady, never fazed one, but this battle had unnerved us all.
Stepping aside, I narrowed my eyes, looking for Eisha. Swallowing the harsh curses back down, I rushed toward the back of the barriers when I saw her dark wyvern form in a heap beneath a large pine tree. Jade watched me run, her eyes realizing where I was going. Without releasing Malik, Jade rushed after me.
“Eisha,” I shouted, my palms splaying open across her neck and scales. One large dark eye cracked, and I sensed her relief seeing my face. Slowly, her scales peeled back into her smooth skin, her long dark hair coiled around her shoulders. I swallowed hard when I saw the damage to her throat and middle. I wrapped one hand around her neck, pulsing my new power through her veins while my other hand fell to the enormous wound bleeding all her molten blood onto the grass. Gaia knelt at my side and helped, but Eisha’s hand found mine.
“Don’t heal me,” she whispered.
“I can heal you,” I insisted. “Already, I feel it working.”
“I do too,” she agreed. “Teagan, I’ve lived a long time. I’ve served my purpose. Jade is safe with you; your son is safe with you both. I have served my purpose,” she repeated.
“No, Eisha, you’re not leaving,” Jade sobbed, Malik’s head tucked beneath her chin. “I need you to be here…be here with Malik. Let Teagan heal you!”
Eisha smiled, a single tear dripping from her eye as my mother lifted Eisha’s head, settling it in her lap. “You know that feeling you have for Teagan—your mate? I…had that once too.”
“I know, but…” Jade began, but faded when Eisha coughed a clot of blood from her lips.
“I lived for you, Jade. After the divide, you were my purpose. I vowed to live out my charge as your guardian until I was no longer needed. Today, I lived to protect your son. Now, I wish to be with my mate—with Gregor. For I have missed him so fiercely for so long.”
“Don’t will yourself away,” Jade cried, her head nuzzling along Eisha’s arm. “Please.”
“I love you, my queen.” Eisha’s gaze drifted toward me, her watery, bloody smile kind and tired. I felt the desire of her heart—I understood—but hated that I would allow her to go. “I love you, Teagan Ward, as I would a son. Take care of them. Take care of all our people.”
“You can stay,” I whispered. “We want you to stay.”
She smiled. “It is a great honor allowing a wyvern to choose whether they succumb to death, or if they force their bodies to heal. Please, allow me to pass in peace.”
Thane tapped my shoulder and nodded as he knelt down at Eisha’s side. He was smiling, almost as though he was happy for her. “Your wounds will take you, Eisha. It won’t be long,” he muttered. Eisha’s eyes brightened. “When you see Gregor again, you’ll tell him how I’ve bested him in strength, won’t you?”
Eisha laughed softly, more blood spilling in her throat and open gashes. “He will, of course, see it very diff…very differently.”
Thane chuckled, resting a gentle hand on her forehead until Eisha released a final breath as the damage to her body took her from this life—though if she really were to see her mate again, I wasn’t filled with complete sorrow. I found I could be happy for her in a strange way.
Jade cried silently, holding Malik close. She rested her head along my shoulder for several long moments before passing our son to my arms. Immediately, I lifted his small head to my shoulder so I could simply breathe him in. Jade placed her hands along Eisha’s still body. Slowly, and with boiling love, Jade released Eisha’s energy. The brilliant orbs of power left a lasting imprint of the goodness, selflessness, and fierce devotion Eisha had maintained from her first breath.
Many lives had been lost to the lindworms and dark mages, but we also had kept many in our numbers. All five royals were alive. Leoch, Raffi, and Athika had returned without fatal wounds. Donovan was dangerously injured, but Ced was already trying to heal the mage. I stepped into the room, Ced’s eyes widening when he studied the changed marks on my skin. My touch scorched across Donovan’s broken body, but healing came with little effort. Ced beamed when, soon, the onyx mage was sleeping soundly, his body left to heal naturally now that the danger had passed.
Nuka, Peran, and Shiv lived on, but they had said nothing since finding a place around the pit. Garwin and most of the common dragons had fallen—though a female named Priya sat next to Sapphire, her almond eyes focused intently on the flames. Ivy stood stalwart next to a Coille mage, despite losing her father and most of their people. The clans were dissolved, and now, I could feel it. Today was the day the earth mages would j
oin with the elementals as one powerful, talented race.
Mitch sat next to me, his focus lost to the flames, but his wounds slowly healing. Jade was on my other side rocking Malik, who whimpered and cooed in his peaceful sleep. My attention turned to Gaia when she stood in front of the burdened crowd. My mother reluctantly released Thane’s hand. Since returning to the caves, my parents had not taken a step apart. Thane had fallen into stunned silence once more and had abandoned the sword that had killed Bron outside the entrance of the cave. Gaia’s chin quivered slightly, but her voice was powerful when she spoke.
“It does not seem right to feel any sort of joy when so many friends and loved ones perished. But our enemies have been defeated,” she beamed. “At long last, the War of Ages has come to an end.” The words fueled the people surrounding the fire. Warriors, mages, even Mitch sat a little straighter when some cheered and bellowed their excitement. “The dark High Priest fell to a wyvern warrior,” Gaia said, eyeing Thane gently. “King Nag was killed by the rightful, more powerful lindworm heir.” The room cheered for Ced and Thane for a few moments. “And through it all, there has appeared a Mage of Kings. He was the one who trapped the dark High Priest and ultimately found a way to overpower the warped energy to end our war.”
Silence surrounded the fiery pit. I glanced over my shoulders a few times, trying to follow everyone’s gaze, until I met my mother’s eye. She was looking right at me. “Me?” I muttered. “No, that’s just a story. I’m not…”
“I saw his transformation,” Jade interrupted, her eyes silencing me. “I felt the change in my own energy. Teagan will rule over the elements even more than a wyvern royal. I feel it inside my heart. But his power is greater. He has night energy, earth energy, and he is willing to sacrifice anything to keep us safe. In every way, he is a Mage of Kings—a dragon mage to lead all races.”