Kate slumped into my side, and I caught her, noticing the blood dripping from her nose.
“Kate? Can you hear me?” I asked, worried she’d overexerted herself again.
She smiled, and her eyes opened as she smiled.
“Sorry I left you both,” she whispered as Forrest leaned over my shoulder. “So sorry.”
“Doesn’t matter, we’re here now,” I told her, brushing the hair from her face. “Besides, look what we did? Zohar and Allis, they’re dead. It’s over, all of it’s over.”
A voice whispered in the back of my mind that wasn’t true. Where was the shield? We should not have been able to wield such power without the shield, but it was nowhere in sight.
Then Kate’s hand was on my cheek and didn’t care anymore. She was alive, as was Forrest, and our enemy was dead and gone.
“Can you stand?” I asked, and she nodded.
I helped her straighten, and she hugged us both to her.
I wanted to stay there forever, just holding her and knowing all our troubles were at an end.
“Since there’s not going to be a war now,” Forrest said, “you should tell her the good news.”
“What good news?” she asked as she slung one arm around each of our shoulders, and we supported her as we moved towards the door.
“You are looking at the new king of the demon clans,” I said quietly. “A lot happened while you were gone. We should head to Gregornath as Lucy said.”
“No,” she insisted. “Take me to Boshen.”
“What, why?”
“Because you’re welcomed there now, it’s your home. Don’t you want to go home?” she asked quietly.
I longed to have any place I could call home, and slowly nodded at her words. “Yeah, yeah I do.”
“And you can finally show me around,” she suggested. “Take us to Boshen. The clans need their king. Everyone else can wait.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out the coin she used to get here in the first place. She placed it in my palm and closed my fingers over it. “Let’s go home, Craig.”
Those words filled me with such hope for the bright future we were about to have, and all I could do was grin with an excitement I hadn’t felt in years.
I held the coin in my hand as Kate held onto my free one, and Forrest took her other one.
I thought of Boshen and what we were about to walk into, but none of that worried me at the moment.
I had Forrest and Kate by my side, and suddenly, being king of the demon clans did not seem like such a horrible fate.
I closed my eyes and felt the power of the coin work as we were lifted from the ground and gently glided through a tunnel of light until we landed outside of a very familiar place.
But when I opened my eyes, I clutched the coin hard in my palm and stepped away from the other two. “Something’s wrong.”
“Craig? What is it?” Kate asked, moving up beside me.
The courtyard that was usually teeming with demons, guards and soldiers alike, was deserted.
No one stood watch at the wall, and the doors to the castle were wide open.
All I could see inside was darkness.
I reached for my sword, but it was missing from my hip. I swore I’d had it when we left, but it was no longer there, and none of my other weapons were either.
Had the coin knocked them loose?
I didn’t think it was possible, but the darkness inside beckoned to me. The air was still, and everything was too quiet.
“Wait here,” I told Kate and Forrest as I moved towards the steps.
I expected to see at least one demon, but even as I stepped into the main hall, there was no one around. Nothing was disturbed either, and that made everything worse. It was as if everyone inside had just disappeared.
“Hello?” I called out loudly, but my voice echoed back to me.
“Craig?” Kate said behind from me, and I turned to see the doors close silently behind her.
I was about to tell her to go back outside.
The second I heard metal clank, and a lock slide into place when the main doors shut, I knew something was wrong.
This was not the castle at Boshen.
I had not taken Kate and Forrest back to my home to celebrate the war was never going to happen, and everyone was safe.
Kate stood a few feet from me, but Forrest was nowhere in sight.
“Where’s Forrest?” I asked as I reached out towards her.
“He’s here,” Kate replied, but there was no light in her eyes, no smile on her face.
We had just defeated Zohar for good.
She should’ve been jumping for joy, but instead, she stared back at me with those eyes.
Cold, dead eyes.
I ground my teeth and tried to reach her again, but this time, I ran into something hard and cold, blocking my way.
I moved my hand along and felt bars to my right and left.
“A cage? What is this?” I snapped and watched as my worst nightmare came true. “Kate, look at me damn it!”
As her eyes glazed over black, the castle of Boshen faded away, and I found myself standing in a dungeon lit by torches… and a wall of bars between me and Kate.
“Craig!”
I turned and spotted Forrest in a cell to my left. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know, we were tricked somehow,” he growled. “She did this to us.”
“Kate?”
I didn’t want to believe it, but her lips curled into a horrible smile that did not suit her face.
She had her hands clasped behind her back as she studied me and Forrest.
I frowned. “What are you doing? Have you lost it? Let us out of here, right now!”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, not yet, at least.”
“Why the bloody hell not!” I raged, rattling the bars harder, but they held fast.
“I’ve come to understand what’s really going on here, with this place, with our past lives,” she told me, running her fingers over the bars until she met my hand.
I flinched to feel her skin so icy cold, but then she reached out and grabbed my wrist, and I winced at the darkness flowing from her.
“All of it has been lies. Everything we’ve seen, so much pain and turmoil. It all could’ve been prevented. Now… now it’s time to set it right.”
Nothing she said made sense. “Kate, look at me please, really look at me.”
“That’s not Kate,” another woman said, and I frowned, knowing that voice. “Not anymore.”
“Celandine?”
She was in the cell across from us, holding her side and looked barely strong enough to stand.
“How is this possible? You… you’re dead!”
“She was and still technically is,” Kate explained. “Don’t listen to her. All she spews are lies.”
“This is not you,” Forrest whispered fiercely. “You are Kate, do you hear me? The strong, fun-loving Kate! You are not Celandine! You are not some crazed warrior, alright? So drop the act and open your eyes! Come back to us!”
Kate’s hand slipped away from my wrist as steps pounded down the stone stairs leading to the dungeon.
She stepped back from the cell, and no matter how hard I stared, I couldn’t see any sign of our Kate in there.
None of this made sense.
She wouldn’t accept the darkness, not alone. I fumed behind the bars, ready to use all the strength I had to tear them apart and track down Zohar and kill him.
But the man who appeared around the wall and stepped up to Kate’s side, rested his hand on her shoulder, was not Zohar.
I glanced to Forrest hoping he’d recognize the black-eyed man, but it was Celandine who spat curses and managed to find enough strength to haul herself to the bars and glare at him.
“Brother, please! What you are doing will destroy everything!”
“Cassius is doing what should have been done centuries ago,” Kate snapped as she glowered at Celandine, so much hatred bre
wing in her eyes. “You will be silent, or I will destroy you myself.”
I backed away from the bars. Cassius, if that was Cassius… “Where is Zohar?”
“My father? He has been dead for quite some time,” Cassius explained. “But don’t worry, I will take good care of you.” He grinned widely at me and Forrest as the world closed in around me.
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak as Kate, and he talked quietly together.
I heard him mention something about an army and making ready to head out.
I exchanged a worried glance with Forrest.
If they had an army, they were going to be passing through the Darrah lands first, where Kadin and the rest of the dragon army currently was. His father and the rest of those soldiers were in danger. We had to get out of here, had to warn them before it was too late.
“I can’t feel her anymore,” Forrest whispered to me as I neared the bars of our shared cells. “Nothing, there’s nothing left of Kate.”
“She’s still in there, she has to be,” I argued. “We can’t give up on her.”
“if the darkness has taken root too deep…” He trailed off on a stream of curses, but we couldn’t just give up on her.
The anger I had towards her that I thought I tucked away roared back to the forefront of my emotions.
If she had just waited, if she had just talked to us, none of this would’ve happened.
The Kate we knew was still in there, and we were going to get her back, one way or another.
If it was a fight she wanted, then it was a fight she was going to get. We still had to find the rest of the shards. They had to be here somewhere. We’d find them, put the shield back together, and wake her from whatever spell was cast over her.
This could not be how our story ended.
I would not let it be.
Even if it killed me, again.
19
Kate
They rattled the bars, trying to get free, but the cells would hold them as long as I needed them to.
Once the fighting was over and all was calm again, then I would release them, but not a moment sooner.
Cassius was right. Neither one was willing to understand what had to be done. They would fight me tooth and nail, and I could not have them getting in the way. could not have them being a distraction.
“You can’t do this!” Craig bellowed suddenly, pulling me from my discussion with Cassius.
I stared at Craig and Forrest as they clung to the bars of their cells, rattling them fiercely, trying to escape. A sly smile spread across my lips as I sheathed the Executioner blade at my back and took the gauntlet offered to me by Cassius.
Instantly, they both stilled, and I ran my fingers down the iron and silver detailing. It was such an intricate thing, the mechanics of it, the power it channeled when I wore it. I wished they could understand so they could see the greatness I was about to accomplish, but they would only try to stop me. As they had tried to from the beginning.
All along, I’d felt called by something greater than myself and this… this was it.
“Kate, please,” Craig begged quietly. “Look at me, really look at me. You know who I am, you know who Forrest is. Come back to us, please.”
I tugged the gauntlet onto my arm and tightened the leather straps, holding it to my left forearm.
“You’re right, I do know you both, and I know you will not stay behind while I must do what needs to be done. If you are both here, you will be safe until it’s over. This is my true calling, and you will not keep me from it, not any longer.”
Craig, snarled in fury, but he wasn’t glaring at me. “You bastard! What did you do to her! What did you do!”
Cassius stepped up beside me, resting a hand on my shoulder once again and gave me the strength I needed to do what was right.
“I showed her the truth, nothing more.”
“Liar!” Forrest growled furiously, but his dragon was not escaping any time soon.
Cassius saw to that, showed me the same trick Allis used on me when I was still too blind by hope to understand how cruel this world had become.
“The truth can be a powerful weapon,” Cassius said. “I trust after today, you will understand just how powerful. Come, Katherine, the army awaits our commands.”
“You can’t do this, brother, please,” Celandine pleaded weakly from her cell. “All you showed her were lies! Katherine, you have to look inside yourself! You have to remember what I showed you, what really happened! Don’t let him twist your mind!”
I approached the bars, leering at her as she attempted to stand and faltered. “You were weak, I understand now. Too weak to see what was before you and reach out and use it to save this world from itself. You could have had this chance, but you squandered it. Now… now I will pick up where you left off, finish what you started all those years ago.”
“That’s not what you’re doing,” she said in a breath. “You are killing innocents, Kate, is that what you want? All that blood on your hands?”
A sliver of a voice screamed in my mind, and I winced as my temples throbbed, but then Cassius was there, and the doubting voice disappeared.
Craig and Forrest continued to rant and rave, but I ignored them and headed for the stairs leading out of the dungeon. Their yells disappeared as the heavy iron door closed behind us.
We left the fortress behind and stepped out into the field filled with Cassius’s army.
My army.
“Are you ready to fulfill your destiny?” Cassius asked as we stopped where the magical symbols had been carved into the dirt, ready to open the breach from this world into the dragon realm.
I drew the sword from my back and nodded. “I am.”
He closed his eyes and held his hands out over the symbols.
Power thrummed outwards from him, making the runes on my body to grow a dark, violet blue.
I was strengthened by merely standing close to him, fueled by the knowledge I was about to avenge my line, my parents.
Lightning crackled in the air before my eyes, and I watched as the portal stretched, opening wider as Cassius drew his arms back. Once it was stable, he dropped his arms and motioned me forward.
“After you, Katherine.”
On the other side of the portal, I recognized the desolated Darrah lands and stormed through the portal.
The magic brushed across my skin, a strange comfort, before I found myself stepping out onto solid ground once more.
Stop this madness! a voice yelled inside my mind, and I paused again.
“Katherine?”
I glanced up, and the moment I saw who approached, the pleading voice inside my mind was drowned out by the urge to take my revenge.
“Katherine, what has happened, why are you here?” Kadin demanded, glancing worriedly behind me. “Where is my son? And Craig? Why have you come here?”
I followed his gaze down to the gauntlet on my arm and smirked when he breathed a sigh of relief.
“You have found it then; your quest is completed. Where are the others? We must begin planning a counter attack immediately. You are not the only one coming through this portal; more plagued have been found roaming our lands, and Lucy, she is here with the witches. They were attacked…”
I frowned for a second at the mention of Lucy, but blinked, and the frown was gone. No one else mattered to me, not anymore.
The portal behind me crackled again as Cassius stepped through.
Kadin’s eyes darkened, and his hand dropped to his sword.
Cassius sucked in a deep breath and spread his arms wide, spinning slowly around as he took in the sights.
“Finally! I have longed for centuries to breathe the free air again!”
“Katherine, who is this man? What is happening?”
“I’m afraid there has been a change of plans,” I informed him, and as I lifted my left arm, the new shield of the Vindicar expanded to its full size.
I heard the horrified gasps and yells of panic
as the sight of what should have been a symbol of hope for these dragons was now seen as their impending doom.
I lifted my gaze to Kadin’s, and the fear in his eyes drew a cackle from my lips, seeing my black eyes reflected in his. “I have come to reclaim what is rightfully mine.”
The portal crackled again, and the army of the plagued marched through, forcing the dragons to fall back as Kadin bellowed for a retreat.
“And I will not be stopped,” I growled, lifting the Executioner blade high, and with Cassius by my side, embraced my true destiny.
The destiny of bleeding this world dry of all those who betrayed my kind, to the very last.
Afterword
I hope you enjoyed Chaos! I can’t wait to bring you the next book in this series!
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Copyright © 2017 by Kit Bladegrave
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Chaos (Dragon Reign Book 4) Page 11