Gaaaasp. Air filled his lungs in a rush. The effects of the grenade were finally wearing off. He rolled over, got to his feet, and assessed his surroundings. The good news was the animus had cleared the general vicinity of any would-be attackers. The bad news was, as he’d expected, his sword was gone, and Ransom had recovered from the blow and was flying into the veranda, no doubt going after Gabriel and Nathaniel.
Colin’s wings snapped out, and he took to the sky, putting every ounce of his significant weight behind his forward momentum. He became a freight train, or as powerful as one anyway, and slammed Ransom from behind. Their bodies tumbled over the shattered mosaic on the veranda and crashed through the doors to the great mountain hall, sending wood and stone flying.
“You and the others will never succeed,” Ransom said.
Colin was relieved to see the other male had lost his sword when the animus hit him, but dragons didn’t need weapons to be deadly.
Ransom’s wings snapped out, their terrible hooked claws high above his shoulders, ready to draw blood. “You have no idea how powerful she is.”
“And you overestimate her,” Colin snapped. “Look at the palace grounds! Half of Paragon is attacking the other half. Rogos and Darnuith are closing in. If the elves and witches don’t secure this palace before nightfall, Nochtbend will be at your door. We are winning this war.”
Dark thoughts transformed Ransom’s normally handsome features into something truly ugly. “Eleanor will turn you all to dust.”
“I don’t want to have to kill you, Ransom,” Colin said, sinking into a fighting stance. “She’s used you. She’s got her hooks in you still. But if you surrender now, I promise you I’ll do my best to give you a chance at a better life. You’ll have a fair trial. You might have a future.”
He scoffed. “I have no future without Eleanor.” The way he said it held a note of darkness, as if he were some kind of windup toy that only Eleanor could crank.
“What have you done to yourself?” Colin mumbled.
Through bared teeth, the younger dragon hissed. “Made myself into something that can kill you.”
He attacked head on, those talons at the highpoint of his wings locking on to Colin’s. Ransom connected with his right. Colin kneed him in the gut and tore through the other dragon’s chest, drawing blood. He blocked Ransom’s counterattack.
Ransom was younger and faster, but he’d had less experience in the pits. Which was why Colin was surprised when the dragon landed a stabbing blow in Colin’s side. Colin buckled but managed to stagger back, tearing Ransom’s talons from his flesh and putting space between them.
“Surprising, isn’t it?” Ransom laughed. “You and your brothers always underestimated me. Do you even remember fighting me in the pits? All of us were forced to lose to you pampered idiots. Not anymore. She’s made me faster. Made me stronger. She’ll make me king.”
Colin laughed, dodging Ransom’s blows to give the wound in his side time to heal. He didn’t remember Ransom from back then, but those years in the pits had been a blur of bloody noses, blackened eyes, and broken bones. Still, it was clear that Ransom remembered Colin, and maybe that was the key.
“Sure, I remember you. You were the one with the tiny dick,” Colin said through a sneer.
“Big enough to fuck your mother.” Ransom hissed and attacked.
Colin faked a punch, dropped like a rock, and delivered a cross jab, talons sprouting from his knuckles. He sliced under Ransom’s ribs and used the dragon’s momentum to throw him over his head. Ransom somersaulted, his blood spilling on the obsidian.
Ransom didn’t wait for his wound to heal as Colin had but attacked immediately. Rookie mistake. Colin took advantage of the younger dragon’s instincts to guard the wound, blocking his uppercut and connecting with an elbow under Ransom’s chin. Using his wings to lever his body, Colin brought both fists down on the back of Ransom’s neck like a hammer, eliciting a curse from the younger dragon.
Ransom skidded on his stomach along the obsidian, his path lubricated with his own blood.
“Seems like Mummy forgot to give you advanced healing abilities along with the speed and strength. You’re good, Ransom, but dumb. Just like you always were. All those years you cursed having to lose to us, you never stopped to think that we were victims of the same system that held you in your place. And now you’re fighting to keep things exactly how you hated them.” Colin stepped closer, just out of reach, expecting the next blow.
Ransom’s eyes were wild. He stumbled onto his feet and turned a seething growl on Colin. The wound on his side was almost healed. If he waited a moment longer—
“I’m going to enjoy ripping your head from your shoulders.” Ransom surged forward, teeth gnashing and talons out. Colin had to hand it to the boy—he was faster and stronger than any dragon Colin had ever faced. But it was true what they said: the bigger they are, the harder they fall. With a thrust of his wings, Colin jumped.
Ransom had poured all his strength into his forward momentum and sacrificed his agility in the process. He couldn’t adjust in time to stop Colin from leaping over him. By the time he used his wings to change direction, Colin was already there, grabbing him by the throat and slamming his head into the stone with everything he had in him.
Ransom’s skull cracked on the jagged remains of the mural. Blood flowed over the jeweled depiction of the dragon and dribbled into the hole Sylas had left when he’d pried the golden orb from its place in the picture.
Blood sprayed across Colin’s cheek.
“If you kill me, she will punish you. And she’ll bring me back. I’ll watch you die screaming,” Ransom said through his teeth.
“I’m not surprised you believe that.” Colin’s voice was grit and embers, his dragon close to the surface. “But it’s exactly why you’re too dangerous to let live.”
He sprouted talons in the hand around Ransom’s throat, dug them into the back of his neck, and pulled, cleaving his skull from his spine with a sickening pop. Ransom’s head rolled from his shoulders, and then his body exploded into dust under Colin’s knee. His gray spinel heart clinked across the floor, skidding to a rest near the stone wall.
Colin rose and wiped his hands off on his shirt. Ransom’s heart was cracked, black imperfections marring the jewel. How long had Eleanor been poisoning him to cause that kind of damage?
“You fucking idiot.” He kicked the heart aside.
He raised his nose to the air. He had to find Leena. There. Her blackcurrant-and-wild-primrose scent came from the direction of the library. He changed course just in time to hear her scream.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Raven gritted her teeth and held Charlie out to Crimson, knowing she had no choice. If she didn’t hand her over, not only would Crimson kill Leena, but she’d take Charlie anyway. Raven owed Crimson. A contract was a contract. And a magical contract could not be broken except by death.
A dark wind like an icy hurricane flowed through the room, knocking Charlie back into Raven’s arms. Crimson was gone. Raven whirled to find Gabriel on top of the blond witch, his hands wrapped around her throat.
“Thank the goddess!”
The knife Crimson had held to Leena’s throat now protruded from Gabriel’s chest, but Raven wasn’t worried. Nothing less than decapitation could truly kill a dragon. He’d heal from that wound within minutes.
“Gabriel,” Raven pleaded.
He met her gaze. He knew what he had to do.
“Raven, I need your help. Leena’s hurt,” Nathaniel said.
When had he arrived? But then, he was the one who’d have had to unlock the ward around this room. Gabriel could not.
It took Raven a second for what Nathaniel was saying to sink in. Leena staggered backward and collapsed. Blood poured from the wound at her neck. Crimson must have sliced her throat when Gabriel pulled her away. Raven clutched Charlie to her body and rushed to Leena’s side, muttering the spell she’d used earlier on her daughter. She pressed her glowi
ng hand to Leena’s wound.
The blood slowed, but Leena was frightfully pale. Unlike Charlie, Leena wasn’t half dragon. She was mortal. Fragile. She’d take longer to heal. Raven kept her glowing hand on the elf’s wounds but glanced back toward Gabriel.
Crimson smiled wickedly up at him while his hands tightened around her neck. “I knew this was your fantasy,” she said. “You always did want me under you.”
Raven’s stomach turned at the thought. The mambo had always wanted Gabriel. She’d never been able to take no for an answer. It’s what had started all this.
Gabriel smiled at Crimson in a way that chilled Raven to the bone. It was like the man had melted away and there was nothing left but dragon. Fire burned in his eyes—dark, murderous, and merciless.
“Eat your heart out,” Gabriel growled. He released her neck and stabbed his talons through her rib cage. Crimson’s mouth opened in a silent scream. Gabriel’s hand twisted, and Raven could picture his talons shredding whatever dark material throbbed where a human’s heart should be. She wasn’t sure Crimson actually had one.
The light faded from Crimson’s eyes, and Raven knew that she was, at last, dead. She hugged Charlie tighter and hissed out a breath. She turned back to Leena. The bleeding had stopped, but the scribe was unconscious, barely breathing.
“I can try to revive her, but my tobacco isn’t designed for elf anatomy,” Nathaniel said.
“What happened to her?” Colin stumbled into the room, covered in blood, and darted to Leena’s side.
“What happened to you?” Raven asked.
Colin cradled Leena in his arms. “Ransom is dead. What’s wrong with her?”
“She’s lost a lot of blood.” Raven turned worried eyes back to the elf. “I healed her wound, but she’s going to be weak until she replaces what she lost.”
The growl that emanated from Colin’s throat had Gabriel across the room and between them in the blink of an eye. He held his hand out toward Raven, and she took a step back from where Colin held Leena. Raven had no idea what was going on, but it was clear Gabriel suddenly saw Colin as a threat.
“When?” Gabriel asked his brother.
Colin cradled the scribe to his chest, looking like his heart was being ripped out through his fingernails. “Last night.”
“When, what?” Raven asked.
Gabriel didn’t have a chance to answer. Something crashed across the room—the collapsed shelves—and Eleanor stood in the center of the symbol painted on the floor of her ritual room, Marius’s heart in her hand.
“You and I are more alike than you’d care to admit, Gabriel,” the empress said, eyeing Crimson’s body.
When had she revived? When had she picked up the diamond? She smeared blood from her talons onto the gem. Raven stopped breathing. That was Charlie’s blood!
“Kaló,” Raven yelled.
Marius’s heart shot out of Eleanor’s hand and landed in her own.
“Too late,” Eleanor said. “It is done.”
Wind swirled. Glass shattered, toppled from the few remaining shelves in the gusts. A thin column of blinding light shot up through the center of the symbol, a giant glowing spear. The empress grabbed it in both hands, tendrils of her dark hair twisting in the building magic.
“No!” Raven screamed.
Eleanor grasped and lifted the light, then thrust it through the floor toward the heart of the mountain with such force it made her grunt.
Sparks flew up from around the circle, fireworks that stank of brimstone. And then something else was there. Someone ancient and blond in a toga that seemed to give off its own light.
“Hera!” Eleanor dropped to her knees.
All was lost. If the queen of the gods was standing in Paragon, the goddess of the mountain was truly dead, and Zeus’s promised protection gone with her. Raven’s heart squinched into a tight ball of dread. How could she fix this? Was this even fixable?
Hera snatched the golden grimoire from the place Eleanor had left it on her workbench, her lips twisting into a wicked, vengeful smile. “It is done,” she boomed. “Rise, Eleanor, goddess of the mountain.”
Raven stumbled back into Gabriel’s arms as Hera disappeared with the book and Eleanor transformed, growing in size from just under six feet to seven to eight to twelve. Raven cursed. She steadied her breath. Eleanor was goddess of the mountain? They were all doomed.
Marius’s heart winked in her hand, it’s internal light flickering as power surged through the room. The diamond was still smudged with Charlie’s blood. Raven’s brows lifted. Eleanor may be a goddess, but she’d just proved a goddess could be killed.
“Bow before your new goddess of the mountain,” Eleanor boomed. A lightning bolt formed in her hand, her sneer betraying her intention to destroy them all.
“Fuck the hell off, bitch!” Raven circled her hand over her head, and everything turned to black smoke.
Her next breath, she landed on her knees in front of a giant mural of Aitna, the true goddess of the mountain. Gabriel landed on his back beside her. Colin tumbled onto the cave floor with Leena still unconscious in his arms.
Nathaniel landed on his feet and smoothed the front of his tunic. “That was unpleasant.”
“Why have you brought us to the cradle?” Gabriel asked.
“Because this is where we undo the spell Eleanor just did. This is where we resurrect Aitna.”
“But the grimoire is gone. Hera took it.”
Tapping her temple, she met his gaze, allowing the ancient Greek characters to glow through her skin. “I absorbed it, all the spells, before Eleanor took us from the crypt. I have a copy of the golden grimoire… inside me.”
Eleanor hissed when Raven and the others disappeared just as her lightning bolt electrocuted the room. She stepped out of the symbol on bare feet, her dress torn from her increased size, and frowned at the remains of Crimson Vanderholt. She’d make them pay. Before the twin suns set on Paragon, she’d send Raven to Hades after the other woman.
The mountain shook, chunks of stone raining down from above her. Wherever Raven had gone to hide, she’d have to wait. Right now, Eleanor had to finish what her armies had started. In a rage, she raced to the veranda overlooking Paragon.
She drew up short when she saw the blood that stained the mural. A thick layer of ash swirled in the wind around her ankles and across the shiny obsidian. Ransom’s scent was undeniable. There, in the shadows, his heart winked at her in the dying twilight. She growled and gnashed her teeth as she swept it from the floor, but there was no light inside this heart. She had not prepared Ransom for death like she had Marius, Brynhoff, and Killian. His soul was gone, moved on to wherever dragons went after they died. Even as the goddess, that place was unknown to her.
Fury seized her, and she crushed his gray heart in her hand and tossed the shards aside. The hate flowed through her like never before. Now it was a goddess’s rage. A mountain’s rage.
They would pay. They would all pay.
Stepping to the edge of the veranda, she looked out upon the battle. The skies of Paragon were darkened with witches. Her dragon army fought them valiantly, but they were outnumbered. She watched an orange dragon rain fire down upon a witch, who blocked the attack with a shielding spell. Below her, dragons burned and writhed, elven arrows, slick with Aitna’s tears, sizzling in their flesh.
And then there were her children. She spotted Sylas first. His garnet scales flashed as he tore through her aerial legion with practiced intensity. Rowan, no princess in battle, fought mercilessly by his side. On the ground, Eleanor spotted Alexander wielding a sword as if he were born with it in his hands, Tobias backing him up.
The suns inched below the horizon, and she could hear them coming. The vampires of Nochtbend surged across the river. Her guard would never survive. Already the enemy was too close to her door.
A growl rumbled deep within her, her inner dragon feeding on her new magic. But how to wield it? Lightning wasn’t enough. A single spell wasn’t
enough. She needed a way to end this now, to save her dragons and only her dragons.
And then she realized she was now the goddess of the mountain. She was the mountain. Her lips twitched into a dark and deadly smile. There was one thing that dragons were impervious to that all other creatures of Ouros feared.
Fire.
She raised her hands, tapping into the pure power at the heart of this mountain. The earth quaked. A mighty rumble echoed across the palace grounds.
Witches stopped in the sky, staring openmouthed from their brooms. The elf captains took one look in her direction and screamed, “Retreat!”
“Burn, baby, burn!” Her voice boomed as only a goddess’s could.
The rumbling grew more intense, and then the volcano erupted. Molten rock spewed into the sky, raining hellfire from the palace all the way to Hobble Glen. Lava flowed like blood.
A chorus of screams filled the night.
She laughed as witches fell burning from their brooms. Elves and their animuses were swallowed in liquid magma. Arms spread wide, she grinned at the blood, the gore, the glory.
“On your knees! Worship your new Goddess of the Mountain!”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Leena opened her eyes to the world crumbling around her. Colin was there, holding her, and he looked worried.
“I have it!” Nathaniel yelled.
She couldn’t see what he had or what he was doing, but his and Raven’s anxious murmurs filled the air. She was in a cave, some strange stone chamber that was so hot she thought her skin would peel from her flesh.
“What’s going on?” she asked Colin. Her head throbbed. So hot.
“Leena, I want to give you my bond. I know you won’t mate with me, but if you take my tooth—”
“Why? What’s happening?” She tried to sit up, but she was too weak.
“We’re in the palace, in a place we call the cradle,” Colin said. “This is where the queen normally incubates her eggs. Raven says she knows a spell to resurrect the goddess of the mountain so that she can fight Eleanor, but the volcano is erupting. Nathaniel and Raven have used magic to protect us, but neither knows how long it will last. It’s not safe for you here, and I can’t get you out. All I can do is give you my tooth. I can give you immortality.”
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