Heart of a Dragon (Fallen Immortals #2)

Chapter Nine

It’s better this way.

No matter how many times Lucian repeated that during his hour-long flight north, there was no better in how he felt. Then again, he was winging his way to his death, so that was to be expected.

The chilly Canadian Jetstream blew past his wings, chilling him to the bone, but he could still feel the slip of Arabella’s silky hair through his human fingers, the soft warmth of her forehead as he kissed her one last time. He’d left her sound asleep, dropped into the depths of relaxation by their sexual adventures throughout the night. It was the perfect way to leave if leaving had to be done.

Which it did.

His brothers would have to manage the fallout from his death without him. He hated every part of that—the fact that he was leaving them to deal with the unraveling of the treaty; that he would never have a true chance to say goodbye to Arabella; and not least, his own death—but it was the only way to save her. The world might go to hell, but the woman he loved wouldn’t have to die trying to save it.

It’s better this way.

He almost believed it now.

Lucian dipped down from the slipstream and dove into a rocky canyon that wove deep into the Canadian Rockies. Every responsible dragon sought out a final resting place well ahead of his five-hundredth birthday. Some desperately tried to stall the inevitable by impregnating any female they could seduce—or took by force, in the case of the House of Drakkon. And several other of the Houses, if he were honest about it. Lucian’s position as the crown prince was an inherent part of protecting humanity from the fae, but policing his own kind had been a full-time occupation as well. Many were repulsed by the number of females who died in the mating process, yet most dragons managed to produce a dragonling at some point. But even when that bought them an additional five hundred years, they all succumbed to the wyvern in the end. If a dragon had successfully mated, their wyvern would only be a savage force of destruction, blasting dragonfire at will and hunting whatever it wished for meat. If the dragon hadn’t mated before devolving into his wyvern form, it was even worse. The hunt would be for females as mates as well as prey.

An uncontrolled wyvern was not only hunted down and killed by its House for the sake of decency; the House itself risked war with other Houses, or the House of Smoke if no one else stepped up. A House that wouldn’t slay their own wyvern was a House that had proved themselves a danger to all dragons.

Most would rather die in solitude than force their own House to tarnish their talons with their blood. For that, a pre-selected tomb was the preferred way to die—a secretive spot where a dragon could spend his final days contemplating his life and dying with honor. Some took a specially-prepared magical poison. Some willed their wyvern to come and beat itself bloody in an attempt to escape. The best among them used slow starvation as a way to atone for past sins and cleanse their minds in preparation for oblivion. Or perhaps prayed that the heaven the angels spoke of really existed and had room for dragons.

Lucian preferred starvation in concept, but he might not have the luxury of the time that would take.

His tomb was far enough from the keep to be not easily discoverable, but by custom, the dragons of one’s family knew the location. And it was, by design, close enough to be easily accessible from the keep, in case his wyvern came on unexpectedly, and he needed to make haste in locking himself away. His beast was more dangerous than most, given the enhancements to his magic due to his fae blood, and it could wreak even more destruction on the human world.

And one human in particular.

Arabella.

His body still hummed from their lovemaking, and even the thought of her name brought a flush of pleasure that enervated the runes that danced along his skin. Their night of ecstasy had sealed his fate—after that, his dragon would never accept another as a mate. And his wyvern would seek her out preferentially, crossing mountains and countries to find her, passing up a hundred other women in his rampage to procreate.

No demon conjured from hell could force Lucian to allow that happen.

When he finally reached the spot he had chosen for his tomb, it was clear he hadn’t been there for several decades. Not since that dark time after Cara died. In the years since, brambles had overgrown and half-blocked the entrance. The cave was tucked in the face of a sheer granite cliff, formed when a portion of the mountain had been pried away by weather, a trickling stream, and the passage of time. Lucian cleared the weeds out with a roaring blast of dragonfire as he landed, leaving him standing on the edge of the cliff amidst the charred remains, still smoking under his boots. He left them burning and set about placing the wards on his final resting spot.

He summoned his runes, which gathered into his hands until they turned almost black with the writhing lines. He slowly and methodically passed his hands over every inch of the rocky cavern, infusing the granite with spells that would keep dragons, fae, and any other magical creatures from invading his death chamber. He spoke the incantations, a mixture of fae and dragontongue, in a slow chant that settled his mind and body as each spell locked into place, interwoven with the others, a complex net of ritual, deep magic that would be impenetrable to all… including himself. His brothers might come for him, but they wouldn’t be able to pass this magical barrier. Lucian alone held the key to unlocking it, and once he turned wyvern, even that would be lost along with his rational mind. There would be no turning back at that point—his wyvern would rail against the magic, breathe dragonfire and rip the rock with its claws, but it would die of starvation before it could dig its way out.

Many a dragon had been entombed over the millennia this way, forever sealed into a chamber of their choosing.

If Lucian were lucky, that’s how it would come to pass for him as well. If he weren’t, his brothers would find him and entreat him to change his mind.

He would try to be dead before that happened.

The cave wasn’t large—just a nook in the mountain that narrowed to a crevice at the back—but it had enough space to pace its twent-foot by twenty-foot length and stand up straight in the middle. The open face of it let in the cool mountain air, as well as the light from the sun rising over the back of the mountain behind him. The flat floor of granite wasn’t comfortable, but it was level enough to sit. The wards would keep out anything magical, but there was no physical door that would keep anything from straying in. The open face would allow the crows to pick his bones clean.

Lucian passed his hands over that opening, speaking the last of the deep magic to ensure it was sealed, then he stepped back to survey his work. The place hummed with magical energy, a vibration that was soothing in its own morbid way. With the wards set and locked in place, he settled into the center of the cave, sitting with legs crossed and hands resting on his knees.

He spent a few minutes calming the pounding of his heart and contemplating his fate. It was cold—damn cold. Maybe hypothermia would take him before starvation. Although he judged that unlikely—the dragonfire in his blood was enough to fire a small village. His human form was more vulnerable to the cold, but he was unlikely to freeze to death. Just as he was urgently regretting his lack of an adequate poison, a strange buzzing started in his pants. It took him a moment to realize it was his phone.

He stood, fished it out of his pocket, and stared at the face.

Leksander.

Lucian let it go to message.

He gazed out of the cave at the orange-pink clouds set afire by the rising sun. His House was waking. It was only a matter of time before Leksander realized Lucian wasn’t at the keep. It wouldn’t be long after before he tracked him here.

Lucian crushed the phone in his fist until he was sure the GPS was ruined, then he got up and threw it out of the cave and watched the glittering pieces fall into the gloomy pre-dawn murk.

He was running out of time to die.

There was one way to make sure his brothers couldn’t talk him out of this path he’d chosen—by turning wyvern before they could reach him. There was no reasoning with his beast, and no coming back from it, once he fully turned.

And quiet contemplation wasn’t the way to make that happen.

Lucian stepped back from the edge and sat in the middle of his self-selected tomb. Then he envisioned the one great sin he had committed, the one he’d been paying penance for ever since. Cara. All the images he’d tried to forget over the years. All the sounds. The feel of her blood. The tearing of her flesh under his own talons. The wet dripping blood of his unborn child being ripped from her womb. The screams he would never forget. The utter silence of the tiny dragon baby who refused to breathe. The complete certainty that he was responsible for all of it—their pain, their suffering, their deaths.

He let his mind go there, reliving the horror and the grief in an endless loop of agony.

A roar sounded in his ears, and searing dragonfire billowed around him. His screams echoed off the walls, his own dragonfire curled back on him, searing him, burning a penance into him that would never be enough.

He sat his ground and waited for the wyvern to come.