The Last Dragon of the East

Chapter 34

34

The prince and his Fated One travel across the many lands and seas. They spend their years, their decades helping the people. Through famine, through disease, through war—the blue dragon does what he can, giving up more and more of himself with every passing moon.

His scales are sowed into the fields to ensure bountiful harvests. His teeth are built into effigies to ward off evil creatures that lurk in the forests. His hair is shorn down to his scalp, the strands of his mane ingested to stave off plague. It is not long before he is a shell of himself, a once-mighty divine beast now little more than skin and bones.

The stranger, meanwhile, reaps all the rewards and grows drunker on the feeling each day.

“They wish to make me their emperor,” he tells the prince, addicted to his newfound glory and fame. “My beloved, please lend me your strength. When I take the Imperial throne, I will need you by my side.”

“I have always been by your side,” the prince says with a heavy heart. “But is this truly what you want?”

“Of course it is! Together, we shall rule for all eternity. Think of all that we could accomplish.”

The blue dragon shakes his head, weary and worn down. He can smell the greed wafting off his Fated One’s skin. Something’s changed. Something terrible. “No,” he says, “this is not you. This is not right. I wish to return home.”

The emperor frowns. “You would abandon humanity and leave me alone, after all we’ve built together?”

“Please, say you’ll return with me to the east.”

“But why should we? We have everything we need here, my love.”

“I long to see my family again.”

“Why? To reunite with the mother and father who wished to keep you there?”

“They only wanted to protect me.”

“By keeping you locked away,” he says simply. “Here, we are free .”

The blue dragon shakes his head, dismayed. He’s suffocating. It is wrong to trap a dragon on land when he should be free to soar the skies. “I’ve had enough of this.”

“You cannot leave me,” the emperor says pointedly. “I forbid it.”

Against his Fated One’s wishes, the young prince walks away, desperate to return to his father and mother. How he has missed them. He should have listened to them—what a mistake it was to leave home.

The emperor’s anger turns into a boiling-hot rage. “You will not leave me,” he yells after the young prince, and gives chase.

The prince tries to shift into a dragon, tries to fly away, but his heart is so heavy and sad that he cannot harness his magic. It is not long before his Fated One has him captured.

“You will stay,” the emperor seethes, “because you are mine .”

The prince cries out, “Release me at once! There’s no need for it to be this way.”

“If you will not give me your power, then I will take it for myself.”

Even the purest of love is not immune to poison. It can twist and mutate into something monstrous with enough obsession and control. Human hearts are far more susceptible to rot. And when love gives way to possession—it is no longer love at all.

The emperor draws his blade and carves out the young prince’s heart. He devours it whole, consuming the blue dragon’s magic and every fragment of his soul in a mere four bites. He is unfazed when their red thread of fate suddenly cuts clean through, their connection broken now, an ugly, unfeeling gray.

After all, who needs their Fated One when they can have wealth and power and immortality?

Where once he was regarded as a hero to his people, the emperor’s reign begins to take a darker turn. Without his Fated One, he is erratic, teetering on the edge of madness. He tries and fails to fill the void where the blue dragon once stood, instead filling his life with riches and with those who will serve his every whim. The emperor craves total domination over his subjects, over his lands, and even the kingdoms just beyond his reach….

But he realizes slowly, and all too late, that nothing will ever satisfy his now-fractured heart. He consumes everything in his path, the well-being of others be damned, all in the hopes that he will one day be free of the insidious, self-inflicted emptiness within.