Chapter 50
ARIEL
I stared in disbelief as Hemming soared through the air toward me, shield lifted high over his head. Before Thallen could even turn, Hemming landed behind him, using all of his momentum to bury the pointed end of his unexpected weapon deep into his back. The god who’d killed my parents—and nearly me—dropped me in an instant. I fell backward into something hard and warm, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the raging beast of a man before me. Black, leathery arms hauled my grandfather up and threw him across the clearing like he weighed nothing at all. Pale silver eyes glared at the would- be corpse before he stormed toward it, another deafening roar swallowing the sounds of the sea below.
I tracked his every move as I clutched the wound on my chest and tried to call upon my fire to seal it. But I was too weak and paralyzed by disbelief for it to come; or I was too far gone to be saved at all.
Because Hemming was already dead.
And the dead cannot save you.
“Hemming.” The word was little more than a harsh, croaking sound as it passed my lips so silently I wondered if I’d actually spoken it aloud at all. The ghost of the man-beast possessed by rage did not hear me. Instead, he crushed his foot into Thallen’s chest where his gaping wound was and drove him into the ground with staggering force.
Again, I tried to call his name as he bent down over the war god to hoist him up. “ Hemming .” Though his back was to me, I saw him hesitate for a moment. So I tried again. “ Hemmy …”
With eerie slowness, he turned to face me.
HEMMING
I soared along the sheer face of the cliff on the back of a dragon as black as night. Its ominous warning about Ariel had rooted fear deep in my bones, and I silently prayed that, whatever fate was to befall her, we would get there in time. The moment we crested the rocky ledge, that fear was realized.
Ariel hung limp and bloody in one of Thallen’s hands as the other dug deep into her chest. Even from a distance, I could see death reflected in her vacant stare.
The thin tether holding the beast and me together snapped in an instant.
Channeling my fury, I ripped a scale from the dragon’s back and shot to my feet as it dove toward Thallen. Then I launched myself at him, the scale lifted high above my head, as Ariel looked on, a spark of life igniting in those endless green eyes.
I buried the dragon scale so deep in Thallen’s back that it jutted out his chest. With a brutal tug, I ripped it back out and tossed him away from Ariel. As I stalked toward him, I raised the scale so I could bury it in his skull.
An image of Kier’s face flickered where Thallen’s should have been, then disappeared like a mirage. Realization slowly dawned, and I drove my foot into the chest of the one who’d played us all. I pinned him against the ground as he struggled beneath my weight, my mind filled with thoughts of how best to kill him. The beast and I shared an undeniable bloodlust that had to be sated.
Thallen’s death was our singular focus.
As we hauled him up, ready to rip his head from his body, something niggled at the back of our shared mind. Something soft and subtle but growing stronger by the second. Something sweet and familiar. Something that tamed our feral need for vengeance.
“ Hemming .”
That name echoed through our mind, breaking revenge’s hold ever so slightly.
“ Hemmy …”
Ariel’s strangled voice ripped me from the haze of rage clouding my thoughts. I turned to see her balanced against the dragon, body broken, bleeding, and riddled with pain. But she was alive—and slowly staggering her way over to me.
“Are you…” she rasped, staring at me with eyes wide with disbelief, “are you… real ?” Her gaze drifted to the body at my feet, then back to me. I looked down at Thallen and realized what she was asking: was it truly me, or just another cruel illusion?
Every drop of rage flowing through my veins disappeared in an instant.
I rushed over to her, stopping short when I saw her flinch slightly as I reached for her. My hand went still as stone. “It’s me, mikros drakos . Your Hemming...”
The second she heard me call her ‘little dragon’, tears welled in her eyes. “You’re not dead.”
“ Never .” I cupped her cheek and pulled her closer. “Because I go where you go, remember?” Leaning down slowly, I pressed my lips to hers and kissed her softly.
When I pulled away, I saw just how dire the wound to her chest was. Her braid and halter had camouflaged it from a distance, but standing only inches from her allowed me to see the gravity of her injury. With the fog of vengeance lifted, fear crashed down upon me like a rogue wave.
“It looks worse than it is,” she said, wavering on her feet when I let her go to better investigate her wounds. She tried to push my hands away and lost her balance for her efforts. When I caught her arm, I realized how cold and dewy her skin was. How shallow her breathing sounded.
She was far closer to death than I had ever been.
“We need to close this,” I said, scooping her up in my arms.
“I’m too weak to call my fire,” she said in a scratchy tone, “and we don’t have much time, so I need you to listen to me?—”
“We need to seal these wounds or you won’t survive,” I snapped at her, but she continued on, pinning me with her sharp green stare.
“—Shayfer might still be waiting for me at the shack along the coast. Eldrien is barely alive, thanks to me. You need to get them back to Kaplyn as quickly as you can?—”
“Ariel!” I shouted as I carried her over to the dragon who’d rescued me. It looked at me through those reptilian eyes, then shifted its gaze to the woman in my arms. “Do for her what you did for me—save her.”
As the dragon silently assessed me, an evil laugh carried over the din of the sea below. I turned with Ariel still safely in my arms to see Thallen looking back at me as he struggled to push himself out of the dirt.
“You cannot save her,” he mocked. “She is as good as dead.”
The beast surged forward, ready to shred him to pieces, but stilled the moment Ariel placed her cold hand against my chest and whispered, “put me down.” I hesitated, not wanting to let her go, but the fierce determination in her eyes was impossible to deny. “I must do this, Hemming. Please .”
A small growl of unease rumbled through me as I placed her on her feet. With every ounce of strength she still possessed, she made her way over to the one that had sought to end her. Thallen moved to stand, but I buried my foot in his face, knocking him back down again.
With much difficulty, Ariel crouched down over his back and reached her palm toward me, her fingers splayed. Without hesitation, I pulled a dagger from the sheath on my thigh and placed it in her hand.
Fisting her hand in Thallen’s hair, she arched his head back toward her and bent her head to his. “You took my parents from me,” she said in his ear, her hoarse voice suddenly finding strength. “You tried to take Hemming, and my friends, too. There is a price to pay for coming after those I love.”
He struggled beneath her as she spoke, but stilled once I pinned him down with my foot again. Too wounded to fight back, a snarl of anger escaped him. Defeat pinched his features tight. “You will learn about paying the price soon enough,” he said, as though he wasn’t about to die.
“I don’t think so.” Still holding his head captive, she dug the sharp tip of the blood-covered steel into his back and thrust it in to the hilt. “That is for my parents,” she said, twisting the blade before she yanked it out and reached around his neck to position the blade at his throat. With a slow and steady hand, she drew it across his vulnerable flesh, slicing deep. “That is for Hemming. And this, dearest grandfather,” she whispered as she placed the tip of the blade between the ribs that caged his heart, “is for me .” Pushing against his back for leverage, she drove the dagger deep into Thallen’s chest. Blood gurgled in his throat as Thallen fought against his inevitable death—and all the while, Ariel smiled with dark delight. “I guess I am god enough to kill you after all,” she whispered before wrenching the blade free.
She released his head with a shove, and he collapsed back into the dirt. He would not move again.
Ariel attempted to stand, but her injuries betrayed her, and she fell limp atop Thallen. Panic spurred me into action, and I scooped her up and ran to the dragon, desperation driving me. “Help her!” I said as I crashed to my knees with Ariel cradled to my chest.
The dragon canted its head, then inhaled deeply. Its black scales smoldered like simmering coals, but no fire escaped. Instead, a snake-like tongue extended from its mouth toward Ariel’s chest. The moment it touched the mangled wound, her skin began to sizzle and close. The stench of burnt flesh filled the air, and I clutched her tighter, terrified that we’d waited too long; that she was too far gone to be saved. But when the tongue withdrew, hope sparked in my chest.
Her wound, like mine, was healed.
“This will not fix it wholly,” the dragon said in an all-knowing tone. “She must be healed properly, and time is not your friend in that endeavor.”
“Then we must leave now,” I said as I sprang to my feet.
“ We… ” The dragon contemplated that word for what seemed like an eternity while the beast inside me paced in its mortal cage. “Yes, I suppose we must. But not without the others.”
Confused, I looked on as the dragon threw its head back and let loose a shrill sound that shook the ground we stood upon. Trees bent, rocks quivered, and the cliff’s edge began to fall away as its cry ripped through the air. Once silent, it stared at the sky expectantly, as though it might respond.
Which is exactly what it did.
A chorus of matching voices echoed from somewhere deep in the island’s core, like it had awakened some resting beasts. One by one, four brightly-colored dragons exploded from the stony earth and soared across the sky like shooting stars, orange trails of fire trailing behind them until they landed throughout the clearing. They stared at me with their piercing eyes, then turned to the black dragon.
“I am Temrys,” she said as she turned to me. “And we shall go with the one who freed us from our corrupt magical bondage.”
With a nod, I loaded Ariel atop Temrys and climbed on behind her, looping my arm around her chest to hold her tight against me. Her head lolled back as her consciousness wavered.
“The shack. Shayfer…Eldrien…”
“I know, little dragon. Don’t worry. We’ll find them.”
Temrys took to the skies without further directive, headed toward the western shore. But the fog was thick near the water, making it difficult to see anything—including those we hoped to find.
“ Ten minutes …” Ariel’s voice was so vacant and distant that I wasn’t sure if she was awake or trapped in a fever dream as her body began to fail.
“Ten minutes for what, Ariel?” I asked, shaking her gently to rouse her.
“Shayfer…waiting…”
“He said he’d wait for ten minutes?”
“Yes…”
“You mean he left you alone to fight Thallen?”
“No…I sent him away.”
I cursed under my breath as a break in the fog cleared. Through it I saw the tiny hut near the shoreline—and two small figures lying near the water.
Temrys screeched as she catapulted through the clouds toward the ground with tremendous speed. I gripped Ariel’s body as tightly as I could and held on to her as we raced downward, her hair flying wildly around us in the wind. As we neared, one of the men crouched down beside the other lying motionless on the ground. Shayfer looked up at us as he placed a hand on Eldrien’s back, ready to escape.
He shot to his feet just before Temrys and the others landed. With wide eyes, he looked on as I dismounted the jet-black dragon with Ariel in my arms. Her eyes fluttered open and she forced a smile as Shayfer approached. “I said ten minutes.”
Shayfer’s expression fell as he took in her battered state, but he quickly righted it as she focused on him. “Good thing for you that I waited longer.”
“We have to get her to Kaplyn,” I said, foregoing pleasantries and explanations altogether. “She needs the healer right away.”
“As does Eldrien,” he said. “I’m glad to see you require no such attention, Hemming, which is rather surprising for one who should be dead.”
I smiled at him. “I’m hard to kill.”
He grinned in return. “Too bad your attacker was unaware of that fact when he tried.”
“Thallen knows that now, not that it matters anymore.”
“Indeed…” Shayfer’s smile fell away as he turned his attention to the dragons behind us, though he managed to maintain his composure in the face of such creatures. “I’m afraid I cannot carry us to Kaplyn’s with my magic. Can they take us? And not kill us in the process?”
“They can and will. Now hurry. We don’t have any more time to waste.”
“Is Eldrien all right?” Ariel asked as Shayfer headed toward him.
Sadness tainted his stare as he looked back at her. “He will be, Ariel dear. Do not worry.”
“Emral,” Temrys commanded, “take the wounded one.” A deep-green dragon, much smaller than she, walked over to where Eldrien lay in the sand and reached a taloned appendage for him.
Shayfer appeared in its path, facing the dragon without fear. “Harm him and I will make you regret it, old one.”
The dragon dropped his snout low enough to skim Shayfer’s nose and huffed smoke in his face. The fae spy did not flinch.
“Emral will not harm him,” Temrys said with a hint of annoyance before turning to a copper-scaled dragon. “Freka, take the fae—and not in your mouth, if you please.”
The longer, leaner dragon slinked past her, eyeing Temrys with disdain as she passed. “Must you ruin everything?” She dropped her head low and snapped her teeth at Shayfer as he climbed on. Emral gently plucked up Eldrien’s blackened body and held him firmly in his claws.
Once I mounted Temrys, we were back in the air, flying high above the sea. “Head to the Midlands—to Lord Kaplyn Corvallym’s estate,” I told her, wondering if she’d even know where that was. But without further explanation, she adjusted her course to lead us there.
The cold sea air in her face seemed to revive Ariel, though only slightly, and she rested her head back against my shoulder. “Don’t ever die on me again,” she said, her voice sounding more her own.
A nervous laugh escaped me. “I hadn’t planned to the first time, and I certainly don’t intend to in the near future.”
She exhaled hard. “Good. Because if anyone has earned the right to kill you, it’s me.”
“I think that truth goes both ways.”
She lifted her head just enough to look me in the eyes. “I think not.”
Her faint smile drew more laughter from deep within me. “We can discuss this later, once you’re fully healed.”
“You want me at full strength for an argument?” she asked, leaning her head against my neck. “Has death erased your memory? Have you forgotten how stubborn I can be?”
“Not even death could make me forget that.” She attempted to rib me with her elbow and winced at the pain in her chest her efforts had earned. “Damn it, Ariel, just be still. You can beat me all you want once you’re better.”
“How you fuel my will to live with such promises.”
My arm around her pulled her closer still. “As was the plan.”
“One you may regret when I’m pummeling you.”
I leaned down and brushed my lips along her ear. “Maybe that’s exactly what I want.”
Her fingertips dug into my leg. “Then it’s exactly what you shall get—sooner than you may wish.”
She nestled in against me and fell asleep as we flew westward over the sea to the southern coast of Anemosia and beyond. Though Ariel’s playful banter had given me a temporary reprieve, my worry returned the second she drifted off once again. She was far from out of the woods as far as her injuries were concerned, and fears of what may have happened to her Fireheart plagued me as we flew over the darkened lands of Anemosia, headed for Kaplyn’s estate in the Midlands.
I prayed that his healer would have the power to restore her.
And I prayed that my father had forgiven both our mistrust in him and our actions enough to let him try.