Chapter 6
There was silence as we traveled, blanketed in a light snowfall. In the distance, I caught a glimpse of the Iron Sea.
After a time, we passed through a handful of outlying huts, and then we were in the midst of ramshackle shanties creaking underneath the weight of the snow on their flimsy roofs.
The buildings grew sturdier as we rode into the township that surrounded the castle.
The wind bit into my cheeks, sharp as knives.
I curled my fingers into the fabric of my cloak, but the rope binding my wrists made it awkward.
I could feel the warmth of the Ambush Master at my back.
“Why do you hate us Azures so much?” I asked. “Or is it me you’re so frustrated by?”
“I have no personal grievance against you.” Blake’s voice was neutral. “I am only doing my duty.”
“Right, of course. Chasing a weak yin through the woods because she ran from a loose tyger. That is the picture of duty,” I scoffed, shifting, my bound hands brushing against the enormous tygress beneath me.
Blake’s grip around me tightened imperceptibly. His words fell quietly from his lips, cold and stoic. “My brother, Zayden, was killed in the Annihilation.”
His twin brother, if I remembered correctly.
Zayden and Blake Axefire had both been Zeniths. They’d been the favorites of the king, his Twin Blades.
“A lot of people were killed in the Annihilation,” I said quietly. “We lost homes. We lost family. Some of us lost everything.”
Blake’s voice snapped like a whip against mine. “We were lured there by the Dominion of the Azure Dragon. By your dominion.” His hands twitched, as if resisting the urge to do something more violent. “For that so-called wedding. The great unification of two dominions.”
The Wedding of Flame and Sky. I had heard the tale, a dream of world peace. The prince of the Azure Dragon Dominion and the crown princess of the Red Phoenix Dominion, to be bound together in hopes of lasting harmony for the first time in history, finally overcoming the prejudices that divided us.
A dragon and a phoenix.
They said it hadn’t been a purely political alliance but one of true love. It would have been the beginning of a wave of cross-dominion royal marriages, to secure peace and, above all else, balance.
But the Annihilation decimated those hopes for peace. Rage was all that remained between the warring dominions now.
My voice turned hollow. “Our own people suffered the most. We lost our royal family. Our homeland.” I swallowed. “I lost all of my memories.”
His head tilted slightly as I looked back, just enough for me to catch the edge of his profile. Full lips, surprisingly sensual against the hardened lines of his cheeks and square jaw. Here I could just make out a bump along his nose where it might’ve been broken before.
“I was there.” The weight of the conversation thickened the air.
Flame shifted beneath us as though she could sense it.
“No one was prepared for the swarm of demons. We were told it was a peaceful event,” Blake continued.
Bitterness dripped from his voice. “That, as a sign of goodwill, we would all be unarmed.”
There was a twitch to his lips, like an invisible string trying to pull a smile that wouldn’t come. “But I’m never unarmed.”
The image of him at the Arena with those swirling blades like a halo above his head flickered across my vision.
“What did you see?” I asked, voice low. He was the first person I’d ever met to have been there.
To have experienced the moment that changed the course of my life—the Annihilation that had killed my family, taken my past. I wanted to pull every memory he had from his brain, like it might bring me nearer to my lost family.
To my people, before our dominion crumbled.
“I watched the soul of the Red Phoenix crown princess get devoured before my eyes. Zayden and his tyger were standing right there. They tried to protect her.” His voice was controlled, but there was something raw underneath, something dangerously close to breaking.
A tremor ran down my spine. “Devoured?”
“There was a new kind of demon there,” he said. “Something we’d never heard of. Bone white. Enormous and insect-like, much taller than a man. It is called the Starved. Intelligent. It could speak. And it ate souls.”
Cold horror slithered through my veins.
His knuckles had gone white. “My brother—” He cut himself off, his breath sharp and uneven as he shook his head.
“None of us could combat it. Even if we’d been prepared, I don’t know what we would have done if the Azure bridegroom hadn’t started grappling with it.
The destruction it wrought in but a few minutes was devastating.
” His voice was cold and measured. “And let me tell you, Azure, who we actually know died. Whose bodies were recovered.”
A chill ran up my spine.
“My brother, the former Ambush Master. His tyger, who was Mated to the only adult tygress at the time.” His fingers tightened. “The king of the Dominion of the Onyx Tortoise. The bride, the crown princess of the Red Phoenix Dominion.”
His voice was growing darker, less restrained and more fueled by anger with every word.
“Do you know who we never found? Any member of the Azure Dragon royal family.”
“That’s not possible,” I snapped. I knew what had happened.
Edith, Quinn, the others—we had all mourned our royal family’s deaths.
“You just said the prince battled the Starved. They perished. Everyone knows that. The groom and his entire family, even his sister, the crown princess of the Azure Dominion. Demons overran our lands.”
Icy fury punctuated every word. “He disappeared during the fight. Azure shapeshifters are notoriously difficult to kill. They heal completely every time they shift forms. Did they die, or was this all a part of some bigger plan to decimate the rulers of the other dominions? Were they somehow working together with the demons? Are they building up an army even as we speak? We don’t know what is happening within the boundaries of your dominion now because no one dares enter. ”
I didn’t say anything, letting his words roll through me.
“The Annihilation cost us our only adult tygress as well,” Blake said. “That might have been the end of the Tyger Warriors if Flame hadn’t already been born.”
I hesitated. “Was the adult tygress there, too?”
“No.” He paused, his breath heaving again against my back. As if he was struggling with something, holding it back, and didn’t want me to notice. “She was Mated to my brother’s tyger. They die with their Mates.”
A cold knot twisted in my stomach. “I thought tygers could re-Bond.”
“They can. To a new human rider.” His tone was clipped, final. “But they can’t live if their tyger Mate perishes.”
A pang hit my chest, a strange grief I didn’t understand. Flame seemed to miss a step.
“So,” Blake said, clearing his throat and resuming that cold, sharp tone, “you’ll excuse me if I’m not so sympathetic to the plights of Azures.”
A bitter laugh climbed my throat. “You believe that our royal family is thriving behind the guise of demons breaking through our Anchor seal? If we’re such a threat, why did your dominion allow us in at all? You could have sent us all back across the Celestine Ocean.”
He exhaled through his nose. “Because we were starving.”
The words landed like a slap.
“The Annihilation didn’t just take down the Azure Dragon Dominion,” he continued, voice like steel.
“Harvests had been poor for years due to floods and storms, and then the Annihilation disrupted trade routes, threw everything into chaos. Then your people showed up, desperate, half dead, but with enough green magic to make crops grow where the soil had become barren.”
I swallowed hard, feeling the cold settle deeper in my bones.
“The Silver Tyger Dominion needed to eat,” he said simply. “And you were convenient.”
I looked down, my fingers curling against the rough rope at my wrists. “So that’s all we’ve ever been? A necessary evil?”
He didn’t answer right away. Flame’s steady gait rocked us forward in silence. Finally, he said, “Azures are a problem we can’t afford to get rid of.”