Chapter 21
The Dragon King
I soared over the cursed woods on dragon’s wing.
The mountains rose and fell, and I braced myself as I drew near the Bloodvale.
Every time I’d tried to cross the invisible barrier of the mages’ spell around the valley, a torrent of searing magic had driven me back.
I’d tested it time and time again for weaknesses, until I knew every outcrop and ravine by heart—but I’d never been able to cross it.
Yet this time, there was nothing. The border flashed past beneath me, and I soared on toward the heart of the kingdom, farther than I’d been in fifty years.
Their spell was truly gone.
I roared in exhaustion and triumph. At last, nothing stood between me and what was rightfully mine: Silverthorn.
I restrained my urge to engulf the castle in flames. I might be a monster, but I was still the Bloodvale’s rightful king. I wouldn’t make my people suffer for my brother’s treachery.
I had to be cautious. My brother could have sent the woman to lure me out. I couldn’t go in blindly and play into his hand.
I landed out of sight, then climbed through the forested hills until I reached a barren overlook above the castle. Its white towers glowed with starlight, elegant and graceful and everything that my black ruin was not.
Silverthorn had been mine. My birthright.
Then my traitorous brother had stolen it with the help of the mages.
“Cassius.” The bastard’s name tore itself from my throat, so laced with rage and hatred that it was barely understandable as human speech.
Was he sleeping peacefully in my old bedchamber with his witch curled against him? I could fly to their balcony and fill their bedroom with dragon fire while they slept—but that would be too quick, too impersonal. I wanted to see the look on my brother’s face when he faced my justice.
I ripped my gaze away. Get a hold of yourself.
I might be a cruel bastard, but I wasn’t a mass murderer. Not yet at least. I’d see soon enough what the curse had in store.
Why had he done it?
The question haunted me. I would’ve given him anything he asked—except for the throne. The throne was mine and always would be. And that was the true blade between us.
“Soon enough, I’ll know everything you did, brother.” I’d begin by squeezing the truth from the woman he’d sent, one truth at a time.
“I wondered when you would return, King Valen,” a voice behind me said.
I spun, my hand reaching to pull the blade I hadn’t brought.
An old woman stood before me, with long silver-gray hair and a patch concealing her left eye. Siggy.
I glared at her. “You.”
“Me.”
I stalked toward her, the tendons in my arm thrumming, urging me to act, to release the monster within. “I should kill you where you stand.”
She shrugged nonchalantly. “I don’t think you’d be the first.”
“You have a lot of gall coming here, old witch. Your meddling has done enough harm already.”
She glanced at Silverthorn. “The mages are dead. The spell over the Bloodvale is broken. And there’s a good king and queen on the throne. I feel like my meddling has done rather well.”
“Harm to me,” I growled.
Siggy narrowed her eyes. “You did this to yourself, you arrogant fool. I warned you not to take on the mages once you’d learned the truth of their power, but did you listen? No.”
My hand flexed. It was so simple for her to rewrite everything that had happened. “You toyed with me. I came to you for help. I asked how to defeat the mages, and you laid out breadcrumbs for me to follow.”
She huffed and swiped her cloaked arm through the air, brushing me off. “I warned you that you’d never be the one to break the mages’ hold over your kingdom, that it wasn’t your fate. But you didn’t listen.”
“Fate.” I scoffed at the bitter word. “I was going to be king. I discovered the source of their power. It was my duty to stop them.”
“It was your duty to do what was best for your kingdom. That required wisdom. And patience.”
“Patience?” I tore myself away and paced to the edge of the outcrop, staring at the castle that had been mine. “What was I supposed to do? Wait around and watch my people suffer like my brother? Wait fifty years for someone else to do my duty for me? That’s not who I am.”
“So we’ve learned.” The old woman smiled, cunning and cruel. “If you’d followed my advice and waited, you would’ve saved everyone a lot of trouble. Instead, you got yourself exiled.”
“Cassius got me exiled. He was the only one I told about my plans. Him and you—one of you betrayed me.”
“You’re not as clever as you think you are, King Valen. The mages were watching your every move. You betrayed yourself. Your brother had nothing to do with it.”
Lies.
“If Cassius was innocent, why didn’t he look for me?” I growled. “Why did assassins come instead, his name on their lips?”
“Do you think the mages would’ve told him the truth? They convinced him you’d gone mad, that you’d run off and abandoned the throne because you wanted to whore around and drink—which seems not far from the truth.”
My muscles coiled. It was a slap in the face. But I wasn’t blind to her manipulation.
You didn’t send assassins for a madman. You sent them for a rival, and Cassius and I had always been rivals. Always competing, fighting, striving to be the best.
I’d spent years wondering when he’d stopped caring that we were brothers.
I straightened, refusing to bend before the old meddler. “When it came time to save my kingdom, you both abandoned me.”
The lines on her face drew taut. “Can you face the truth?”
“I always have.”
She sighed, her shoulders slumping. “You weren’t the right king for the Bloodvale, Valen.
Impetuous. Rash. A hot-headed rake. You weren’t the right king for her.
If you were meant to be her king, you would’ve been drawn to her like a river to the sea—inevitable and relentless.
You would’ve waited for her to rise—if you’d been the one to rule. ”
Her words sank into my chest like a dagger cut from ice. “This is about Cassius’s queen? The witch?”
“It always has been. The Fates had a plan for Ella.” Siggy placed her hand on my arm like an old friend. “And you needed time to grow into the man you needed to be.”
I pulled my arm from her grasp. My fangs erupted, and the beast within me trembled just beneath the surface. “I’m not a man. I’m a monster.”
Siggy backed away. A flash of doubt flickered in her good eye, then it was gone.
“I know what you are.” Her voice was sad, and for a moment, she was as I’d first known her—a kindly old woman who could help me unravel the spell over my kingdom. It had been a lie, a mask no less real than the one I wore.
“Your time is running out,” she said softly, as if in answer to my thoughts. “Queen Ella saved the Bloodvale. You must save yourself.”
I wanted to rage against her, to ask her why she’d left me to the wolves and beasts, but her words stripped me bare. “How much time do I have left?”
“Months. Maybe weeks. It depends on whether you can control yourself—on whether you have restraint.”
“Restraint is growing harder to come by.”
The relentless anger and hunger that accompanied the curse grew more each day. Soon, I’d no longer be its master, but its slave.
Misery strangled my words.
“If I don’t break the curse, I’ll become thrall to the demon who did this to me, and both my kingdom and the Bloodvale will be in peril.”
“Then it’s a good thing that you spend your time enthroned in your ancient castle, drinking, and feasting, rather than seeking a way to break it.”
My gaze narrowed on her, my irritation simmering. “I’ve tried everything. The Fates have given me only one recourse, and I will take it to protect this kingdom if I must.”
Siggy looked toward the castle, her expression mournful. “It would break you, Valen, if you did that. You might hate your brother, but his death would break you.”
“Then you truly know everything.”
“I see the things the Fates want me to see—and a few they don’t.”
The fucking Fates. The meddling goddesses of pain, suffering, and misery. Of inevitability. I despised them almost as much as the demon who cursed me—who’d transformed me into the monster I was.
The bile of revulsion soured my mouth, but I knew there was only one way I could save myself. I knelt before the old witch. “Tell me if you’ve seen another path.”
“I’ve given you advice before.”
“I’m listening now.”
She nodded, then slowly lifted the patch that covered her eye. Luminescent blue flames burned within, swirling around an ebony pupil that swallowed me like a bottomless pit.
“Valen, Valen, Valen,” she tsked in a deep voice.
“The impetuous prince who so desperately wanted to be king. Who had to do everything himself. Who trusted no one, not even his brother, not even the Fates.” She seized my hair, the blue fire of her gaze boring into me.
“The Fates will give you another way to save yourself—if you are strong enough to face it. This will be your second—and final—chance to heed my warnings.”
I ground my teeth. “Tell me.”
“The woman you have imprisoned—she is the only one who can break the curse over you.”
Shock rumbled through me. “Belle?”
“She has the power to save you—but it will cost you everything: your ambition and your kingdom, your power, wealth, and dreams. Everything you ever imagined you would be. Everything you imagined you would rule and protect. All of it.”
She released me roughly and covered her eye. I reeled in shock, barely able to comprehend what I’d heard.
Siggy nodded curtly, the old woman I had known once again. “Do with that as you will, young king.”
Turning, she disappeared into the shadows.
Her words were bitter poison, burning through me like an adder’s venom.
I hadn’t been the right king.
It was all my fault.
Siggy had known what had happened to me and yet had done nothing.
To save myself, I had to give up everything.
To hell with the old witch. To hell with the demon who did this to me. And fuck the Fates. To them, I was nothing more than a marionette to be tormented and teased.
I thrust myself to my feet. Every step of the way, they’d found new avenues to torture me. A spell over my kingdom that I couldn’t break. A devil’s bargain I was forced to make. A curse with three solutions: kill my brother, kill myself, or kill my dreams.
“Fuck you!” I bellowed at the dark woods where Siggy had disappeared. “I will not be your plaything!”
Not hers. Not the Fates. Not the demon’s. I’d find a way out of their trap—and it all began with Belle.
Of course she was part of this—a pawn of the old, one-eyed witch. I would discover the secret of the woman’s magic, then Locke and I would find a way to break the curse without giving up my power or my throne.
I would beat the Fates at their own game—or I would die trying.