Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
LUROK
Islam my fist against the wall of my den.
My scales burn with rage I cannot contain.
The lie I told her echoes through my mind.
Each syllable is a fresh wound. My coils tighten and release in agitation.
The air already answers my fury. Scrolls stir on my desk without a visible source.
I have become the very thing I feared: the living embodiment of the prophecy I have fought to deny.
My palm leaves a smear of blood on the stone, knuckles splitting from the impact.
I barely notice the pain. It is nothing compared to the memory of her face crumpling before she rebuilt her walls, that flash of devastation before pride reasserted itself.
For a heartbeat, I glimpsed the damage I inflicted before she hid it away.
"I did what was necessary," I snarl to the empty chamber, my voice bouncing off walls carved with the history of my ancestors. Of warriors who never broke, never wavered, never succumbed to weakness.
The air disagrees. It whips around me in agitated currents, rustling scrolls and setting the ancient blades and ceremonial daggers hanging on my wall to trembling against their moorings, metal singing against metal in soft, accusatory chimes.
My element has its own opinion, it seems, refusing the lie even as I desperately cling to it.
Just survival. Nothing more, the words tasted foul on my tongue as I spoke them.
I circle the confines of my den, tail lashing in tight, furious arcs. Each slither sends ripples through the air around me, invisible power growing with my emotions. A vase topples from its shelf, shattering against the floor. I barely register the sound.
I should never have claimed her in that hidden grotto, or surrendered to the hunger that has haunted me since I first scented her.
Marking her as mine was reckless folly with ancient prophecy warning against it.
Now I suffer here, my scales burning with the memory of her skin against mine, torn between duty to my people and the invisible pull that is tearing me apart inside to deny.
The wind picks up around me, no longer a gentle stirring but a gathering storm. It whips my hair across my face, lashes my scales with enough force that I feel each gust like a physical blow.
“Control," I hiss through clenched fangs, claws digging into my palms hard enough to draw blood.
But control slips further away with each thought of her.
Serin, with her stubborn chin and hazel eyes that see too much.
The memory of her small hand fitting into mine, as if it were carved to rest there, haunts me.
The way her body moved against mine in that hidden grotto, as if we were created from the same elements, burns through my resistance.
A roar tears from my throat as I whirl to face the ancestral shield mounted on my wall.
Once carried by my sire into the great battles of the Sundering, its polished surface now reflects a warrior barely recognizing himself.
My eyes glow with an inner light, a pale luminescence I have never seen before.
The air spirals around me in visible currents at my unconscious will.
The storm builds with my rage, with my grief, with the terrible knowledge that I cannot have what I want.
That to surrender my heart means condemning my people to whatever catastrophic change the Threadborn Prophecy foretells.
The Season of Naga cannot be allowed to happen.
I will not be the catalyst that brings destruction.
Yet even as I think this, the air responds to emotions I cannot fully suppress.
My chamber transforms into the heart of a cyclone.
Scrolls unravel in midair, their ancient text a blur of motion.
My sleeping furs lift from my nest, spinning in a wild dance across the room.
Weapons tear loose from the wall, blades clattering against stone before being swept up into the vortex.
I stand at the center of destruction. My silver scales gleam in the fractured light.
A terrible power courses through my veins.
The element answers me as naturally as breathing.
It expands with my rage, contracts with my focus, moves through me and around me and beyond me.
I could tear this mountain apart, stone by stone, if I wished it.
The realization sends ice through my blood. This is what the prophecy warned of. This elemental power could reshape the world and destroy it. Is this what awaits my people if all four elements fully awaken? If earth and water join fire and air?
No. I will not allow it. My tail lashes against the floor as I fight for control, muscles straining with the effort of containing what I have unleashed.
"Enough!" I bellow, my voice barely audible over the tempest.
For an instant, the wind pauses, suspended like a predator considering its next move. Then it surges back with redoubled force, as if mocking my attempt at mastery. My control is an illusion. The element obeys only the true currents of my heart, not the lies I tell myself.
And my heart beats with a single truth: her name, her face, her essence, that I cannot escape, no matter how desperately I try.
Serin.
A sound like thunder cracks through the chamber as the serpentglass panel embedded in my wall flares to life, cutting through the chaos.
Traven's face appears in the rippling surface, his eyes widening as he takes in the destruction surrounding me.
The normally stoic Second Fang's expression shifts to one of urgent alarm.
"Lurok!" His voice penetrates the howling wind. "To the war chamber. Now. Sovereign Flame commands it."
I struggle to focus, to push aside the storm of emotions that has manifested so physically around me. "What has happened?"
"No time." Traven's voice is clipped, his normally impassive features tight with tension. "Get your tail to the palace immediately."
The panel darkens before I can respond. With tremendous effort, I draw a deep breath, forcing my racing heart to slow. The wind gradually dies, not through any conscious command but through sheer necessity. Duty calls, and I cannot ignore it, no matter what chaos rages within me.
Objects clatter to the floor as the air stills, the sudden silence after the storm almost painful in its intensity. My den lies in ruins around me, physical evidence of my inner turmoil.
I run my fingers through the length of my tangled hair, pushing back the disheveled strands with a sharp, frustrated gesture.
Whatever crisis demands my presence, I will face it with the discipline of a Talon.
I will bury these feelings deeper, lock them away where they cannot influence my element.
I must. Because the alternative is surrender to what grows between Serin and me.
And that surrender may mean the end of everything I have sworn to protect.
I burst through the doorway of my den, my coils propel me forward with dangerous speed, silver scales a blur against the stone floor as I race through the residential tunnels of Vessan-Kar.
The air rushes with me, an invisible current that announces my passage before I arrive, sending loose objects skittering against walls and rippling through the fabric of passing naga's robes like phantom fingers.
The keh'shalin seems to brighten as I pass, their sentient light intensifying as if responding to my elemental presence.
I force my focus forward, but my control remains tenuous at best, the air around me disturbed by emotions I cannot fully suppress.
Each powerful undulation of my tail drives me faster through the winding corridors.
I rush through the palace entrance, scales scraping against the ornate archway.
The grand corridor stretches before me like a river of polished stone, flanked by towering columns that reach toward a ceiling adorned with luminous crystal constellations.
My coils bunch and release in powerful thrusts as I race toward the throne room, the very air around me crackling with my passage.
I round the final curve at full speed and nearly collide with a slender figure emerging from a side passage.
I halt so abruptly that my tail slams against the floor, sending a shudder through the stone. My hands shoot out instinctively, catching her shoulders. The contact with her soft human skin is like touching a live flame. I jerk back as if burned. The ghost of her warmth lingering on my palms.
Serin.
She stands before me, barely an arm's length away, her hazel eyes widening in surprise.
She wears a simple tunic in deep blue, the naga-made fabric draping elegantly over her small frame.
Her dark mahogany hair falls loose around her shoulders, catching the soft glow of the keh'shalin.
A far cry from the wounded female I left in the Flame room.
She now looks rested, healed, and achingly beautiful.
My breath stalls in my lungs. For one dangerous moment, I forget why I was racing through the corridors at all, forget everything but the plush feel of her mouth against mine and the gold flecks in her eyes that lit up like tiny stars when I filled her silken slit.
The air between us grows thick, heavy with all I cannot say, all I must not feel.
"Lurok," she says, my name on her lips a sweet torture I do not deserve. "What's happening? Why are you—"
"Nothing that concerns you," I say, voice harsher than meant. I glide back, creating a necessary but unbearable distance. "Palace business."
She flinches at my tone, but her chin lifts in that stubborn angle I have come to recognize too well. "I heard commotion. Naga are rushing everywhere."