Chapter 6 #2
The dragon inhaled again, its chest expanding, molten light blooming in its throat.
I dove right this time, just before a stream of flame carved a trench where I’d been crouching. My elbow clipped the stone hard enough to bruise, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t.
“Don’t duck into the flame, you idi?—”
“I know!” I snarled, voice raw.
I rolled again, limbs screaming, another bout of fire missing me by inches. Each breath scraped down my throat, ragged and searing. I wasn’t built for this. Not for lava-forged arenas and fire-breathing beasts and sadistic trainers who looked like they’d thrive in hell.
The dragon’s tail slammed down behind me, shaking the ground and throwing me forward onto my knees.
Seraphine didn’t stop. “Back on your feet!”
I pushed up, legs trembling, blood roaring in my ears. My heart pounded a frantic rhythm, drowning out everything but the rush of flame and the thrum of panic rising behind my ribs.
The dragon lunged.
I ducked, felt the heat kiss the top of my head. Too close.
Way too close.
For one horrifying second, I swore he waited to see if I’d cry.
Not like a beast hunting food, but like a bored, ancient terror batting a half-dead mouse across the floor to see if it still twitched.
His massive head tilted, molten eyes narrowing with something that felt dangerously close to amusement, and the sound that rumbled out of his chest wasn’t a roar, not really.
It was a low, vibrating huff, like laughter trapped in smoke.
Like I was adorable. Like I was entertainment.
Like the only dragon in Ashenveil had looked at the long list of important, kingdom-ending things he could be doing today and decided, Actually, I’d rather play with the handmaiden.
“Faster,” Seraphine barked. “Or you’re ash.”
I kept moving—left, duck, roll, stumble—my body burning from exertion, lungs raw from the smoke-laced air, and legs aching beneath me. The world had narrowed to a smear of searing stone, the endless hiss of flame, and the looming shape of the dragon circling like a living tempest.
The dragon inhaled. The glow in its throat brightened, golden-white, ready to unleash.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
The voice came from the shadows. Smooth. Low. Lethal.
Valen.
I spun toward the edge of the arena, breath catching in my throat. He stood there, framed by firelight, arms folded over his chest. His gold eyes tracked me like a predator watching prey, but his mouth… his mouth curved in that infuriating smirk I’d sworn I would claw from his face one day.
“What are you—” I choked, barely ducking another blast. The fire singed the ends of my hair, curling them into brittle ash. “What the ancestors are you doing here?”
“Watching,” Valen said simply. “You’re very entertaining when you’re desperate.”
“Glad I could amuse you while I die!”
The dragon’s flame roared past my left shoulder. Heat grazed my skin like a slap. I stumbled, coughed, the taste of smoke raw on my tongue.
Valen tilted his head, eyes gleaming. “You look better like this.”
“Like what?” I spat, staggering behind a scorched pillar.
“Alive.” His smirk deepened, cruel and almost tender at once. “Sweat and blood suit you more than silk.”
My knees buckled under the next shockwave, but I shoved myself upright, fury hotter than the fire around me. “If you want me alive, maybe call off your monster!”
“My monster?” he repeated softly, like the idea amused him. Like it offended him. “Careful, little Frostbite.”
The dragon’s shadow shifted as it circled, heat rolling in waves that made my eyes sting.
Valen didn’t look away from me.
“He isn’t hunting you,” he said. “He’s testing you.”
Another blast scorched the stone behind me. The air cracked with it. My heart nearly did too.
“You call this testing?” I snapped, throat raw, lungs begging. “I call it dying.”
Valen’s mouth curved. Not kind. Not even cruel.
Certain.
“No,” he murmured. “Dying is what happens when he decides you’re worthless.”
My stomach fell.
“It appears he has decided quite the opposite,” Valen continued, voice low as smoke.
The dragon inhaled again, golden light swelling in its throat like the beginning of the end.
I moved anyway. Instinct. Terror. Survival.
Valen watched me scramble like it was all inevitable. Then he said, almost lazily, “Besides.” His eyes flicked briefly to the dragon… then back to me. “He won’t burn you.”
I stared at him through sweat and ash and rage. “That’s a promise?” I spat.
Valen’s smile deepened. “Would you believe a promise from the man that captured you?”
Another shockwave slammed through the arena, heat snapping across my skin. I stumbled, caught myself, hands shaking, vision clouding at the edges.
“You’re insane,” I hissed.
Valen’s voice turned deadly. “You’re alive.”
I swallowed hard, fury and fear tangled in my chest like barbed wire.
“I’m not your experiment,” I said. “And I’m not your entertainment.”
Valen took a slow step closer to the edge of the arena, firelight carving his face into something brutal and beautiful.
“No,” he said, eyes bright and cold. “You’re my problem.”
My blood turned to ice.
“And if you survive,” Valen added, almost conversationally, “you’ll stop pretending you’re small enough to escape what you are.”
Another blast came, so close my sleeve caught, the fabric blackening. I tore it off and dove again, rolled, and came up trembling. My lungs screamed for air.
“What I am,” I rasped, “is done with you.”
“Done?” His voice was low and wicked. “You keep saying that, Frostbite, but here you are. Still dancing in my fire. Still looking at me while you burn.”
The dragon lunged, claws scoring the stone where I’d just been. I dove again, magic prickling beneath my skin like a storm waiting to break.
“You could stop this,” I snapped, chest heaving. “You could help me!”
Valen leaned against the arena wall, arms folded like he had all the time in the world. “But then I wouldn’t see you like this. Fighting. Glorious.” His eyes flared.
Another blast. I spun behind a pillar. The heat seared my cheeks, sweat running down my temples. “You’re sick.”
“You’re beautiful when you’re furious.” His voice slipped between the fire like velvet. “Every time you dodge, you draw the line between survival and surrender. Every time you curse me, I want to taste the words off your tongue.”
I swore, flinging a shard of ice at the dragon’s head—not even aiming, just desperate to keep it back. It hissed and flared its wings, molten eyes snapping to me.
“You’re going to get me killed,” I shouted.
“No,” Valen said softly, “I’m going to make you dangerous.”
His gaze descended, slow and deliberate, to the torn neckline of my leathers, to the frost building in my palms. “Do it,” he murmured. “Let your cryomancy out. Show me what I stitched into you.”
I froze mid-step, chest heaving. “What are you talking about?”
The dragon inhaled, the glow in its throat building. Valen smiled, a flash of teeth. “Come on. Show me what you’re hiding. Don’t make me drag it out of you.”
My magic flared. “You said frost isn’t allowed here. If this is some test, I refuse to participate. You don’t control me.”
“Don’t I?” His voice was a growl now, hot enough to cut through the roar of fire. “Every time you breathe here, you breathe because I chose to keep you alive. Every shiver of ice in your blood sings because…”
“Because why?”
The dragon roared. Fire poured toward me like a living tide. I dove, rolled, came up kneeling, palms pressed to the scorched stone. Ice licked at my fingertips.
Valen stepped closer to the edge of the ring. “Yes,” he whispered. “There she is. My beautiful, terrible frost queen.”
I glared up at him, breathless, fury and magic trembling through me. “I’m not yours.”
His smirk curved, dark and slow. “Then stop panting like you already are. Every sound you make makes me imagine what it will be like when you break apart beneath my mouth.”
My hand snapped up before my mind caught up. Frost cracked through the air, jagged and furious, forming into a spear of ice that caught the light like a shard of a broken star.
And this time, I didn’t hold back.
I hurled it at the dragon with every ounce of grief, rage, and desperate need tangled in my blood.
It tore free from me like a sob made solid, a weapon born of loss and fury. The shards screamed through molten air, spinning silver-blue against the suffocating heat. One found its mark.
It sank deep into the dragon’s throat.
The beast reared back with a sound that split the earth. Its wings lashed outward, vast as cathedral arches, stirring the air into a cyclone of ash. Fire guttered in its chest as a geyser of molten-dark blood spilled down its obsidian scales, sizzling where it struck stone.
The ground shook with its agony. The banners above cracked against their poles.
And Valen?—
Valen staggered.
The sight knocked the breath from my lungs.
His hand flew to his own throat, fingers pressing against skin that split where my ice had struck the dragon.
Blood welled between them, bright, terrible, and real.
His chest rose too fast. His jaw clenched against a groan.
For the first time, the unshakable king looked almost human.
His gaze snapped to mine.
Gold eyes, burning with pain, yet refusing to close. Refusing to look away.
Not a coincidence.
Not an accident.
No—this was worse.
The dragon bled. Valen bled.
“Call a Vitascribe! Now! We need a healer,” Seraphine screamed.
I stood frozen in the center of the arena, my lungs scraping for breath, smoke coiling around my legs like serpents. My blood roared in my ears as his eyes locked to mine.
Not fire.
Not fury.
Something worse.
Something that felt inevitable.
Something that felt like fate tightening its grip around my throat and whispering that no matter how far I ran, I was already bound.