Chapter 38 #2
Always. Race forced himself to let her go and nodded at Attor.
The male bowed, the motion sharp as a blade. “On my blood, I swear it.” His granite-hewn face gentled for only a breath as his gaze flicked to Ash. “You will carry the realm’s future one day, lass. And I will see you live it.”
“Wait in the lower halls,” Race ordered, crossing back to the dais. “It’s safer there.”
As Attor ushered his reluctant mate from the throne room, Koal strode over, his jaw set in determination. “I’m with you.”
Race inclined his head and strode to the wall behind the thrones again, stopping at the twin pillars on either side of the dais.
He scanned the stone surface, searching…
Every sense was pulled toward the bottom of the wall, hidden in shadow.
The air there was colder, heavier. He ran his fingers along the base, and his palm brushed a shallow depression in the pillar’s carved support.
Bastard had changed the trigger location.
He pressed it.
Stone ground against stone. A seam split wide, dust sifting down as the wall shuddered open.
The stench hit first—metal, rot, and smoke. Beneath it, something fouler—the tang of dark magic scraped his psychic senses. Sparks hissed along the edges of the passage.
Race’s stomach roiled, the stink familiar, piercing his mind and flaying his psyche like blades. He knew this place from before, dark and endless—
Chains biting into his wrists, the echo of his own hoarse screams against wet granite—
No, dammit. Not again.
He shoved it all down. This isn’t Tartarus!
The ache in his temples grew as he stepped into pitch-black darkness, Koal at his side.
The former corridor yawned into a crudely built chamber lit by guttering sconces, and his stomach turned. Guards lined the room—dozens—their armor gleaming dully, weapons at the ready. Their eyes glowed the flat, unnatural sheen of beings stripped of their will. Blank. Empty.
“Shit,” Koal muttered, steel drawn.
One by one, their heads snapped toward him, their lips peeling back into snarls. They surged forward like puppets on strings, scales popping on their skin and talons bursting free, but they couldn’t fully shift into battle form—the place couldn’t hold that many dragons.
Race summoned his Gaian sword. “They’re not alive to save. Drop ‘em.”
The first wave hit. His blade cut clean, severing a throat before the guard even managed a swing. Koal’s great sword arced wide, cleaving through another—
Skaldr appeared out of the shadows, flanking Race’s other side. His strikes carried the fury of a man who’d lost too much to care for his own safety.
Yeah, they all did.
Race spun, his sword a blur, decapitating more of the zombie guards who had once served his sire. Rage fueled every inch of him.
These weren’t soldiers. They were desecrations of his father’s reign—proof of Malcarion’s depravity.
Swords clashed, metal screaming against metal, the air heavy with the stink of gore. The floor grew slick with blood, enemy boots slipping, bodies falling in heaps. Still, they came—guts hanging, limbs severed. They fought.
Fuck! Race unleashed his fire. The blank-eyed guards didn’t cry out. They stumbled forward, their armor collapsing into molten slag. Even dying, a group of them clawed ahead, driven by Malcarion’s thrall until their bodies finally turned to char under the force of his flames.
And then, silence.
Race stood among the dead, his chest heaving while pale, sickly green sparks of Malcarion’s foul magic flickered along the stone seams.
Koal spat on the ground, scowling at the corpses that Race hadn’t turned to slag yet. “Fucking sorcery.”
Skaldr growled.
But Race didn’t look at the bodies. His gaze fixed on the darkness ahead, into deeper shadows that pulsed with an unnatural light, like a heartbeat. “With all these guards, the bastard’s close.”
He strode deeper into the passage. The walls glowed faintly, veins of green fire running like rot through the stone. The air grew hotter, thicker, reeking of metal and char.
Then the chamber opened before them. More puppets lined up against the walls. None moved, not even a limb.
Pain ricocheted through his skull, spikes driven deep and hard. He staggered, one hand braced on the wall—
“Sire. You okay?” Koal asked.
He couldn’t shut the pain off, could barely breathe through it, but he forced a nod and straightened. The lit chamber beyond drew his attention.
His eyes narrowed.
Not lit. Hundreds of forge stones hung suspended from a massive birdcage iron frame, pulsing like trapped hearts, each throb a muffled scream, bleeding radiance into the air—the powers stolen from the children.
The illumination seared the chamber, waves of corrupted energy spilling outward until even the stone seemed to shudder.
At the center was Malcarion.
Dark strands of magic tethered him to the trellis, crackling with green and red energy, his hands sunk into the lattice. His body convulsed with every surge, veins bulging and eyes blazing with stolen power. Gold scales broke free, then receded.
Shirtless. Disheveled. He appeared almost skeletal, his long hair limp with sweat. No longer the suave male shifter Race once knew.
He threw back his head and laughed, and his forged Ember Crown slipped a little, the fiery stones glinting in the crackling light. “Yesss—”
Then he stilled and tilted his head, his golden eyes swirling black as they settled on Race. Tinges of green underscored his pallid features.
“So, it’s true?” His voice boomed off the walls, power feeding him. “The ghost walks. Not for long, weakling—”
The guards surged forward as if in response to his words, blank-eyed, enthralled, and voiceless.
Race’s ice-cold fury shattered. He dove through the horde, his blade swinging with brutal precision. Heads toppled, bodies dropped—the chamber ran slick with blood.
“Your sire couldn’t stop me. Why should his broken whelp succeed?” Malcarion flicked his hand, and another surge of stolen power ripped through the chamber, shattering stone. “You fled, left your people to die while you hid in the dark like a coward.”
Race’s lips curled back, his fangs bared at the lie. “You know nothing of the dark.”
Malcarion sneered. “I know enough. Tartarus was your punishment, was it not? A pit for failures.”
“Failure?” His vision turned crimson. “Because you couldn’t get what you wanted from me? You had me incarcerated there. Shackled. Tortured for centuries.” His grip tightened on the sword. “And I endured—for this moment!”
Silence slammed down.
Even the sickly greenish-red light of the forge stones seemed to falter.
Koal’s and Skaldr’s sharp breaths ricocheted around the space, their shocked stares nailing him.
Race ignored them. “Today, your reign ends. Your perverseness is over.”
“Today, who I am awakens,” Malcarion snarled, spewing a torrent of dragonfire, only it fell a foot short of Race. “I will wear the Ember Crown. I am Lemuria’s king. Your ghosts will never haunt me again!”
“Fucking lunatic,” Koal muttered. “He’s already wearing the damn thing.”
“It’s not—” Nails of fire hammered Race’s skull as flickers of memory tore loose—
A room carved from black stone, wards crawling like fire over his skin, burning.
He screamed.
“Release your powers, whelp,” Malcarion snarled. “The Ember Crown will accept me.”
“I have nothing,” he rasped, agony lancing him as Malcarion tried to force him to bend.
“Maybe starvation will give me what I want,” he hissed. “Or Tartarus!”
Fuck! Race shook his head, trying to dislodge those fragmented memories. And the truth slammed him in the solar plexus like a sledgehammer.
This was why he now hunted the children.
He couldn’t get what he wanted from Race—an adult—and who knew from how many others. But a child who couldn’t hold onto their power? Easy prey to siphon their untouched abilities. All this because the insane fucker thought he could release the true crown from its pedestal—
Bastard!
No one could touch the real Ember Crown except the one born to rule.
“The Ember Crown will never accept you,” Race said coldly. “It was forged for Pyr’xian’s bloodline. I die, and Lemuria dies with me. No stolen scrap of power can change that.”
“Lies!”
“Pity whoever you conspired with for our downfall didn’t inform you of that little detail—”
Malcarion let go of the grid, roared, and flung his hands wide. Power ripped from the forge stones, and screams echoed in hundreds of childish voices. The blast tore stone from the walls, hurling Koal and Skaldr back and shaking the chamber.
It hit Race full force, searing the air from his lungs and shredding the granite around him. He shuddered and braced against it, his dragonfire roaring in his blood.
“You think you can kill me?” Malcarion spat, convulsing as more power poured into him. “No one can!” His cracked lips twisted into a smile. “I am almighty now. You will bow to the perfected line.” His body swelled, the skin splitting in places where light burned through.
“Kneel, princeling, and I might let you live.” Energy swirled around him in a shield. “I am Lemuria’s crown!”
The pressure inside his skull detonated, pain ricocheting—
“Lemuria’s crown will be mine,” Malcarion hissed. “When you’re ready to yield the god’s gift, I will release you from Tartarus, your new home—”
A snarl tore free as more of his shattered memories surfaced.
Decades. This bastard had kept him chained beneath these mountains, trying to harvest his power—and when that failed, he’d thrown Race into Tartarus like refuse.
Rage surged in a tidal wave. Race pushed through Malcarion’s power storm, his gaze unflinching. “No, asshole, you are the rot that ruined it!”
He lunged, his dragonfire roaring down his Gaian blade, and with everything in him, he drove his sword through Malcarion’s shield, dissolving it, then clean through his chest, pinning him back to the gridiron he favored so fucking much. A burst of blinding light broke free—
The forge stones screamed.
Cracks spiderwebbed through them. The lattice convulsed, green fire bursting outward as the stolen power ripped itself loose, howling as it backlashed into its thief. Rubble rained down.
Breathing hard, Race drove the sword deeper. Dark magic writhed around the blade, clawing at him, leeching at his strength through the connection, but he held on. “You tried to steal my legacy,” he ground out, “and it didn’t work. It never will—”
“No, you don’t understand!” Malcarion shrieked, thrashing against the flaming blade. “Without me, all collapses—”
“Without you,” Race said coldly, even as tremors ran through him, “everyone lives.”
Malcarion convulsed, his scream fracturing what remained of the lattice, the sound tearing through stone and spell alike. The framework collapsed inward, disintegrating into rubble as fire consumed him from the inside out.
Flesh, false crown, and madness burned away together—until nothing remained but drifting ash and dust.
Endless silence echoed.
The forge lay shattered, the remaining stolen powers seeping into the earth.
Race stood over the slag and ruin, his sword hot in his grip, his chest heaving. The bastard was finally gone. Centuries of venom, torment, and loss—ended.
But victory tasted like ash. His dragon still roared for blood, his body trembling with fury that had nowhere left to go.
Fragmented memories of his torture under Malcarion churned in the cracks of his mind. Had the bastard wiped them out? Or had Tartarus hidden them so deeply he couldn’t claw them back?
His hands shook. He wanted to kill Malcarion all over again.
“It’s over,” Koal’s voice came from a distance.
Race turned to find Skaldr behind him, his face a hollow mask of agony, as if struck repeatedly by a hammer. “You…” His throat worked as if he couldn’t swallow. “You never ran.”
Race said nothing.
Horror, guilt, millennia of misjudgment twisted across Skaldr’s features. “Eracier…”
Race shook his head, didn’t want to talk about it. But at the pain in his old friend’s eyes, he briefly gripped Skaldr’s biceps—
A groan echoed from above.
The ceiling spider-webbed. Cracks raced across the stone.
Fuck.
“Move!” Race roared—
The ceiling crashed down over them, and everything went dark.