Chapter 26 #2
Fyrestar sweeps past me again and then circles higher, waiting near the rough stone ceiling. My heart thuds. Dread curdles everything in my stomach. Rooted in place, I can barely breathe. Cold washes over me. Everything feels vague and distant but still intensely awful, just like in my nightmares.
“Idallia?” Bale strides over to me, a slash between his brows. His amber eyes hover between disbelief and worry. “What’s wrong?”
I know I’m slowing him down. The tremor that shakes my hands slides like poison through the rest of me. “I’d never been bitten by a vampire before.” That I knew of. Those old, small marks on my inner wrist burn along with the new ones. The pillar seems to sway, and I try to find my balance.
Bale reaches up to steady me. “Are you afraid?”
I swallow hard. “They were all over me.”
“This isn’t the time to go soft on me. People need our help.” His words are hard, but his voice is gentle.
Biting my lip, I shake my head. “If it’s nothing you can’t handle, then I think you should handle it without me.”
“It’s nothing we can’t handle. As a team. I didn’t say it would be easy. We’ll still be outnumbered.”
“Not with the wing guards.”
“We never know what we’ll find when we get there. Draywood was proof of that.”
My eyes snap to his. “Not helping.” Anger rises to mix with fear.
Maybe I’d have gotten over my dread if he’d told me the truth and helped me understand what I am.
All I have are questions and speculation, and piecing things together has only scared me more.
Instead of helping me, Bale said he didn’t know anything and then distracted me with his shadow wings, broad chest, and strong arms.
If what Rexton Hale says is true, and I bleed even a little, this could be Draywood all over again.
“Get on your phoenix,” Bale says steadily, “and fly.”
I dig in my heels. “You don’t need me.”
His expression hardens. “There are six pillars for a reason, Idallia. I need my whole Elite Wing.”
Duty yanks at me. Kellan wasn’t himself, and I’m worried the Fae Queen used what little magic she has to drain some of his lifeforce from him. As a dragon shifter, he shouldn’t feel the effects too much unless she got greedy. Maybe he’s just tired. Everyone else is in top form.
Except for me. I can’t make myself move.
“The sixth pillar was empty until I came along. If you really needed six fighters for this kind of thing, you would’ve filled it from the beginning.”
“I didn’t want just anyone, Sunshine.” He grips my waist and lifts me down from the pillar. Startled by the unexpected touch, I brace my hands on his shoulders, some heat sneaking back into my frozen limbs.
“I’m the only one gravely injured on a regular basis. I’m a liability, not an asset.” I let my hands drop away from Bale.
“If I thought that, I wouldn’t let you fly out.”
Bitterness and fear stir inside me again. “I think it.”
He lightly squeezes my waist. “That doesn’t make it true.”
“Doesn’t it?” We’re only as strong as we believe we are, and right now, I feel like one hit could shatter all my bones.
I back out of his hands, the weight and heat of them imprinted on my sides.
“No fire. No flight.” I laugh like daggers cutting into skin.
“And now I’m worried about my own neck like never before. ”
“Stop. You’re good. You’re fast. You’re worth fifteen vampires in a fight if you can just get your head in the right place.”
“Maybe if you’d tell me the truth about things when I ask, I could get my head in the right place,” I snap.
He doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even react. My heart beats heavily, waiting for something to give it hope. The thudding weight sinks into the pit of my stomach at Bale’s silence.
“Do I have to drag you out of here?” he finally growls.
“Try it,” I growl back.
“That’s when you’ll fight? Against me?” He looks shocked, almost sick. “So ready to turn on me. Just like that.” The angry snap of his fingers echoes loudly in the war room.
“What are you talking about?” Bale is our rock. Our starborn king. The constellation we circle, and my dread only grows at seeing him look so unsteady.
He reaches out again and grips my shoulders, his urgent gaze blazing into mine. “If you’re loyal to me, then you’ll get on Fyrestar and fight.”
I shut my eyes to block out the fire in his. I want to lean into him and take comfort in his arms as much as I want to savagely lash out, and not only because I’m scared.
“I know you lied to me.” I open my eyes so I can burn him with my gaze.
“Don’t make this about something else.”
Fuck him and his evasive nonanswers. “I’m not like the others. I don’t fight like them. I don’t eat like them. I don’t fly like them.”
“What are you saying?” His fingers tighten, drawing me in.
His warmth and strength are almost too hard to resist, but I turn away from him. “I don’t think I belong here.” My voice hitches. “Maybe I never did.”
He turns me back and grasps my chin, lifting my face to his. His eyes like a volcanic eruption, he thunders, “If you go, I will chase you down and bring you back. This is your home. These are your people.”
Tears sting my eyes. “Lying to me again?” I spit a laugh at him and wrench my chin free. “I have no people.”
“And Fyrestar?” His seething gaze swings to my warbird. “Rimblaze? Embersol? They’re where you belong.” His short, harsh laugh is vicious enough to rival mine. “You love them so much the rest of us are fucking jealous!”
I blink at that. I’ve never seen any jealousy from the team over my phoenixes. Not even from Kellan.
My throat thickens with impulsive words that surge up and spill over. “You’re right. They are my home. I want to go and take them with me.”
Bale takes a sudden step back as though I’ve slapped him, his eyes flaring, though I didn’t raise a hand. “None of you are going anywhere—except to the Silver Moon Range.”
“You don’t dictate what I do. You can’t stop me.”
“Get on your phoenix and fly,” he orders, low and hard.
“No.” It’s the first refusal of my life directed straight at Bale.
His fists clench at his sides. “If you don’t come with us, I’m taking Fyrestar anyway.”
My eyes shoot wide, and my heart spasms violently. “Don’t.”
“I have to. And I know if I ask, he’ll come.” Bale’s whole face transforms into something I don’t even recognize. Is this what his enemies see right before he rips them in half? I shudder as the next horrible words leave his mouth. “I’ll take Rimblaze too. I’ll need him to replace you.”
My insides hollow in dread. “No! He hasn’t passed his tests.”
“This is his test.” He looks at me harshly. “And yours.”
I start to shake all over, rage and fear so mixed together that I don’t know which is which. “Fine.” My nostrils flare, my breath storming in and out. “But leave Rim out of this. It will be your fault when I’m dead. And if Fyrestar dies, I’ll kill you.”
Bale doesn’t look triumphant at all as he wraps his arms around my waist and takes off, only his shadow wings lifting us both.
Locking me against his chest, he flies out the huge, soaring window, calling for Fyrestar to join us as dawn cracks the night darkness over the spiny mountaintops like a jagged rip in the sky.
I grab Bale’s shoulders and hold on, but I refuse to throw my legs around him, this time letting them dangle.
Drayke Mountain slips past us, the rough granite walls and carved terraces glowing pink and orange with first light.
The wind scrapes over me from one side, the rest of me sheltered by Bale.
I feel even more powerless in this position, torso to torso, his fiery, windblown scent surrounding me, and his warm arms infuriatingly reassuring, despite it all.
My voice trembles with wrath. “I fucking hate you right now.”
“Good,” he growls. “Because right now, I fucking hate you too.” His gaze tracks Fyrestar, watching my phoenix speed up and angle down. “I saved the best for you,” he mutters. “Closest to the heart.”
My eyes jerk up, too close to his chin. He doesn’t look at me, his flat mouth and granite-hewn jaw seeming to brutally hold in anything else he might say and then regret.
I don’t fully understand, although I’m certain he’s talking about my warbirds.
“What do you mean? The damaged scales?” He doesn’t answer.
“Bale!” How could he have saved anything for me?
He didn’t even know I existed until decades after he created the phoenixes and the Elite Wing.
His grip tightens, sending a shock of sensation up my spine and down my legs.
“Why are you doing this?” I grind out. “If you have answers, I want them.” I wanted them centuries ago.
“When did life suddenly give us what we want?” Something in his voice slices at my heart. Such bleakness. Eons of it hollow out his words.
I don’t let sympathy steal my fury. “I’m not talking about life. I’m talking about you.”
The wind snatches his dry huff almost before I hear it. “Maybe I’m talking about you too.”
His low words explode inside me in a tangle of heat and confusion.
They barely have time to penetrate before he opens his arms and drops me.
I fall, watching Bale shift above me in a roar of fire and wind.
All dragon now, he dives but stays close, huge and dark beside me as I flip over to find Fyrestar flying in.
I settle onto Fyrestar’s back, and we soar over the rooftops of Drayke alongside Bale.
I’m out of the mountain now, my choice taken from me the second Bale threatened to bring Fyrestar and Rim in my stead.
They’d want to go if he asked, and the thought of making them choose between us makes me sicker than I already am.
Bale’s other words still rattle around inside me like a discordant note from an unexpected tune, but I find myself just as unexpectedly readjusting my mindset.
I start hardening my fear into strength and siphoning my emotions into that place inside me that’ll wake up like a thunderclap and turn me into a force almost as deadly and formidable as Bale.
If I’m going to fight vampires, I’m going to fight them like a rabid animal and cut through them so fast they won’t have a chance to bite.
We join the rest of the team on the southern outskirts of Drayke and leave the city behind.
The faster we fly, dawn pouring over me in a splash of sunlight, the more I want to fight.
My heartbeat settles into a new, vengeful rhythm, and my dread-filled hesitation in the war room starts to feel like it came from a different person.
These vampires want blood? I’ll make them bleed. And then I’ll deal with the Dragon King.