Chapter 27 #2
Alderin stands before the fireplace, his back to me.
He does not turn or offer any greeting. Someone prods me between the shoulders, forcing me to take a few more steps into the room, then pulls the door shut behind me.
The king and I stand there in that space, together and yet, apparently, worlds apart.
My heart thuds with dread. How long must I remain like this?
Could I simply turn around and walk out of the room again?
No sooner has that thought crossed my mind than the king turns abruptly on heel, facing me.
Firelight illuminates him from behind, casting his face into shadows, but I can see nonetheless how pale and drawn his features are, and how his eyes spark with…
are those tears? I shudder and cannot help taking the smallest half step back in retreat.
“Do you think, Roselle,” he says at long last, breaking that terrible silence, “that this is all pure entertainment for me?”
“What?” The word whispers from my dry lips.
“It occurs to me,” he says, turning and beginning to pace the floor in front of that wide fireplace mouth, his shadow dancing at his feet, “that perhaps you think I enjoy watching these valiant young men die for the honor of becoming your husband.” He pauses, staring down at his own feet, his expression strangely focused as though he’s studying something else entirely, some glimpse into a world beyond my sight.
“Each time I order a new trial,” he says, “I know that one or possibly several of Belanor’s finest will perish.
Diminishing our defenses, darkening our futures.
All these lives snuffed out in the prime of their prowess.
” He rubs a hand down his face, pulling at the lines of his cheeks and jaw, so that he suddenly looks much older than I’ve always believed him to be.
“I am High King,” he says softly, as though not speaking to me anymore.
“Which means they are all my sons. Each and every one of them.”
Finally, he turns to me again, and oh damn me, but I wish he wouldn’t.
I wish he would forget I was here entirely, let me slip away and escape, like a pathetic, scurrying little mouse.
Instead, he looks directly at me, and there is such accusation in his gaze, it could skewer me straight through the heart.
“These men have determined that you are worth dying for.” His teeth flash, set on edge.
“You owe them. You owe them your life, your existence. You must make yourself worthy of their sacrifice.”
All the same old protests and pleadings pile onto my tongue, but not one of them can survive in the desert of my bone-dry mouth. I look at Alderin, see his anguish, and everything I feel, everything I fear, is suddenly so small and ridiculous.
He turns from me to the fire again, reaching up to the mantel for that lidded chalice of meorise.
As I watch, he flips the lid, and that gout of captured hellfire leaps from its confines, once more rendering all other light in that room nothing, filling the space that it does not occupy with shadows.
A whimper trembles on my lips. Though I hate myself for my cowardice, I back away, pressing against the door behind me.
Alderin turns to face me once more. His features, lit up in that hellish glow, are angry.
I’ve never seen him like this—it makes him look like a different being entirely, a creature of darkness.
“You cannot keep resisting your destiny,” he says.
His words seem to reach me from an echoing distance.
“No matter how brave and valiant your champion proves to be, you will not survive the journey to the Dracor Flame if you do not manifest your inner fire. You must become what you were born to be, Roselle. You must become the Dragon Princess.”
As he speaks, he draws nearer to me. I cannot scream, cannot flee. My whole existence seems to be encompassed in that single dancing flame. It hypnotizes me, filling my vision, until all I see is fire, until all I smell are poisonous fumes.
“Mother,” I whisper.
I’m back there—back in that burning cottage, back in that moment of terror and pain.
Spinning in place, I stare around me at the familiar furnishings, the little table where we took our meals, her favorite chair where she would polish her weapons on long winter nights.
My own straw doll, sitting on my bed, catching flame, consumed.
Black smoke fills the air, making it impossible to breathe.
Come, child, Durona’s voice hacks with agony, even as her fingers close around my shoulder. I’ll push you up the chimney!
I turn to face her, see her blistering face, almost unrecognizable in twisted pain.
She pushes me toward the hearth, but I’m too big.
I’m not the child I once was, but fully grown, and I cannot fit, cannot escape.
Durona’s grip on my arm weakens. She coughs, her whole body crumpling as dragon fumes fill her lungs.
Fire catches in her skirts, eating into her garments, searing her flesh.
Mother! I cry, trying to throw my arms around her, trying to get her up, to protect her.
But the fire leaps from her to me, consuming me in a thousand greedy tongues.
I feel my flesh peeling away from my bones, and when I scream, more fire enters my mouth, plunging straight to the very pit of my being.
There it begins to grow, forming a ball of power which gyrates in place, sending pulses of energy through my veins.
I feel it burning me up from the inside, searing my limbs.
I look down at myself, see my own flesh eaten away, peeling back… revealing dragon scales beneath.
I throw myself backward.
And suddenly, I’m back in Alderin’s chambers, hurtling for the door, my hands scrambling for the latch.
I fling it open, stagger out into the hall, only vaguely aware of the guardsmen around me.
I spin in circles, my eyes wide, but my vision full of fire.
Somewhere, in the back of my awareness, through the roar of flames, I hear Alderin shout, “Stand back! Do not touch her, do not hinder her!”
Then, choosing blindly, I turn and flee down a darkened passage as fast as my feet will carry me, the flames of hell licking at my heels.