Chapter 35
Rosie
“Well met, my dear,” the king says, his lips curved in a smile that does not meet his eyes. “I’ll admit, I’m impressed. I did not expect you to make it this far. You are certainly not lacking in spirit.”
My gaze flicks to the tunnel where the dragon boy lurks, terrified. Alderin, seeing that glance, turns to face the tunnel as well, dragging me roughly with him. “Come out, boy,” he says. “Let me have a look at you.”
The boy hesitates. I feel resistance in his mind, but something, some force I cannot explain, drives him to put one foot in front of the other.
How can this be? If I didn’t know any better, I would think Alderin had some sort of control over the boy, stronger even than my own influence.
But humans cannot command dragons, everyone knows that.
Yet the boy obeys, leaving the shadows, stepping into the moonlight.
There he stands with his arms at his sides, quaking on his little bare feet.
Alderin looks him over slowly, taking in his bony frame.
Then he shakes his head and turns to me again.
“I had hoped your interactions with the boy would be enough to ignite your flame. Alas, I find you not even the least bit fiery. Not like last night, for sure. But,” he adds with a tilt of an eyebrow, “perhaps we can yet get you there.”
My heart sinks. So he did mean for all this to happen—my escape through the air shafts, my rescue of the boy. That convenient key ring on the prison guard’s belt, and the ease with which I brought him down. It was all carefully orchestrated.
Well, perhaps not all of it.
“I would be more concerned about your nephew if I were you,” I say, baring my teeth in a too-sweet smile.
Alderin’s eyes flash. “Taigan?”
Good. He’s surprised. Maybe I can use that.
“Yes. Your precious champion. He’s not in such championship form as he was this morning.
” I pull against Alderin’s iron hold. He doesn’t release me, but is that hesitation I sense in his grip?
“Let us go,” I say, “and I’ll tell you where he is. You might even get to him in time.”
“What did you do to him, you little—” Alderin stops short, drawing a hissing breath through clenched teeth.
He turns his head to one side and breathes out slowly.
“Taigan doesn’t matter. Not in the long run.
” He meets my gaze again, his eyes sharp as two blades.
“Prince Warrick can serve the purpose just as well. The important thing is that you finally manifest your flame, that you take that first step toward becoming what you must become. More importantly, you must submit. To your fate. And to me.”
“Submission was never one of my better attributes,” I growl.
He catches hold of my other hand, gripping both my wrists so hard, I fear the bones will break.
“I am well aware of your stubbornness, child,” he says, shooting puffs of vapor in my face.
His breath is hot, unexpectedly so. Despite the sharp, cold wind, I begin to sweat.
“I had hoped I could convince you to do what you must out of the goodness of your heart. I had hoped you would prove to have all the traits necessary for the task before you: compassion, nobility, truth of purpose. All those attributes which I myself gave to you.”
For a moment, I can make no sense of his words.
They seem like mere noise in my ears, beating in time with my thundering pulse.
Then something shifts in my head, and I realize.
I realize the truth which I should have guessed ages ago.
The truth which has been staring me in the face from the moment I first arrived in this gods-forsaken place, thrown at the feet of this man.
“You’re…” The words won’t come. They stick on my tongue, unwilling to be spoken out loud. “You’re my…”
“When the plan was first formed to take one of Mhoryga’s eggs, we all knew it could not be just any egg.
Mhoryga’s evil could not be counterbalanced by any but the noblest blood from the purest line.
” Alderin tilts his head, staring at me from beneath the ledge of his stern brow.
“I was chosen. Out of all the worthiest knights and princes of Belanor, it fell to me to journey to Khylmira and present myself as consort to Mhoryga. It was well known that she liked to collect pretty lovers for the purpose of generating her dragon spawn. But she chose only the best, most select specimens for the creation of a queen egg.” His teeth flash in a bitter smile.
“She looked upon my face and form and found both pleasing. So she made me her consort, her king. Her plaything and thrall. Her love. For five long years, she possessed my mind. I belonged to her, and in that time, I all but forgot what it was to be a man.”
He looks away then, his expression momentarily stricken with grief.
“Were it not for Durona, I would have remained with her. With Mhoryga. So great was the passion of fire she ignited in my heart. Only Durona had the strength, the will to pull me free.” He faces me again, his fingers tightening around my wrists so that I gasp with pain.
“Thus, we succeeded in taking the precious egg. In taking you—my child. My only child.”
Horror churns, a maelstrom in my heart. I stare into the face of this stranger, this father. My captor and my enemy. The man who inspires loyalty and loathing with every other breath he takes.
“I sacrificed everything to bring about your existence,” Alderin says, shaking his head slowly. “To offer the world its one and only chance of salvation, I gave up my honor, my soul…my very humanity. But I received other gifts in exchange.”
With that, he releases one of my wrists and snaps his fingers. Fire erupts at his fingertip—a steady green flame.
In the same instant, I hear his voice. Not with my ears, not in any audible sense.
It’s in my head, louder and more forceful than any spoken word could be: “You are mine. You are mine, Roselle. Bred of my blood and bone. If I cannot have your willing heart, then I will make do with your unwilling mind. It might even be easier in the end.”
No. No, no, no, this cannot be! Not him, not the High King, not the great legendary hero of Belanor. He cannot be dracori! And yet, he is in my head, speaking to me in a dragon’s voice—a voice of flame and heat and pure power.
“It’s time to let your fire rise, Roselle,” he says and spreads his fingers.
Now five flames burn, one from each fingertip.
Soon the flame encompasses his whole hand, a blazing gauntlet.
“It’s easy! I survived the process, and I am but a man.
Mhoryga pumped my veins full of dragon blood to enable me to bear it.
You, however, are a natural dragon. You can wield hellfire as easy as breathing.
A tremendous gift, if only you would claim it. ”
“I can’t!” I whimper, shrinking before him. “I will burn!” If I could collapse into myself and become nothing to hide from his gaze, I would. But he holds me fast.
“Only because you fear too much,” he says, speaking out loud in the gentlest, most patient tones. “Be brave, Roselle. The hour is nigh. It is time for you to rise to your destiny.”
He stretches his hand toward my face, those flames licking with hunger.
A scream bursts from my throat, ragged and raw, as I twist and writhe, desperate to break his grasp.
My own fire, deep down inside, rises in response to perceived threat, just as it did when Joro strangled me.
Heat floods my veins, so vicious and consuming, it will incinerate me from the inside out.
But not before Alderin burns my face off.
“Stop struggling, child,” Alderin growls through his clenched jaw. “It will be easier if you—”
A deep voice rumbles from the darkness behind him: “Get your hands off her, you rutting bastard.”
The king’s eyes widen. He turns just as a shadowy form looms behind him. Moonlight illuminates the face of Death incarnate, carved from white stone. Then a blade flashes, poised to rest just at Alderin’s throat. A thin line of blood trickles where the edge just slices into taut flesh.
I twist in the king’s grasp, staring up at that apparition. “Valtar!”
He’s here. Alive, in the flesh, and yet…
and yet nothing like the man as I last beheld him.
He is transformed, become once more the monster I saw standing over Joro’s dead body.
A creature of blood and darkness, a dealer of death and pain.
He is utterly terrifying and yet, in that moment, utterly beautiful to my desperate gaze.
He does not look at me. His eyes remain fixed on his prey with deadly focus.
“Is that…” Alderin swallows. “Is that a meorise blade?”
A smile slashes across Valtar’s lips. “Did you think I’d be foolish enough to go without one?”
Alderin lets out a slow breath. Then his fingers uncurl from around my wrist. I fall back from him to the paving stones and scoot away awkwardly, feet tangling in my skirts.
When I am beyond his reach, I scramble to my feet, eyes flicking from Valtar to the king and back.
I know Alderin is my enemy, but Valtar? Were the things they told me about him lies?
Or is he truly everything they said? Mhoryga’s agent, a deadly assassin. Dracori.
It’s all a little too easy to believe.
“Rosie,” he says, and the sound of my name uttered so harshly startles me. “Get the boy.”
His voice shocks through my system like a bolt of lightning.
I drag in a rough breath, then turn to the tunnel entrance where Rhyo still stands, frozen under Alderin’s command.
I concentrate my voice, instilling all the force I can into it.
Now is not the time to worry over the rightness or wrongness of controlling another’s will.
“Come here!” I say, holding out my hand.
His little body quakes. Then, as though released from some terrible grip, he shakes himself hard and rushes to my side. I put an arm around him, pulling him to me and placing myself between him and the other two.
“Stand back from him, Rosie,” Valtar says, shooting a sharp glance my way.
My heart jolts to my throat. “What are you going to do?”
“What I have to.”
Even as he holds that knife against Alderin’s throat, he stretches out his other hand.
To my gut-plunging horror, green hellfire gathers at his fingertips.
I have just enough wherewithal to cast myself to one side, throwing my arms over my head, before a blast streaks through the air and hits the boy straight in the chest. Rhyo screams as fire engulfs him.
I twist where I land, staring at that pillar of green flame.
It’s true. The thought pounds against my skull. It’s true, it’s true. Valtar is dracori. He didn’t renounce it; he couldn’t.
Somehow I’m not surprised. I wish I were, but I’m not. I’ve known all along that he wasn’t who he claimed to be, I just…I just didn’t want to believe it.
There’s no ignoring the truth now. He is dracori—one of the damned, his blood replaced with the blood of a dragon, a monster shaped by Mhoryga’s foul craft.
The boy’s scream cuts through my horror, dragging my attention back to him.
His pain and terror ring in my head so hard, I cannot block them out.
There’s a terrible bursting sensation, so intense, I feel as though my skin is opening and my body turning inside out. But it is not I who changes—it is Rhyo.
The boy thrashes and writhes, his spine lengthening, his flesh thickening, his skin bursting as horns and spikes protrude.
Two great wings erupt from his shoulders, and when the blast of hellfire at last dies back, he stands there on the paving stones, revealed in his true form, a grotesque beast of scale and talon and flame.
He shakes his head, as though horrified by his own being, and a roar bursts from his belly, rising to the sky in a gout of flame.
For a moment, I can do nothing but stare at that creature. His shame and his pain rack my soul. I want to reach for him, to wrap him in my arms and protect him from everything he is, from everything cruel fate has made him.
Before I can, however, Valtar appears beside me, scooping me up in his arms. Part of me wants to protest, to fight to get myself free. But he feels so safe and solid and warm, and suddenly I don’t care if he’s here to kill me. I just want him to hold me. Nothing else.
“Roselle!” Alderin’s voice calls across the paving stones. “You’re making a mistake! You cannot trust this man. He’s Mhoryga’s servant. He will betray you into her hands!”
I look back over Valtar’s shoulder to where the king stands, clutching his bleeding neck. Hellfire light gleams in his eyes. Should I heed him? Even now, even after everything, the impulse to trust him implicitly is stronger than I want to admit.
I tuck my head into the curve of Valtar’s shoulder, clinging to his neck, and shutting my mind against that influence.
“Stand to!” Valtar barks at Rhyo. The next thing I know, he’s setting me on the dragon’s back, and it’s so hot I scream.
Valtar leaps up behind me and pulls me into his lap.
“I know. I’m sorry,” he says. “If there was any other way out, we would take it.” He then wraps me in his cloak, and instantly there’s some relief, protection against the heat.
It’s still hot, almost unbearably so. But I grit my teeth, determined to bear it.
“Fly,” Valtar commands. I feel the sting in my mind as his voice affects the dragon boy. Immediately, Rhyo spreads his wings and leaps from the platform. A stomach-plunging weightlessness, followed by a breathless rush—then we are soaring out across the cold, star-strewn sky.
Behind me, Alderin’s voice reaches out like grasping hands. “I will find you, Roselle! I swear by all the gods, I will find you! I will not rest until your destiny is fulfilled!” But within moments, his words are nothing but a faint echo as we leave the mountain behind.