Chapter Seventy-Three
Everyone has always feared Hades.
No one seems to realise that the worst of them is his cousin. The Sun God.
He is the real danger.
Tabitha Wysteria
Dawn was glad to leave the city of Aruna behind.
It felt almost unreal that she now stood at the foot of the great mountain range where the dragons waited, their shadows shifting against the stone like living echoes. The air was cooler here, thinner, carrying the faint scent of ash and ancient fire.
She and Kai had arrived at first light to make their preparations, and now they lingered in restless anticipation, waiting for the others to join them.
Kai, however, had no patience for waiting.
He paced like a caged beast, huffing under his breath every few minutes, his agitation growing with each passing moment. It was clear he wanted nothing more than to leave this place behind as quickly as possible.
Dawn could hardly blame him.
She wanted the same.
The enormous doors carved into the mountainside—through which most travellers entered the city of Aruna—groaned as they began to open.
For a fleeting moment, Dawn half-expected King Siroc himself to appear. But it was not the king who emerged. Instead, his son stepped forward, flanked by Isla and Arena. The young prince wore simple desert garments, suited for travel, and his face shone with unmistakable excitement.
‘Your father?’ Kai asked as the prince came to a halt beside them, his gaze already drawn to the dragons.
‘He did not wish to see me off,’ Zaydan replied. ‘He is still… processing everything that has happened.’
Kai opened his mouth, no doubt ready to offer a remark he would later regret, but Dawn moved quickly, stepping between them.
‘Have you ever seen dragons before?’ she asked.
Zaydan shook his head.
At that exact moment, one of the larger dragons turned its massive head and released a thunderous roar that rolled across the mountainside.
Zaydan stumbled back, his pale eyes widening with alarm. Dawn let out a soft laugh.
‘Do not be afraid,’ she said. ‘They will not harm you. I was frightened of them once as well.’
‘How did you overcome it?’ the prince asked, genuine curiosity bright in his voice.
Dawn’s attention drifted, almost instinctively, towards Kai.
He stood a short distance away now, deep in conversation with the two Dunayans. For a moment, warmth crept into her cheeks.
‘I had a little help,’ she said lightly, clearing her throat.
Zaydan looked as though he was about to ask more but the great metal doors behind them began to open once again.
Dawn had visited Alina many times while the drakonian princess had lain in restless sleep. But since she had awakened, Dawn had kept her distance.
She could not quite explain why. Not aloud, at least. Yet somewhere deep within, she suspected that Alina would not welcome her presence. Not after everything that had been done. Not after everything Dawn had taken from her.
And so she stayed away.
Still, nothing had prepared her for the sight of Alina now.
Even though she had seen her lying still and pale upon the bed, seeing her standing, moving, was something else entirely.
Alina stepped out into the desert not as someone broken, not as someone maimed by loss, but as something sharpened by it.
Something dangerous.
It was almost unnatural, how quickly she had recovered. Only a handful of days had passed, and yet she walked as though her body had already forgotten the violence it had endured.
Dawn could not help but suspect that Mareena’s strange medicines played a part in that.
And her own blood.
She had not told Kai.
Mareena had come to her quietly, asking—no, pleading—for more. She had explained how she would mix it into the remedies she had prepared for Alina. It would strengthen her, she had said. Help the wounds close faster. Prevent infection from claiming what remained of her arm.
Dawn had refused.
At first.
There was a difference between offering her blood for weapons…and forcing it into someone’s body, making them consume it without their knowledge.
The thought had made her recoil.
But hours passed. And eventually, Dawn had returned.
She had found Mareena seated beside Alina’s bed, watching over her with that same unwavering focus.
And Dawn had given in.
She had stood there in silence, watching as the phoenixian princess carefully mixed her blood into the medicine.
Even now, Dawn did not know whether Alina was aware of it. And she knew, with quiet certainty that it would not be her who told her.
Alina did not so much as glance at the group.
She walked straight past them, her steps steady as she made her way towards the waiting dragons.
Dawn found herself staring.
It was difficult not to.
Alina wore her phoenixian fighting garments, though the once-pristine white had been stained and dulled by blood and battle. One sleeve—where her arm had once been—hung loose and empty, stirring faintly in the desert wind. Dawn tried, and failed, not to look at it.
Alina had covered her head and most of her face, veiling the worst of the damage. But her eyes…
Her remaining eye still burnt bright.
The bandages concealed the other, mercifully hiding what had been taken from her.
Alina must have felt Dawn’s stare, because she turned sharply.
‘Is there something you wish to say?’
Dawn opened her mouth, but no words came. She shook her head instead, retreating into silence.
‘I do not want your pity,’ Alina said, stepping closer. ‘Though I imagine you are rather pleased this has happened to me.’
Dawn’s eyes widened. ‘Of course not.’
Alina let out a dry, humourless snort. ‘Do not lie.’
Dawn drew breath to argue but the moment slipped away. Alina had already turned her back, dismissing her entirely, and continued on to stand beside Mareena.
Dawn watched in silence as the small group made their final preparations.
No one came from the city to see them off. Not even to say farewell to their prince.
Kai moved to her side and helped her onto one of the dragons, guiding her into place with practiced ease. As always, he climbed up behind her, his arms settling securely around her waist.
By now, Dawn had grown somewhat accustomed to the sensation of flight.
‘Don’t look at Alina like that,’ Kai said. Dawn was unable to read his expression, and she wanted to twist around, to understand what he meant.
‘Like what?’
‘Like she’s broken.’
The dragons lifted their great heads and roared, the sound echoing across the mountains. And then, with a powerful beat of their wings, they took to the sky.
Dawn found herself turning Alina’s words over and over in her mind as the dragons carried them across the sky. As well as Kai’s.
And, deep down, she knew Alina was not entirely wrong.
She did not want Alina to die. A part of her still longed for what they had once been. For that fragile thread of friendship that had existed before everything had shattered.
But there was another part of her. A darker, more twisted part that had not yet healed from what Alina and Ash had done.
That part whispered that this was justice.
Payback.
And Dawn hated herself for it.
She did not want to be that kind of person—bitter and cruel, secretly wishing harm upon others. She wanted to be better. She wanted to become someone worthy of the life she had begun to build… someone worthy of Kai.
But change did not come easily.
Some wounds refused to close.
She felt Kai’s tension the moment they left the Desert Kingdom behind and crossed into his lands. It settled into him like a second skin. He was eager to return.
And she understood why.
His thoughts were no doubt fixed upon his army, still trapped within the witchlands, unable to break free from the tightening noose of magic and war.
His plan was already forming—to gather the remaining wyverian forces, to take to the skies with the dragons, and somehow carve a path back through the wall to liberate those left behind.
It took them several days to reach the wyverian castle.
They were forced to land often, resting every few hours so the group could recover and eat. Especially Alina, whose body, despite its unnatural resilience, could not yet endure long stretches of flight.
By the time the dark volcanic mountains of the Kingdom of Darkness rose before them, Dawn felt a deep, aching relief at the thought of solid ground beneath her feet.
She glanced slowly up to take in the castle. It towered above the jagged landscape. The stone seemed to drink in the light, and above it, the sky remained perpetually grey, as though the sun itself had long since abandoned this place.
Dawn stared in quiet awe.
They landed upon a vast stretch of barren land, where even the grass had withered into brittle shadows of what it once was.
The moment Dawn’s boots touched the ground, she felt it.
The silence.
It was unlike anything she had ever known. It was heavy, suffocating, as though the world itself had fallen still. No voices. No movement. No sign of life beyond their small group.
As if nothing else existed.
‘They must be inside,’ Kai said when the others glanced at him, all of them thinking the same thing. Without waiting, he strode forward towards the great black doors of the castle, clearly intent on summoning servants or guards to receive them.
But he slowed.
Then stopped entirely.
A figure stood at the entrance. Watching them.
Ash Acheron.
He leaned against the dark threshold as though he had been waiting for their arrival all along. Clad in black wyverian garments, his golden hair and eyes seemed almost unnatural against the gloom.
Dawn had almost forgotten how beautiful he was.
How effortlessly he could silence a room simply by existing within it.
She had not seen him since the witches had stormed his castle. And she remembered, with a cold twist in her chest, the promise she had made to herself, to Hagan. That the next time she saw Ash Acheron, she would kill him.
Ash tilted his head slightly, studying them in silence.
There was something different about him.
Something… ancient.
As though the man standing before them was no longer merely a drakonian king, but something far older, something that had shed the limits of mortality without quite abandoning its shape.
Kai approached him first.
The two men embraced, clapping each other’s backs in a brief, wordless greeting. Zaydan followed with a respectful nod, and Isla and Arena inclined their heads in turn.
No one spoke.
Then Ash’s golden glare shifted.
It fell upon his sister.
Dawn held her breath.
She expected tears. A desperate reunion. Arms thrown around each other after everything that had been lost. But Alina did none of that.
She walked forward with steady steps and, without a word, reached up to pull aside her rasguita and karash, uncovering her face, revealing the ruin of her features and the broken remnants of her horns.
Ash stared at her.
And not a single emotion broke across his face.
‘So it’s true,’ Alina said, her voice edged with something sharp and brittle. ‘You’re alive.’
Ash gave a single nod. Then, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, he stepped forward and pressed a kiss to his sister’s cheek.
From where she stood, Dawn saw the way Alina stiffened beneath the touch, her entire body going rigid for the briefest of moments.
A quiet sigh escaped her.
And without another word, she turned and strode into the castle.
Mareena lingered a heartbeat longer. Her gaze locked onto Ash’s, something unspoken passing between them, something measured, and deliberate. He returned the look in kind, as though acknowledging a game neither had yet named.
Then she, too, followed Alina inside.
And just like that, Dawn was alone.
Alone beneath the looming shadow of the castle, staring at the man who had once held her heart so completely and shattered it without mercy.
When Ash’s golden eyes found hers, it felt as though the fracture split open all over again.
Raw.
Unhealed.
For a fleeting moment, she wondered if he could recognise her beneath the borrowed wyverian form. Surely not. How could he?
But the way he stepped towards her told her everything she needed to know. He knew.
Of course he knew.
‘Hello, Adara,’ he said.
The name struck like a blade.
Dawn lifted her hands, and green smoke curled from her fingers, rising like something alive. It wrapped around her, unravelled the illusion, until her true form stood bare before him.
She would not face him wearing another’s skin.
Not him.
Not now.
‘My name is Dawn,’ she shot back, the words sharp as broken glass.
Silence fell between them.
Heavy.
Taut.
They watched one another, unmoving, two forces poised on the edge of something inevitable. But beneath Dawn’s stillness, a storm raged.
She could do it.
Here. Now.
No witnesses. No consequences she couldn’t twist into something believable.
She could end him.
Her fingers twitched, magic whispering at her command. And she wondered if Ash could see it. If he could feel the intent coiling inside her.
Judging by the faint curl of his lip, by the way he stood as though braced for impact…He could.
And perhaps he was waiting for it.
Dawn lifted her hand, power already gathering at her fingertips—green smoke coiling like something alive, eager to be unleashed.
To end it. To silence the ache that had hollowed her out for years. To watch those cursed golden eyes dim at last.
A presence stirred behind Ash.
Kai.
He appeared in the threshold of the castle, his gaze flicking between them, sharp and assessing. He understood at once, of course he did. The tension, the quiet violence hanging in the air, the fragile line Dawn stood upon.
This was no ordinary moment.
This was a breaking point.
And yet… he did not retreat. Instead, he stepped forward.
Slowly. Deliberately.
He met her eyes, and in that look was everything. A warning, entwined with understanding, but also consequence. A silent plea wrapped in steel.
Then he came to her side.
‘We ought to go inside now, Dawn,’ he said, his voice low, steady and gentle, but unyielding.
He lifted his hand between them.
An offering. A choice.
Dawn stared at it. At those long, pale fingers extended towards her, and something inside her faltered.
Because she knew.
If she struck now, if she gave in to the fury clawing at her ribs, she would not only lose Ash.
She would lose Kai.
And the thought of that, of losing the one person who had managed to anchor her, however imperfectly, caught in her throat like glass.
But then, what had all of this been for? All the years. The pain. The obedience. The blood she had spilt at Hagan’s command.
It had all led here.
To this moment. To Ash Acheron.
Dawn exhaled slowly, the breath trembling as it left her.
Not today. Perhaps she was a coward. Or perhaps… she was not yet ready to decide which part of herself would win.
With reluctance that tasted bitter on her tongue, she lowered her hand. The magic dissipated into nothing.
Hesitantly, she slipped her hand into Kai’s, his grip warm and steady around her own. She let him lead her forward into the shadowed mouth of the castle, and away from Ash, whose smile lingered behind her like something that refused to fade.