Chapter 42
Chapter Forty-Two
Kallias
Ronan stayed with me that night. I curled back to back with him, as I had countless times in childhood, though now his dragon soared somewhere above, cutting through the star-drenched sky, not tucked around us, shielding Draconis children from the harsh realities of war.
With his steady presence, I drifted in and out of a fitful sleep—too heavy with exhaustion to stay awake—but incapable of true rest with my mind tethered to Kallias, knowing he was out there somewhere, fighting while I lay here.
I bolted upright in the middle of the night, a sudden jolt tearing me from dreams into a waking vision of Velli piling on my husband, shark teeth sinking into his flesh. The sight drifted across my vision like smoke, and my brother’s hands caught me.
“Easy, sister.” His grip on my shoulders anchored me, easing the tremor in my chest as frantic breaths heaved and rattled. “His light shines in the night. Gyrak is keeping the dragons away, tracking his progress.”
I dropped a hand to my stomach, then lifted it just in time, pressing it against my heart instead. Ronan didn’t need to know everything yet. “He’s moving?”
“Taken two levels already. Moves fast for an old man.” He eased me back onto the bed, the sheets cool against my skin. “Now, sleep. Your dragons are watching over him.”
I rose before the sun, the horizon a blackened shadow.
Freya had managed to get inside the manor, her presence quiet and measured as she helped me dress, weaving my hair into tight braids pressed close to my scalp.
The tension in her movements weighed heavier than the early morning chill, her fingers moving with a restraint borne of unspoken fear.
I knew from experience how hard this was.
In Draconia, it was all too easy to be free with our words and feelings.
Dragons answered our beck and call. War was a distant echo, a story we might hear but never live.
Here, though, death loomed at every edge.
Steel clashed in the distance, and we relied on stone and iron for protection, the air thick with the smell of sweat, smoke, and smoldering fear.
It was far harder to keep that fearless fire alive in the face of so much destruction.
The Sols’ status hadn’t changed, though the Harvesters tended to them with care.
Their bodies bore bandages, skin flushed with a richer color than before, deep and vibrant, as if health had returned to replenish the blood that this brutal war drained from their veins.
I allowed a brief, grateful glance before turning toward the path that led to Sol.
Ronan stayed close, his fingers snapping at his side, small puffs of flame curling and blinking out in the cool morning air.
We didn’t take the mules Clay once offered, instead walking the long, winding trail, boots crunching over dust and stone, drawing us nearer to the distant cacophony of carnage.
At the beginning of the path, an outcropping blocked our view. We had to skirt the cleft of a jagged cliff before the city proper revealed itself.
It wasn’t the great white city I had once known.
Streaks of black marred the mountainside, scars scorched into the stone by dragonfire. Gyrak and the others swarmed nearby, silent vultures poised for a signal. Breon shot through the air, catching Tsunami’s claws mid-lunge and hurling her off her target—me.
She screamed, wings beating as she clawed toward the sky, where a sliver of daylight eased into view.
“She has been fine all night,” Ronan muttered, tension tightening his jaw. “Staying with the others, not causing trouble—leaving her toy alone.”
My fingers twitched, itching to grasp the dagger tucked beneath my dress. “It’s daybreak,” I murmured. “She’s anxious. Like the rest of them.”
He hummed, disbelief threaded through the sound, guiding me onward. The small plateaus of the mountain were barren, gates and fences torn to splinters. Bodies lay where they had fallen, charred armor and broken weapons indistinguishable. Were they Tallon’s men or Kallias’?
Did it matter? They were all Radaanian.
The stables burned, piles of hay smoldering, smoke curling into the empty sky. I scanned the cliffs for the goats that had once peppered the sheer rock faces. Nothing remained. The colorless landscape stretched before me, silent except for the occasional crackle of distant battle.
Sorrow clenched my chest. This city’s solitude—the laughter, the clamor, the rhythm of daily life—was obliterated. All of it lost. Was it Tallon’s doing? Fyrn’s? Or mine and Kallias’?
With gritted teeth, I forced my legs to move. I refused to halt, to flinch from the brutality of war. I cataloged them all in my mind: every fallen soldier, and slack face, and pair of eyes staring unseeing at the morning sky.
Fields that had once gleamed green were now scorched, sod ripped apart, years of labor undone in mere weeks. Claydon and the people of Sol poured their lives into this city, and it had all been torn away.
Our path descended, meeting the tenth level. Once filled with the laughter of children and the clamor of merchants, now doorways gaped with emptiness, distant screams weaving into the smoky air.
Ronan took the lead, one hand free to throw fire, the other resting on his dagger.
I needed to see the city, even if I was powerless, even if I could only bear witness to the devastation borne from the clash of father and son.
Each step drew me closer to Kallias, to whatever waited in the heart of this ruined place.
I paused, tilting my head. Voices drifted from somewhere ahead—not fighting, not pain, but conversation. My boots carried me forward, almost of their own volition, slipping past my brother into a dark doorway.
“Storming eels, Nienna!” Ronan hissed, pressing close behind me.
The room swallowed us, thick with smoke and the scent of charred wood. Walls, stripped bare, absorbed the faint glow from a flickering glimmer deeper inside, the tunnel ahead hinting at secrets just out of reach.
I stepped forward, drawn by the casual cadence of voices.
Ronan’s hand gripped my arm, blue light pulsing from his palm.
A small orb danced above us, illuminating the path littered with rubble, shards of burned shelves, scattered crates.
The tunnel’s solid stone reflected the magical glow in fractured patterns, shadows crawling over walls like silent predators.
With a warning squeeze, he kept me close, guiding me forward, as if letting go would send me charging blindly into the darkness.
We crept toward the voices, ears straining. Multiple people spoke, punctuated by the high, chirping laugh of a child. The glow at the tunnel’s end brightened, revealing more of the jagged floor beneath our boots.
Then a goat bleated, echoing against stone and silence.
“The door!” someone shouted.
A man the size of a mountain lurched into the hall, sword drawn, body filling the doorway and blocking the warm glow.
Ronan yanked me behind him, fingers snapping in front of us. A ball of blue fire surged outward, coiling into a shield of flame that hissed against the floor and walls.
“Who goes there! Name yer king in the next breath, or I’ll have yer head!”
“I am Prince Ronan Draconis, Second Rider of Draconia. I serve Queen Nienna of Radaan!”
“The Prince of Draconia?” The man’s sword lowered a fraction. His chin dipped, squinting as if trying to see us more clearly. “We were told he was with the queen.”
“He is.” I stepped free of my brother, moving toward the wall of flame. The blue light caught my golden mantle, shifting its color to an eerie green.
The man was immense, forcing me to crane my head back to meet his gaze. Balding at the crown, dark hair fell over his ears like a heavy wreath. A thick woven vest hung over his tunic, tied with a rough rope. No armor, no heraldry—just the dress of a miner or herder, a commoner.
His eyes widened at the sight of my mantle. In the next breath, he dropped to his knees, sword clanging against stone. “My queen!”
“Queen?”
“She’s here?”
“In the mountain?”
“She would never.”
I smothered a smile, hearing the murmured words from the room beyond. “I’ve come to visit my people. Might you know where to find them?”
“She’s coming!”
“Oh, sit up straight!”
“Grab Oreo!”
The man rested a hand on his knee. “I beg yer pardon, Yer Majesty. We didn’t expect ye to walk the streets so soon.” When he straightened, he gestured through the doorway. “Welcome to my humble abode.”
Ronan made a strangled noise behind me as I rounded the corner.
I expected a family huddled in fear. Instead, I found an array of war-shocked faces and a home battered but smiling, a fragile resilience mirrored in every gesture. And a black-and-white goat launched off a table, hooves thrashing through the air, galloping straight toward me.
“No, Oreo! Ye can’t eat the queen’s dress.”
The big man scooped the creature under its belly despite its bleats of protest, setting it next to a small child. They all stood near a mattress perched on a stone shelf. The boy offered a quick bow, dark hair falling into his eyes, before securing the goat’s collar.
The room had no windows, only lanternlight, yet mirrors scattered along the walls caught the glow, throwing fractured reflections across the space.
It was large, spacious, a hall with multiple doorways hinting at rooms beyond.
A table dominated the center, surrounded by chairs and stone benches, as if this were a receiving room in a homely palace of sorts.
A petite woman with graying hair jabbed an elbow into the man’s stomach. He grunted, frowning down at her.
With a sigh, she offered a curtsy. “Your Majesty, I am Fiona, wife to Hur,” she said, sending her husband a quick glare.
“And Mother to Quill and Skye.” She motioned to the boy and a thin girl at her side.
“That is Oreo, our Kuh’lir. Orphaned at the beginning of the siege, he has proven quite the guard dog. ”