Chapter 30 Lela #2
I slid down into the cold, dark depths, the surface seeming so far away as I kicked and struggled upward.
My sandals were torn away by the current.
My heavy cloak and dress dragged me down, preventing me from getting any closer to the surface.
I slipped the hooded cloak off my neck and kicked harder, my lungs beginning to squeeze, desperate for air.
The underflow tumbled me around, then I wasn’t sure which way was up.
Gods, would I die by drowning after all of this?
The swift-moving current carried me beneath the water, the blackness below an eerie tomb if this should be my watery grave.
Bubbles escaped my mouth as the desperation for air became dire, my vision hazing at the edges.
In a frenzy, I kicked and cut my arms through the water, feeling as if I wasn’t moving at all.
Panic and fear gripped me hard. I wasn’t ready to die. For the first time in years, I wanted a future. I wanted to live. I wanted Trajan and the idealistic dream he had for a new world. This couldn’t be my end. Not yet. Not now.
Suddenly, a familiar rumble vibrated through the waters. I had no more strength to fight the current, my body being swept away far beneath the surface. I watched behind me, slipping into unconsciousness as two ice-blue eyes drew closer and closer then Trajan’s dragon was there.
He swam above me, scooping me into his claws and shooting up with unnatural speed. He broke the surface with powerful force, his roar piercing the sky as I sucked in a deep breath. Instantly, I was awake again, my body freezing but my mind sharp.
A stream of flame shot across the sky to my right.
I was dangling in Trajan’s claws, but now I could see there was a full-scale dragon battle taking place in the sky.
Trajan’s dragon dove back toward the river, and for a moment I panicked, thinking he was taking us back under.
But then I saw the Mercury slicing down the river, the crew on the deck watching the fight and dragon flames above them.
Trajan slowed as he approached the ship, gently dropping me on the upper deck, his beating wings gusting fiercely as he instantly shot back up into the night. A crewman and Koska helped me to my feet.
“You should go below deck, my lady,” said Koska.
“Like hell I will,” I snapped, forcing my shaking legs to carry me to the bow so I could see what was happening.
I stared up, watching Trajan fly directly back toward the melee where not just three but five dragons fought with one who was larger than all of them. His scales were pale and silver under the moon.
“I thought those dragons were extinct,” said one crewman to another standing next to me.
I peered up, wondering who they referred to.
“They were,” said Koska. “I can’t believe it.”
That’s when the largest of the dragons banked against the wind, his wing catching the moonlight so that I could see he wasn’t silver, but—“Gold,” I whispered.
That was Alaric. I knew that it was. Golden dragons had been extinct, it was true. And they were said to have remarkable firepower.
As if he heard me, he spun on the three close on his tail and belched a flame of fire.
When it hit the first dragon, the fire didn’t simply slide over him, it exploded into a firebomb in the night.
His target exploded with it, one wing and his tail falling toward the earth, the explosion having singed the other two dragons.
Trajan engaged one of them, then I couldn’t tell who was who as they flew higher into the sky, shrieking and roaring in the clouds, jaws snapping and bodies colliding, sounding like lightning and thunder.
As if Lady Fortuna had heard my thoughts, a distant crash of lightning lit up the sky, the silhouettes of fighting dragons painting the night.
Then a rumble of thunder rolled a moment later.
“Jupiter seems to be watching tonight,” said the captain, standing next to me now as we slid farther away from Rome.
Yet another dragon flew from the left. Deathriders must’ve seen or heard their roars, falling into the battle with Trajan and Alaric.
I cursed, realizing my power was useless here. The plunge into the Tiber had doused the burn, but seeing my dragon, my soulmate, fighting without me had sung the power back into my veins.
A dragon darted out of the clouds then dove toward us. Another flash of lightning pierced the night, and I saw he was black-scaled. The dragon beat his wings, angled directly for the ship, sending the crew scrambling below decks.
“Come, my lady!” screamed Koska, taking my arm.
I jerked free of him. “Leave me here!”
He didn’t argue, running for cover like the others. The storm winds kicked up the sails and the gods buoyed my powers, for I felt the presence of the otherworld. Supernatural essence flooded through my body as I watched my enemy diving for me.
“Quintus,” I whispered, knowing it was him.
In the distance, my dragon roared, Trajan diving out of the clouds like a fallen star. With the others behind him, he fell toward the ship, toward me.
But my sight stayed on Quintus, halfway to me now. Unexpectedly, a memory pushed into my mind that I’d forgotten, as if Lady Fortuna had breathed it into my ear, wanting me to remember.
Jardani lay dead at my feet, his throat clawed out. Papa shouted at the creature turning away from Jardani’s body toward me, “Don’t hurt her! Leave her alone!”
Papa ran forward, half the size of the black-scaled beast but with twice as much heart.
The beast was a hideous monster of all my nightmares, the demons of Rome we’d been warned about all of our lives.
His mouth gaped, his black-forked tongue hanging loose when Papa reached his side, attacking him with his bare fists.
The Roman in half-skin backhanded my father, knocking him into a tree with a crunch, where he fell and lay still.
“Papa!” I screamed as the beast gripped me by the waist and lifted me until my face was his height.
“A beauty,” he said in garbled speech I could barely understand, his forked tongue flicking out of his mouth and sliding over my neck.
“Stop!” I cried, pushing back on his shoulders and kicking with my feet uselessly.
He laughed, that same hideous sound I heard when he killed my Jardani. Furious, I swiped out with my nails, but he caught my wrist, one of his claws scraping the thin flesh beneath. A trickle of blood slipped down my forearm. The monster leaned forward and licked it clean.
“You bleed very prettily, my sweet. I think he’ll like that.”
My body vibrated with the haunting memory, of how he’d killed my father as well as Jardani. Of how he’d sold me to a master who did indeed enjoy making me bleed—not just from my body but from my heart and soul too.
Fury lanced through my body, licking upward, radiating toward my target, who was nearly upon me now.
He roared with triumph, but then I raised my palms and screamed to the sky.
My piercing yell resonated like a gorgon’s shriek, rattling the heavens, who answered with flashes of lightning and waves of thunder.
“Give me your blood,” I murmured, feeling my wrath whipping out of my body like a living entity, like a sword slicing its target with a hundred knives.
Quintus shrieked as blood streamed from his eyes and his nose and from beneath his scales.
Not drops but rivers pouring from his body, raining down out of the sky upon me on the upper deck of the Mercury.
He flapped his wings, howling in pain, obviously unsure what was happening.
Then his red eyes found me, all while his blood misted the air, painting the ship’s deck crimson.
And me. I watched him with genuine pleasure, wanting him to feel the pain my family did as his blood rained from the skies.
My poor father tried to protect me, and this monster had swatted him like a fly. It was my turn. I flicked my hand and more blood seeped from the scales beneath his belly. He shrieked again, crying out in a watery gurgle, the fluid filling his lungs now.
“You bleed very prettily,” I told him, my voice echoing on the wind in a ghostly whisper.
Then dragon claws pierced the flesh of his back.
A blue-scaled dragon clamped jaws around his neck and ripped mid-air until Quintus’s head left his body.
Trajan dropped the carcass and its head into the sea.
His body plummeted into the water, the waves rocking the ship.
Trajan roared triumphantly into the stormy night, lightning flashing and thunder rumbling.
Fireballs exploded far above as Alaric finished off the deathriders who’d come for us.
Lightning crashed overhead, the sky opening and dumping torrents of rain from the clouds. I turned my face heavenward, the rain washing the blood of my enemy from my body and all of the hurt he’d embedded deep inside me. Minerva had given me a beautiful gift, one of both power and healing.
“I will honor it,” I whispered up to the wind and rain and the stars far above, in case she was listening.
The storm continued to rumble while my mate roared a warning to any other dragons nearby and circled the mast as our ship named for the messenger god slipped out to sea. I didn’t have to wonder what message the gods had for us. War was coming.
“I am ready.”