Chapter 30
Delia
Ashfell to The Ember Vein
The world spits me out in fire.
One second, I’m gripping Jules and Phoebe’s hands in the Eyrie, screaming as the portal opens, the next I’m stumbling onto black stone in Thorne’s main hall, knees slamming hard enough to rattle my teeth.
I gasp, bracing my palms on the warm floor.
The Great Flame roars in its hearth, taller than me, casting wild shadows down the length of the throne room. Smoke and heat and the spicy-scorched scent of Thorne’s magic wrap around me.
But I don’t feel him.
Not like I should.
Not like I always do now.
“Thorne?” My voice cracks. “Thorne!”
“Lady Delia?”
I spin.
Masha glides from an archway, skirts whispering, her dark hair braided in a crown, eyes sharp and assessing even as concern tightens her lined face.
“Masha.” I lurch toward her. “Thorne’s in trouble. He needs me.”
Her gaze flicks over me, taking in my flushed cheeks, shaking hands, and gods-only-know-what expression.
“Yes,” she says quietly. “I feel it too. The bond sings loud enough to crack stone.”
“Tell me how to get to the camp. I need—”
“The chariot,” she cuts in briskly, already turning. “Go to the chariot, milady. The Lord will have gone to the Vein. It is the swiftest way.”
Right. The fire chariot.
I sprint after her, boots skidding on heated stone as we race down a long corridor and out into the courtyard. Ashfell rises around us in jagged spires, every window flickering with flame.
My heart hammers against my ribs like it’s trying to break free and fly to him without me.
We burst into the stables.
I skid to a stop and swear.
The chariot stall is empty.
No sleek obsidian frame. No harness. No waiting Fire Mustangs.
Just sizzling hoofprints burned into the ground, still smoking at the edges.
Masha curses in a language I don’t know, then slaps a hand over her mouth, eyes going wide.
“Your pardon, Lady Delia. It must be getting serviced!”
“Well, fuck,” I breathe.
My panic spikes—then pauses.
Because there is something here.
At the far end of the row, a stall door hangs broken off its hinges.
A massive Fire Mustang stands just beyond it, half in shadow, half in the light spilling from a wall-torch.
I stare.
He’s gorgeous.
A beast the size of a draft horse, all rippling obsidian muscle and long, powerful legs.
His mane is living fire, burning in shades of gold and white and violent blue at the core.
Flames drip from it like liquid light, flaring as he tosses his head.
His hooves are made of magma and hammered steel, each step punching small, glowing crescents into the stone.
His eyes are molten amber.
And right now, they are fixed on me.
“Okay,” I whisper, more to myself than him. “Okay, buddy. You and me. We’re doing this.”
I take a step forward, hands raised.
“But milady—”
“It’s okay. He won’t hurt me,” I bluff, but I really hope it’s true.
“I need to get to your Lord,” I say, because insanity feels like the only reasonable option. “Thorne. You know him. Big, grumpy, too hot for his own good? Probably currently fighting half an army and scaring the shit out of everyone?”
The Mustang snorts, a puff of smoke curling from his nostrils.
He cocks his head.
Then—very clearly—nods.
I blink. “Well. That was easier than I thought.”
I probably shouldn’t have said that out loud.
Because the second I swing a leg over his back and settle myself—no saddle, no reins, just two fistfuls of burning mane that miraculously doesn’t scorch my hands—the Fire Mustang launches forward like a rocket.
“OH MY GOD!”
The world becomes speed.
We tear out of the stables, hooves striking sparks that explode into sprays of fire behind us. The courtyard blurs. Ashfell’s towers streak past in a whirl of black and ember-red. The air slams into me hard enough to steal my breath.
I cling to his mane, laughing and screaming all at once.
“YOU COULD WARN A GIRL!” I shriek.
He tosses his head, and I swear he’s laughing.
Then the castle falls away.
The Broken Plains stretch out beneath us in an endless sweep of rust-red earth and black glass ridges, all lit by the strange Gemini Moon hanging fat and low in the sky—bone-white on one side, blood-rust on the other.
We thunder over the savannah-like landscape, fire blooming under each hoof-strike. Heat lashes my face, my hair whipping back, tears burning in the corners of my eyes.
In the distance, lightning cracks down from a bruised cloud bank—Dagan’s temper, maybe.
And closer—too close—an angry red glow flickers and moves.
The Ember Vein camp.
As we near, the smell hits me.
Smoke. Blood. Hot metal. That sharp, coppery tang of magic burning too hard.
The camp is chaos.
Tents are in various stages of ruin—some collapsed, some already reduced to smoldering piles of ash. The tall ward-torches flicker erratically, as if something keeps slapping at the magic that powers them.
Shapes move in the dark—soldiers, miners, twisted things that can only be SoulTakers. Their edges look wrong, like someone smudged them halfway out of existence and forgot to finish the job.
“Down,” I murmur, patting the Mustang’s neck. “Please.”
He rears once—flames shooting high—then plunges into a controlled skid, molten hooves carving glowing furrows in the packed earth as we slide to a stop just outside the main ring of ruined tents.
I hop off, legs jelly.
He bumps my shoulder with his flaming muzzle.
“Thank you,” I whisper, dazed. “You’re insane. I love you. Do not tell Thorne I said that.”
A roar tears the air apart.
Not from the battlefield.
From the center of camp.
I spin.
Near where Thorne’s pavilion used to stand, four enormous figures are locked in a deadly dance.
A massive dragon of silver and shadow—Alaric—rears back, blue-white flame streaming from his jaws to collide with a column of red fire that shoots up into the sky.
Kael stands nearby, arms raised, water spiraling around him in furious whirlwinds that hiss and steam as they try to contain the inferno.
Dagan is half-shifted, stone crawling up his arms and chest, eyes glowing green-gold as he braces both hands on the earth, channeling his power downward, shoring up the Vein’s shattered wards.
And at the center of it all—Thorne.
Or what’s left of him.
A fifteen-foot titan of bone and fire.
His skeleton form towers above the wreckage, ribs made of obsidian and white-hot cinder, wings of pure flame lashing the sky. Lava pulses through the cracks in his bones like molten blood. Fire roars from his eye sockets, from his fingertips, from the spaces between his ribs.
Everything about him screams power.
And rage.
And pain.
He swings one massive fiery arm, and a row of empty tents disappears in a spray of ash and embers.
“What’s happening?!” I shout, stumbling forward, mind rejecting what my eyes are seeing.
“Lady Delia, stay back!” Kael’s voice cracks across the space like a whip, even as he flings another shield of water in front of Thorne’s wild flames. “He is not himself. This has always been the curse of the Two-Face.”
“Curse?” I echo, breathless.
Alaric lands heavily nearby, his dragon form rippling smaller as he forces himself toward a more humanoid shape, blue fire still simmering off his scales.
“Fire power is tricky,” he grits out, eyes silver-bright. “It seduces. It corrupts. It overwhelms. When the tether snaps, he can lose himself to it. We are doing everything we can to contain—”
“No.” The word rips out of me.
They all look stunned.
“You’re wrong,” I say, fists curling, heart pounding so hard my chest hurts. “Fire doesn’t just corrupt and destroy. It purges. It cleans. It remakes things.”
Alaric stares at me like I’ve grown an extra head. “That may be, but right now you cannot reach him—”
“Yes,” I cut in, voice shaking. “I can. You can’t. But I can. Because I’m not afraid of him. I love him. And whether he’s admitted it or not, he loves me too.”
The moment I say it, something inside me settles.
The bond hums.
Thorne turns.
The massive skull swivels toward me, fire flaring higher in his sockets. For a heartbeat, there is no recognition.
Just rage and raw power and a kind of agony that tears at my chest.
He roars.
The sound slams into me like a physical blow, driving me to my knees. Heat slashes over my skin, fierce and wild, and the hem of my cloak flares with sudden sparks.
Behind me, Kael swears. Alaric shouts my name. Dagan’s rumble rises in panic.
“Delia!” Alaric bellows. “Get back! You will burn—”
“No.” My voice is barely more than a rasp, but I force myself upright. One step forward. Then another. “He won’t hurt me.”
I don’t know how I know.
I just do.
Everything in me is certain.
Thorne stomps closer, each step sending tremors through the ground. The air around him shimmers and warps, so hot that the edges of the world seem to waver.
He swipes his hand—another row of abandoned tents disintegrates into cinders.
“Thorne, stop!” I shout, throat raw. “This is your camp! Your people! You don’t mean to do this!”
There is no sign he hears me.
No sign he understands.
Flame boils inside his ribcage, churning like a living thing. The light is almost too bright to look at.
I swallow hard.
“Please,” I whisper. My legs threaten to give out, but I keep walking. “Please remember who you are.”
The other Lords are screaming behind me.
Someone tries to grab me—Alaric or Kael, I’m not sure—but a sudden wall of heat rises between us, pushing them back.
The bond between us stretches so tight it hurts.
I step into the circle of his heat.
It should kill me.
It doesn’t.
It feels like standing in the center of the world’s hottest fireplace, like every part of me is being scrubbed clean from the inside out.
My skin prickles, my hair whips around my face, tears evaporate the second they fall.
I lift my hands.
My fingers shake as I reach forward—toward the place fire curls thickest between his ribs.
“Delia!” someone roars. Jules? Phoebe? No. That’s just my memory of them, screaming in my head.
I ignore it.
I ignore everything but him.