Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
THORNE
“Get up.” A booted foot smacked my leg, and I flung out an arm, waving my attacker away.
“I said, get up.” Another kick nailed me in the ass, and I crack open one eye, uttering a low growl.
“Go away.” The foul bite of alcohol curdled in my throat. Sour spirits wafted from my pores like rot from a corpse. Drunkenness clung to me, thick and suffocating, the only protection I had against the gaping wound of her absence.
“Get up, you inebriated fool. I grow weary of your presence in my throne room,” barked that imperious voice. “Despite what my mate believes, this has gone on long enough.”
“Fine. Fine.” I forced my torso upright. Using the trunk of the sacred tree as support, I shoved to my feet. Spots swam before my eyes, and my stomach rebelled. I smacked my hand over my mouth, belching.
“Vomit here, and I will rebuild Idris’ zoo, starting with you. While Runa may be sympathetic to your grieving, my patience runs thin. Too bad for you, the queen is at the market today.”
Grieving? Surely the pain I experienced with Serafina’s loss couldn’t be described by such an innocuous word.
What I felt was the constant spiraling of my soul as it circled hell’s shit-filled latrine. The tearing of my heart as a pack of rabid beasts sank savage teeth into the bleeding muscle, shredding it to pieces.
This was no mere grieving.
Immune to my suffering, the mighty king of Carcerem slung my arm over his shoulder, helping me to step over the roots of his infernal tree. Empty bottles of Ambrosia spilled out of my makeshift nest. They clanked against one another as they rolled out of my path.
“Why? Why did she do it?” I asked for what was probably the hundredth time. “Why did she save me only to leave me?” In doing so, Sera had granted Alaric his dearest wish. Because of her sacrifice, I would live on without her. Longing for my mate until the end of my days.
Without bothering to answer my very deep, very complicated question, Victor led me down the steps of the dais. My feet moved as if disconnected from my body. As I shuffled further from the tree, the center of my chest ached, a tugging sensation taking hold.
“Wait,” I muttered, blinking blurry eyes.
“When’s the last time you consumed anything other than alcohol?” Victor asked.
I scrunched my forehead. “What day is it?”
“It’s been ten days,” he grumbled. “Ten long days of you moaning, weeping, making an utter fool of yourself. At some point, I would like to be able to sit on my throne without your sobs echoing off my walls.”
I stiffened in his embrace, turned my face, and flinched at finding him so close. “And what if it were your mate who was devoured by an ancient tree?”
His grip on me tightened, his lips forming a thin line. Yeah. I thought so.
The tugging sensation beneath my ribs pulled harder, and I whipped my head around, noting we’d traveled several paces away from the arbor.
“Stop.” I reared back, but the king’s grip was too strong now that his power was restored. Thanks to my mate.
With trudging steps, he led me further down the aisle. Bent on getting rid of me? Tearing me apart from what remained of Serafina?
That tugging increased. It wrenched at my insides. Clawed my dragonflame. Ripped at my heart. Threatened to tear me in half.
“Dammit. I. Said. Stop,” I roared, command rumbling with my beast’s presence. With a flex of my dragon’s strength, I wrenched free of the powerful king.
Victor spun to face me, both of us squaring off.
“I won’t leave her.” Smoke coiled from my nostrils.
“Serafina is gone,” Victor stated, his voice hard. “Your behavior does not honor the sacrifice she made. You discredit her memory.”
“And isn’t it convenient that her sacrifice served you?” Spikes prickled along my back.
“You as well.” His silver gaze narrowed with disdain. “Or do you forget that sacrifice is the reason you breathe?”
The guilt his provocation evoked threatened to fracture me into tiny pieces and toss me into the wind. “At what cost?”
“Serafina saved thousands the day she healed our tree. Because of her, Carcerem will flourish. Crops grow, animals reproduce, and our people have magic, thanks to your mate.”
My arms flung wide, my words scathing. “All of that and yet our glorious benefactor can’t give her back to me.”
“It is not for us to question the goddess,” Victor said, his statement coming off as mechanical. As if even he didn’t believe them.
Flarking sell out.
I waggled a finger at him. “That bullshit may work on your people. But not on me. I, more than anyone, know the darker side of Hathor.”
Fates save me. I sounded like Alaric. Despite his cruelty, could it be he wasn’t the villain in my story after all?
What if I’d been wrong about him? The thought threatened to shatter the fragile pieces holding me together.
Dear brother. What has become of us? We’d lost everything. Including each other.
And now the goddess had claimed Serafina as well.
I turned to glare at Hathor’s creation. Bronze leaves shimmered on its branches. Its roots pulsed with health and vitality. Hell, it looked better now than even before The Dark One’s attack. And yet Hathor kept all that power to herself. Refusing to grant me a sliver of it to bring Serafina back.
The day the goddess took her from me, I woke at the base of the tree, Runa and her siblings hovering over me. The fatal wound my brother gave me was gone. And so was my mate.
I didn’t even have a body to bury.
I kept waiting for her flame in my chest to gutter out, for silence to claim me. But it hadn’t. It lingered, cruel and flickering, reminding me of all I’d lost.
With every day that passed, that feeling remained, driving me mad. To have her so close and yet out of reach sparked something primal inside of me. My dragon wanted his mate. Each day it was denied, it raged. Especially now, as another male stood between him and his greatest treasure.
And I was too exhausted to hold him back. Nor did I have it in me to care.
Heat welled, my dragonflame stirring. Scales rippled over my shoulders, and my teeth sharpened.
“Easy, now, Thorne,” Victor warned. “Don’t do something you will regret.”
“Regret?” I snarled, my voice a deep rolling growl. “I could teach you a thing or two about regret.” I leveled a predatory glare on the sacred arbor. Maybe Alaric had it right after all.
“All of my suffering started with Hathor and her sacred arbors,” I bellowed, flames crackling in my throat. “Protect the tree. Serve the tree. Worship the tree. Heal the tree.”
“Die. For the flarking tree,” I roared, blasting a stream of fire at the arbor’s stony trunk.
Simultaneously, Victor flung a ball of golden energy. Before my flames could strike the bark, a shimmering shield blazed before me, blocking my attack.
“Guards!” Victor shouted.
I spun on the king, roaring my fury, blasting fire at the infuriating male. Again, my flames met a golden shield. Only this time, the power of my attack blasted my adversary off his feet. Victor flew back, performed a skillful flip, then landed in a crouch.
Another flash of his glowing hands, and one of his shimmering force fields sprang up around my body. I punched my fist into the transparent bubble. Sparks exploded and pain detonated across my knuckles.
Red coated my vision. I would not be caged. Not by Alaric or Hathor, and certainly not by this ungrateful king.
Boots stomped the tiles, and uniformed guards rushed into the room to surround me.
“Easy, Thorne.” Victor held out his hands, his voice soothing as if he coaxed a wild stallion. “You’re mad with grief. Not in your right mind. Once you’re rested, things will look different.”
“You sound like your mate,” I snarled. “Tell me. Is she the reason you haven’t put me down?”
At his stoic hesitation, I snorted a laugh. Thought so.
I leveled him with a glare so dark even the powerful king took a step back. “Release me,” I commanded in an inhuman voice, one laced with my dragon’s presence.
“I’ve no desire to end you,” he said, flashing fangs. “But I will, even if my mate throttles me. Do not force my hand, Draconis.”
“Too late. You just forced mine.” I threw back my head, roaring my battle cry. Blue lightning crackled over my skin. Magic warmed my muscles, and the change washed over me. An explosion of golden sparks erupted as I shifted, shattering Victor’s containment field.
Screams and shouts of the panicked guards rang out. The stench of urine hit my sensitive nose. I swept my tail across the floor, knocking benches, soldiers, and kings over like pins in a bowling game.
“Damn you, dragon.” Victor’s bellow echoed in the space. I took advantage of the chaos, leveling my predatory sights on the mighty tree. Before the king could interfere, I opened my mouth and unleashed my pain, my anguish, upon the one thing that was truly to blame.
Hathor’s sacred flarking arbor.
Cries rang out. The roar of my flames rumbled throughout the room. My fire had never burned this hot before, the molten stream so intense it turned blue. It exploded against the onyx trunk, the mystical bark glowing.
“Give her back,” I sent my mental command out into the universe.
“Stop him! Before he burns the whole place down!” said a smoky voice.
“You stop him!” commanded another, this one deeper. “Not even stone can withstand that blast.”
“Dammit, Runa is going to be pissed when she returns.”
Golden spheres of energy hammered my withers, pain erupting with each blow the king aimed at me. Still, I maintained my fiery attack, blasting the tree with everything I had.
I would have my vengeance.
“Why is he attacking the tree?” asked a gravelly voice, his words thick and slow.
“Guess he’s pissed at Hathor,” said the fiery one.
“It is never wise to engage a goddess,” the dullard stated.
“Don’t think he cares.”
“We must strike him together,” the king’s command rang out over the others. “One… Two…”
Pain erupted through my midsection, the blast a combination of magic and fire, followed by the crash of a boulder. Together, their combined power knocked me off my taloned feet. My jaws slammed closed, teeth cracking as I tumbled across the throne room.
Piles of overturned benches broke my fall, my spine slamming into one of the soaring pillars that supported the ceiling. Rocks rained down on my head.
“Should we hit him again?” the slow one asked.
“Not unless you want to bring the roof down on us,” answered his brother.
I growled a low groan, Victor’s face swimming before my one eyeball. He dared to come this close to me while I was shifted?
Golden energy suffused his being, and his steely eyes glowed with an ethereal light. Power crackled in his palms, strong enough to make even me flinch. The king of Carcerem was brimming with magic and rage.
“Shift,” he commanded, not in a shout as one would expect but in a low seething tone that was far more effective.
Reality returned by degrees. Flark me. What had I done? These men were not my enemies.
I closed my eyes, drew on my magic, and demanded my dragon recede. Lightning crackled, the change washing over me, cracking bones, shaping muscles until I’d shifted into my mortal form.
My bare leg rested on the seat of an overturned bench. Rubble from the broken pillar scratched the skin on my back. I coughed a ring of smoke, wincing as I stared up at the king. The golden light that enveloped him didn’t fade. Instead, he folded his arms, glaring down at me.
I squinted against the radiance of his fury. “Guess I wore out my welcome?”
His jaw tightened. “You could say that.”
But Serafina. How could I leave her behind?
A raised voice reached my ears. “What’s happening? He destroyed our tree?
My chest clenched. Had I?
I glanced at the sacred arbor. Where I’d blasted the trunk, the bark glowed a furious pulsing red. Like superheated metal, it appeared solid but liquid at the same time. The texture of the bark shifted and moved, the craggy lines changing. Until it almost resembled… A face?
My breath caught, heart leaping. I knew that face.
“Sera?” I scrambled to collect my limbs, rushing to my feet. With a limping gait, I climbed over the mess I’d created until I stood before the glowing tree.
Heat radiated from its surface, hot enough to cause even me to wince.
Outlined in the trunk was the figure of a woman.
Before my eyes, she twisted and writhed.
First, her arms emerged. Next, one slim leg, followed by the other.
Serafina was a carving come to life, stepping out of an artist’s imagination.
By slow degrees, her molten form cooled.
Her glowing skin dimmed, the fiery color fading.
Her forest-green eyes glowed against alabaster skin, her face crowned by a spill of crimson curls. I raised a shaking hand, flinching when she grasped it.
With one touch, my mate freed me from grief’s chains as surely as she’d freed me from death’s clutches.
“You're real,” I groaned, every part of me vibrating with shock.
My mate blinked back at me, a tiny crease forming between her brows. Recognition flashed in her eyes. “Thorne?”
“Yes.” My voice broke, tears cascading down my cheeks. Yet I hesitated to embrace her, fearing she would disappear.
“I had the strangest dream. I was inside the tree, and everything was so lovely that I didn’t want to leave. For a time, I think I got lost in it all. When I called for you, I could feel you but not see you. And then I sensed your flame.” She rubbed her chest. “And I followed it. Here.”
Her beautiful gaze took me in, then warmed.
No longer able to resist, I drew her into my arms and held her tight. “It’s okay, Sera. You’re home now. And I am never letting you go. From now on, I plan to hold you captive in my heart, where I can love you forever.”