Chapter Forty-Three
Ember
“Fetch her!” Albright barked at Pyre, recovering first. “Kill them both.”
Pyre gritted his teeth, but he was already shifting as he ran for the edge, leaping up and away from the stone lip, his wings sprouting as he fell. Past him, Ari streaked high into the sky, Dela astride her back, crouching low as the dragon hauled ass.
I, meanwhile, wasted no time. I charged across the tower and slammed my head into Albright with a whip of my neck like an oversized giraffe. Still in his human form, he went flying.
My other loyalists attacked Albright’s forces, who were already starting to shift.
It was chaos as dragons attacked humans.
Some humans managed to dodge the initial attacks, giving themselves time to finish changing.
The roof wasn’t built for that many dragons, and fighting pairs either took to the sky or found themselves pushed over the brink.
Shouts and bellows of pain and success followed—the usual sounds of battle. I ignored most of them, my claws digging deep into the stone of Albright’s tower as I stalked toward him.
He shook himself alert from where he’d slammed into the stairwell entrance. Chunks of stone slipped around him. Then he rolled away just as I hurled a blast of fire at him. It hit the cube-like protrusion, shattering the stone, spraying it outward in all directions.
Angrily, I lunged for Albright, but he rolled right over the tower’s edge, dropping several stories to the ground below, where he shifted into his dragon form. I inhaled, then breathed a stream of fire down at him instead of chasing.
He grunted and lunged away awkwardly as his legs continued to form. The blast burned a streak down his left flank, blackening some scales but doing little other damage before he got out of the way.
“Get back here and face your reckoning, you coward!” I roared as he took to the skies.
Spreading my wings, I leaped after him, leaving the others to fight below. I could only hope they would either win or hold out long enough for me to deal with Albright and return.
As I raced after my uncle, I risked a glance around for Ari.
It took me a moment to spot her. She was already so far away.
Pyre was still pursuing her, and though he was gaining speed, her acceleration was better, meaning he was still losing ground.
That wouldn’t last, though. His top speed was higher than hers, and Ari was tired from the flight out.
I didn’t have long to deal with Albright before I would have to go settle the score with Pyre, too. This day would exact a heavy toll on me, but I couldn’t stop to think about it. Not yet.
“It’s not too late for you to give up!” Albright shouted back at me as I raced after him. “She can still live!”
“You’re in no position to bargain!” I shouted, already closing the gap between us.
“I disagree!” Albright roared and abruptly reversed his course by flipping himself around.
One moment he was going for altitude and was ahead of me.
The next, he was coming straight at me, fire leading the way.
I cried out and banked wide, but the flames scored my stomach.
A single scale took too much damage and peeled away from me, slowly falling to the ground below, the deep red now a crisp black.
I watched it go for a moment, a symbolic shedding. Things would never be the same, and in that second, the falling scale seemed to be a metaphor for the entire fire clan. A signal for our fall from grace as we descended into an orgy of death and destruction at the hands of our kin.
Unless I could stop it. Minimize the killing, and then unite instead of divide. Something I knew Albright wasn’t capable of doing. The entire clan would fracture under his rule, and more would die. Which meant I had to stop him there and then. Before it was too late.
Heat followed my conviction, spreading throughout my body in a firestorm of passion and determination. I would stop Albright and save Dela. Then I would take her to the God-King, and we would pass his test. She was my mate. I believed that thoroughly.
But first, I had to kill my uncle.
I rolled from the sky after him, the air shimmering around me as I drew in fire.
The red of my scales began to shimmer and swirl as each became home to its own flames, practically coming alive.
An orange-red glow trailed around me as I dove after Albright, turning me into a comet that would be seen across the entire dragon realm.
I sucked in more power, infusing every bone, vein, artery, and cell with fire until I no longer harnessed it. I was it. I became fire, at its very core, my body no longer corporeal, but a flame dragon.
Albright saw me coming, and he tried to evade me, but I swept through the sky after him, no longer needing to fly. The heat propelled me, the atmosphere burning around me. He banked left, then right, beating his wings with all the strength in his body, but all it did was delay the inevitable.
At the last second, I adjusted my position so that my claws struck first. The fiery limbs sliced through his scales, plunging deep into his body.
Dragon shrieks filled the sky as the top of his body blackened and burned from proximity to my heat.
His wings shriveled and wilted, and he fell from the sky, sliding limply free of my claws.
I let him go, not bothering to guide him to the ground.
It was the death he deserved. Nothing special, simply a crash from high up.
There was no dignity in that for a dragon, and I felt it was appropriate for a traitor like him.
I would come back later and burn his body to ash.
There would be no memorial for someone like him.
Watching the body fall as those thoughts flowed through my mind, I found myself breathing a sigh of relief. It was over. The flames faded, returning me to my true body, tired but victorious.
Then she screamed.
Dela!
I was moving before I could even visually locate her, heading for the sound, renewed energy pouring through me, powered solely by adrenaline. I was running on fumes after my display with Albright, but it would be enough. It had to be enough. I hadn’t come that far to lose her.
Ari was dancing through the sky while Dela hung on with all she had, doing her best not to fall.
Behind them, Pyre was coming on strong, trying hard to blast them with his fire or rip them apart with his claws.
Ari banked hard as he breathed more fire, taking the strike along her hind leg to ensure it didn’t reach Dela.
She was sacrificing herself for my mate.
That only spurred me on further.
“Pyre!” I bellowed, giving chase. I wanted him to know I was coming for him. That his time was up.
Albright was an uncle, and from the moment Blaze didn’t return from Mount Drakonus, he’d made it clear he wouldn’t support me and that he would eventually declare himself to be the next Prince of Fire.
Pyre had betrayed me. It was that simple. I’d trusted him, he’d led me to believe I could trust him, and then he’d turned against me. Not only that, but he’d handed Dela to Albright. Simply given her over, putting her fragile body in harm's way. I could never forgive him for that.
Below, the fighting had stopped as everyone focused on my comet-act and then Albright’s falling body. They continued watching, with the two sides split apart, to see if I would make it to Dela in time.
Ari saw me coming, and she whipped around in a sharp turn that pressed Dela hard into her back, forcing my mate to go flat against the dragon scales, unable to sit up. Then she dove while I rose to meet her. We’d played this game before, many times in the past.
Ari always won. I banked first, avoiding the head-on collision.
That time, however, I knew it would be different. I went up and up, heading right at her. I didn’t bother drawing fire in or anything like that. It wouldn’t be a symbol for all to see. It would be personal.
At the last moment, just before we slammed into each other, Ari swept out of the way, skimming just under me. I made brief eye contact with Dela. Not enough to communicate anything specific but just long enough that she would know I’d seen her.
Then I slammed into Pyre.
He barely saw it coming. As laser-focused as he’d been on burning Dela from Ari’s back, he hadn’t noticed me coming up from below, hidden mostly by Ari’s body. We collided with a tremendous crash of limbs and scales and then began to free fall.
“You put her in harm’s way!” I bellowed, claws raking across his underside, spilling scales and blood. “How dare you!”
“How dare I?” Pyre shouted, spitting fire at me.
I turned away, but it blackened half my neck.
“How dare you try to cling on to the throne for dear life, too arrogant and blinded by your pride to realize you should step aside. The realm is suffering because of you, and you won’t do anything about it! ”
“I am doing something about it,” I growled as we twisted and rolled, the ground coming up fast. “I’m getting rid of a cancerous infection at its heart.”
“Coward, too scared to do the right thing,” Pyre snarled, jaws lunging for my neck.
My wing came up and batted him away, but he got his claws into it, tearing a long rent through the membrane.
In return, I sank my teeth into his hind leg, ripping a giant chunk of scales and flesh free, spitting it out to fall away.
My mouth tasted like iron, thanks to his blood, and I grimaced, glancing down.
“Shit.” I spread my wings, muscles shrieking as they tried to stop me.
Pyre rolled away and did the same with a hefty grunt of pain. We managed to slow ourselves enough so that we didn’t splatter on the ground, but the landings were not gentle. Trees shattered and exploded as we crushed them, and the ground shook from the twin impacts.
I lay there and groaned, oriented such that I had one eye looking up at the sky.
“That hurt,” I wheezed.