Chapter Forty-Five
Ember
“You two are sure about this?”
I glanced over as Ari dropped into position next to us, her wings spread wide and flapping lazily, keeping pace as we headed toward Mount Drakonus and our meeting with the God-King.
“Positive,” Dela said from where she sat at the base of my neck, leaning forward, her head resting on my scales. She was listening to my heartbeat again, tapping out the rhythm with her fingers.
“What she said,” I rumbled. “I’m far more sure of that than I was of your loyalty, Ari, and for that, I owe you an apology.”
“Accepted,” Ari said without hesitation.
“I have to know, though,” I said. “Why? You seemed so at odds. You’d do anything for power. I look back now, and I can see that Pyre put the idea of you being a traitor in my mind, likely to cover his own tracks, but it would never have worked if it wasn’t plausibly believable.”
Ari sighed. “I won’t do anything for power, Ember. Otherwise, I would have joined Albright for real, and you would have lost. I couldn’t do that, though, because he wasn’t following the law. I told you once, but you didn’t listen.”
“He sometimes has a problem with that,” Dela said, chiming in.
“All the best to you with that,” Ari said.
Great. The two of them were starting to get along. That did not bode well for me.
“Thanks,” Dela said dryly.
“Anyway, as I told you before, Ember, you are next in line, by law. The throne is yours if you can find your mate. I think you’re crazy for choosing a human, but that choice is yours.
I will accept it and support you. Just like I will support Ashe if you two fail.
Hopefully, he’s smarter than you and picks me. ”
“You can’t have it both ways,” I said.
“What?”
“Him being smart and picking you. It’s one or the other.”
Ari rolled her eyes. “Ha-ha. Well, good luck.”
“Thank you,” Dela and I said in unison.
Then she was gone, banking to the left, heading toward Fire Castle, where word of Albright’s defeat would soon spread like wildfire. Hopefully, the other deserters would turn themselves in without issue, and the princedom could begin to heal.
However, that was a concern for later because right then, I had a more imminent task approaching.
“Are we just going to fly into that?” Dela nervously asked as I approached the clouds that permanently ringed Mount Drakonus, obscuring its upper third from view. The dark gray ring looked ominous with the blue that filtered out. There was no rain, no rumbling of thunder.
“We’ll be fine,” I assured her. “I hold the key to get us in.”
“Your necklace,” she said, remembering how I hadn’t taken it off.
“Yes. It will guide us safely to the God-King,” I said, hoping I was right as we entered the clouds.
One of the scales on my neck glowed bright red as they enveloped us in their fluffy embrace. The light cast back the dark but also the clouds, forming a tunnel in front of us, leading us onward.
“Well, that’s neat,” Dela remarked.
“It is, isn’t it?” I said, flying with extra precision down the tunnel as we went up and around in a slow turn to the right. Nothing but clouds and red light to be seen, even the blue visible on the outside disappeared.
“How long do you think?” she asked.
“Not long,” I said, seeing an opening far in front of us just as she finished speaking.
We emerged from the clouds to find ourselves at the tip of a protrusion sticking out from the side of the mountain.
It was smooth, like it had been carved from marble, and a brilliant stone-gray.
I landed as gently as possible. The last thing I wanted to do was have my claws mark up the surface of it.
“Now what?” Dela asked.
“I have no idea,” I admitted. “I’ve never been here before. The God-King does not normally tolerate interlopers. Hence the necklace. It is a guide. Anyone else would become lost in the clouds, I assume, and probably be turned back, unable to find their way.”
Ahead, the wall of the mountain shimmered and then disappeared, revealing a hole big enough for my dragon to fit through with room to spare. I walked toward it, trying not to jostle Dela as I did. Even with four legs, it was difficult to walk smoothly, but she held on gamely without complaint.
We entered the mountain, and it swallowed us up, then spit us out onto an identical ledge that hovered over a cataclysmic abyss of darkness on the inside. I walked most of the way to the edge, then stopped, waiting.
Was I supposed to address the God-King or to call him forth and tell him why we’d come? There were no rules, and I didn’t want to anger him. What if he smote us into dust because I spoke out of turn? That would be bad. So I kept my mouth shut.
Below us, something stirred. Something big. The entire mountain seemed to groan as it shifted, followed by a long scraping of something against the rock. Something very long.
Air blasted over us, and Dela yelped as she was nearly blown free from my neck. She managed to hang on by the tips of her fingers until the gust of wind died down. What the hell would cause such wind on the inside of a mountain?
“Oh, shit!” Dela yelped as I scrambled backward, away from the twin giant circles that appeared at the edge of the ledge without warning. They were each larger than I was from tip to tail.
They were brilliantly white, I realized, the light slowly coming up in the chamber.
Which is when the true enormity of what I was looking at hit me. Those circles were the nostrils of an absolute behemoth of a dragon.
The God-King.
His snout became visible, and it stretched into the abyssal dark an incalculable distance.
Hundreds of feet long, and that was just to his eyes.
Eyes taller than three dragons, wingtip to wingtip, and just as white as the rest of him.
They were glowing with power. Not milky-white from age, but pure energy infused in them.
Ember of Fire.
Dela of Earth.
I jerked as he spoke inside my head.
“Yes, God-King,” I said, bowing my head. “Thank you for seeing us.”
Dela moved on my back, hopefully doing something respectful as well, though she didn’t speak.
You come for judgment. As Eternal Mates.
“Yes,” I said solemnly. “I do.”
“As do I,” Dela squeaked. He was speaking in her head then as well.
Very well. Let the judgment begin.
Then he disappeared into the darkness, leaving us alone.
I craned my head to look at Dela. The God-King knew she was of Earth. He’d said as much, and yet he was allowing the Test to begin anyway. Either he didn’t care because it meant an automatic fail, or my theory was correct. He’d pulled her to the Fire Realm, brought her from Earth for a reason.
“What now?” she hissed at me.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’ve never been here before. I was expecting something to happen. Something that would test our caring for one another.”
“Me, too,” she said, looking around like she wanted to get down but deciding against it. “So, do we just wait? Is the Test one of patience? See if we get on each other’s nerves while we wait aimlessly?”
“I would expect it’s different for every couple,” I said. “Something will force them to realize how they truly feel about one another. To reveal any flaws in the relationship.”
“We barely have a relationship,” Dela said with a slight hiccup of nerves. “Should we have waited, maybe? Did we rush it?”
“No,” I said firmly. “No, we did not. You are mine, Dela. I know that. In my entire body. There is none for me but you.”
She lay flat against me, one ear to my scale, listening. “Do you know why I said I would come up here?”
“No,” I admitted.
“Because back there, our hearts were beating on their own. Individuals. Until you smiled at me. Then mine skipped a beat, and they became in sync. We were living together. Is that corny?”
“No,” I said, smiling toothily. “I like it.”
“Good, I—what is that?”
I turned to see that the gargantuan chamber was filling with light.
Light born from a giant wall of flames was rushing right at us!
“Shit,” I said, backing away from it, scrambling across the ledge until I reached the mountain. Even though it had been an open hole when we entered, I encountered nothing but solid stone. There was no way out.
We were trapped.
“I don’t think he believes in us,” Dela said as the wall of flames spread, preventing me from jumping off the ledge to escape it.
“Yeah,” I said, slumping against the wall. “It sort of seems that way, doesn’t it?”
The heat from the oncoming wave of death reached us, already starting to make the air uncomfortable. The cavern was just so big that it was taking ages to reach us despite the speed at which it moved. We would watch it come for minutes before we actually burned to death.
“It would have been nice if he could have given us a reason,” Dela grumped.
I abruptly shifted to my human form.
“What are you doing?” she asked, slipping from my neck as I shrank.
Gathering her in my arms, I retreated to the farthest spot I could from the fire.
“If I’m going to die in a few minutes,” I said, my skin already starting to sweat, “then I want to do so with you in my arms. I can’t stop that, no matter how powerful. My other form is useless. I would like to kiss you one last time.”
She stared at me, and again, I was surprised by her lack of fear. She wasn’t afraid to die. Not like that, at least. Oh, sure, there was some fear. But she had buried it. As I had. Because she was convinced we were mates. That we had made the right choice.
I gathered her into my arms and pressed my mouth to hers, reveling in the softness of her lips and the hunger of her kiss as she grabbed my neck, yanking me down and not letting go.
“I don’t regret this,” I said through the kisses. “My only regret is that you have to die with me. I don’t know what he sees wrong with us, Dela, but I want you to know I see nothing wrong. You are my mate. You are the one I want. The one I would spend my life with.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I feel the same.”
The fire was making it harder to breathe, and sweat poured down my face. The chamber was engulfed in brightness. There was no shade, no shadows. Just light, as it came at us, the air beginning to shimmer. Soon there would be no oxygen left. I had to speak any last words now before I couldn’t.
“Dela,” I said in a whisper from lack of air, stroking her jaw, ignoring the sweat that ran with my thumb. “I love you.”
She shivered and struggled to suck in a breath to speak. Her mouth opened, and she couldn’t breathe.
Dela! I mouthed, pressing my mouth to hers, breathing into her lungs. Hopefully, there was some left.
Her eyes went wide, and she yanked my ear to her mouth.
“Love … you,” she gasped into my ear. “I love you!”
Light flared, and the fire washed over us. I turned my body at the last second, protecting her, shielding her, for what little good it would do. The fire touched us—
And the light faded.
We were no longer in the mountain. Cool stone pressed against my back and rear.
I was sitting. I looked around wildly until my eyes landed on Dela.
Sitting next to me, looking regal with a tiara of gold infused with fiery rubies.
She wore a dress of scarlet that rode low around the bust, with a thick piece of material running flat up her sternum and around her neck in a choker.
Her hair fell in magnificent waves around her shoulders, its length infused with scarlet highlights that shimmered in the light reflected from the ceiling.
“Dela,” I whispered. “You look beautiful.”
She pressed a hand to her chest, looking at herself, then at me.
“We’re alive,” she hissed.
“Are we? Or is this the afterlife?”
She leaned over, resting her hand on my neck. “They beat together still,” she said. “But where are we?”
“Fire Castle,” I whispered, taking her hand in mine, the other touching the necklace underneath my uniform, the black looking dull next to the vibrant image of my princess.
My princess.
“We did it,” I said, stunned. “Dela, we did it!”
“You’re the prince now?”
I nodded, squeezing her hand. “And you are my princess.”
“Princess?” she said with a gulp as if just now processing her new status.
“If I’m the prince, and you’re my mate, you’re now the Princess of Fire,” I told her.
“Wow.” She shook her head. “I don’t get it. I thought we failed.”
“I think that was the design of his Test,” I said. “To make us think we weren’t compatible. But when we said we thought he was wrong, that we did love each other, we passed.”
She looked at me. “I do love you. I didn’t just say that.”
“I believe you,” I said. “Otherwise, we’d probably be ashes by now. I will never have cause to doubt it either. Nor should you ever wonder about my love for you.”
“I won’t,” she whispered. “But I have a question.”
I nodded. “Yes?”
“What do we do now?”
I thought about it and then grinned. “Stay here.”
“What? Okay, but why?”
I shot up from my throne and dropped the three steps from the raised platform to the floor before walking across the room to the door. The room was empty, so there was nobody to stop me as I lowered the bar into place, locking the door from the inside.
“What are you doing?” she asked as I did the same with the secondary entrance before coming back toward her.
I started undoing my buttons, a grin finally giving away my plans.
“Celebrating my coronation with the finest prize I can imagine,” I growled, dropping to my knees in front of her and pushing my way up her dress.
“Here?” she yelped.
Then my lips found the inside of her thighs.