Chapter Sixteen
Malichai
The Sky Burns
I smell blood before the call comes. It’s not much and it doesn’t belong to her. But it’s wrong. A scent like torn magic. Like dark power scraped across something pure.
My phone buzzes. Tavian. I already know why he is calling.
“Say it,” I growl down the line.
“She’s gone.” His words are soft but final.
Everything in me stills. It doesn’t explode like I expect it to, and I don’t feel any panic. Because the kind of rage I feel right now doesn’t burn fast, it burns endlessly.
“Where?”
He ends the call and walks into my office. “From her apartment. The window was shattered. No one saw him come or go. But all the wards were shredded. The only trace left behind was a single feather.”
A feather. Fucking Ravik. He’s showy, smug motherfucker, and he can’t help pushing my fucking buttons.
He’s hoping I will retaliate, and I will.
My dragon lunges beneath my skin. The shift claws at my bones.
My hands flex, already sparking with heat I’ve spent the last thousand years learning to control.
I’m done controlling it.
“Get here now.”
I end the call and wait. It only takes Tavian five minutes before he and Dax are in my office, ready to burn the city to ash at my command.
“She was inside the secure zone,” Dax says, voice tight. “That’s not just arrogance. That’s a message.”
“It’s also a declaration,” I snarl. “He’s done playing.”
“So, what’s the move?” Tavian asks.
My voice drops to a growl. “We burn everything.”
Ten minutes later, I’m back in black. My favorite three-piece suit. But this time, no tie, and no smile. Power rolls off me in waves. My dragon paces just beneath my skin, aching to take the lead. To fly. To kill.
We trace the magic from her apartment. It’s faint, twisted, and covered in shadow, but the bond is there beneath the surface. Pulling me. Calling me. It’s not at a hundred percent, not yet.
But it’s awake. And through it, I feel her. Her fear and her pain. But also, fury. My girl isn’t the type to huddle in the corner waiting to be saved. She can save herself. And goddess help Ravik if she gets free before I get there.
“He took her to the old borough crypt,” Tavian says, scanning the heat maps and spell signatures. “Archaic wards. Off-grid. It used to be a holding site for hybrid prisoners before the unification.”
“Fitting,” I grind out.
Ravik always did love irony.
“He won’t hurt her yet,” Dax adds. “He’s too smart for that. He wants you to see what he can do. He wants to draw you out.”
“He succeeded.”
We move fast. Too fast for human eyes. Too fast for the other half-bloods to see us passing even if they can sense us. Because when you kidnap a dragon’s mate, you don’t get warnings. You get war.
The drive is long because the crypt is in the middle of nowhere. An abandoned stretch of land on the outskirts of the Bronx, hidden by enchantments no one’s maintained for over a century. We break the first three layers of wards in seconds.
The fourth screams. It’s a dragon-forged blood ward.
Ravik stole it from an old line, maybe from one of the elders who sided with him when I refused to kneel after my father’s death. He’s been planning this for a while, I realize.
But I am fine with that. Let him think he's prepared.
The crypt doors creak open, and we step into a tunnel carved from obsidian and bone. Ancient and cold.
I hear her voice in echo against the walls. Muffled but furious. She is cursing up a storm in three different languages. My heart slams against my ribs.
“I’m going in first,” I snap.
“No arguments,” Tavian replies.
Dax just nods, already drawing his ancient dwarven forged blades.
I round the final corner, and there she is. Chained to a pillar with iron cuffs. Magic-draining chains. Her head lifts the second she senses me.
“About time,” she grits out, eyes blazing. “I was about to start biting.”
Ravik steps from the shadows, smiling like the smug fuck he’s always been. “Malichai,” he drawls. “You always did enjoy making an entrance.”
I don’t answer. I move. Faster than lightning and stronger than reason.
We collide in the center of the room, magic crashing like two storms merging. He tries to counter with a shadow blast, but I’m already inside his defenses. My fist connects with his jaw. Once. Twice.
He stumbles back and spits blood. Laughter falls from his split lip.
“She’s not like us,” he says. “She’s less. You’d burn your kingdom for her?”
“Yes. But I’ll burn you first.”
He lunges and I shift. Not fully but just enough. My hands become claws. My mouth a snarl of flame as my vision sharpens into gold. And then I rip through him like paper.
He doesn’t die easily but he dies.
When he finally falls, broken, burning, and hissing curses in a language too old to name, I turn to her. Her magic is flickering, weakened by the chains holding her captive.
She’s pale with sweat dripping down her temples. Her breathing is shallow and for the first time since Ravic took her I feel panic. I move fast, breaking the chains with a whisper of flame. She collapses into my arms.
“I’m okay,” she says, but her voice wavers.
“You’re not,” I whisper. “But you will be.”
“You saved me,” she says with a lopsided smile.
“I will always come for you, little flame,” I say placing a kiss on her forehead.
“I know,” she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “I forgive you.”
Magic explodes around us. It slams through both of us like a tidal wave, burning away doubt, guilt, fear. All that’s left is us.
Whole.
Complete.
Mated.
Bound.
She clings to me, head buried in my chest, and I press my lips to her hair.
“You’re mine,” I whisper. “And I’ll never let you go again.”