31. To the Death
To the Death
A blast launches me through the air and catapults me back.
I land hard, the wind knocked from me. The jarring force shoots through my body. My bones vibrate, rattling the very teeth in my mouth. I can’t even feel the soreness in my ribs, the throb in my face, the ache in my head anymore. There is only this. The shuddering shaken marrow of me.
It takes me a moment to regain myself, to lift up on my elbows and watch in disbelief as the world tremors around me.
Two massive dragons slam together like boulders colliding.
This is chaos. Twisted and violent.
I gawk at the sight of them, even though I’ve seen them like this before—that first night when Tage swept me up to the Crags.
I remember him, remember feeling him, that massive slab of muscle undulating all around me.
And yet this is something altogether different .
. . like seeing them in full color when before they had only been one-dimensional black-and-white outlines.
Seeing them this way—dragons meting out abuse on each other, trying to kill each other, is a new kind of spectacle.
Terrifying and fearsome. The stuff of nightmares.
A great cloud of dirt billows from the ground, following them as they roll and thrash through the cave. They lift into the air, the great sails of their wings churning through the mist and dirty haze, spitting grit into my eyes. I blink and cough as I scramble back, covering my mouth with a hand.
The others scurry to get out of the way, too, hugging the walls of the cave like ants avoiding a tidal wave.
Tage and Cyphus are everywhere at once . . . a blur of onyx hides—a streak of black iridescent paint on the air.
A roar cleaves the cave.
Bone grinds on bone. Flesh squelches. Purple sprays like rain.
They’re moving too fast. It’s impossible to identify which one of them bleeds, but the taste of metal fills my mouth.
They’re fighting to the death—to kill. Only one is going to make it. Profa. A legitimate way to kill the alpha and take his place. I understand it now.
I know I should be worrying about myself, about what this could mean for me, about what will happen to me if Tage fails, but I can only lean forward in fear and anxiety, trying to mark Tage, willing him to win, to live. And that means killing Cyphus.
Because that’s the reality . . . what needs to happen.
For Tage to live, another must die.
This is the truth . . . the violence of this world. I swallow the cold lump in my throat. Isn’t that everywhere? Not just among dragonkind, but in Penterra, too.
Tage is the sleeker of the two, all speed and fluid grace while Cyphus is a bull, a mountain of brawn.
Claws fly, teeth snap, blood flows, thick as syrup.
Flesh flexes and pulls over the bulge of muscle and sinew. The horned spikes on the frills surrounding their faces are not merely decorative. They turn their heads, swiveling, stabbing, trying to score one another to ribbons with the sharp tips.
Locked in a deadly embrace, they spin through the air, flying up, up, up toward the stalactites, the long spears waiting and ready.
I cry out, seeing it coming, knowing the fate of one of them . . .
Don’t let it be Tage. Don’t let it be Tage.
As they near those deadly points, a cry fills my ears. Only dimly do I realize it’s me.
Cyphus has Tage in a stranglehold, holding and driving him directly into those rock teeth, ready to impale him.
At the last possible moment, Tage twists. Foreclaws and hindclaws digging and holding tight, he thrusts Cyphus upward, impaling him onto several stalactites.
Cyphus bellows like a gutted animal.
I gag and swallow back bile as blood showers down from his body.
Tage unsheathes his claws and lets go. Cyphus slides free of the stalactites with a great sucking sound, his giant body dropping like lead, kicking up a storm of dirt and blood and mist where he lands.
Danhy blows out a shuddering sob. Viggo wraps an arm around her, murmuring comfort. “He made his choice.”
Tage sets down on his feet beside Cyphus.
I remember what they said about dragons. They cannot easily be killed. Only dragon bone can do it, and stalactites, however lethal they appear, are not that.
Cyphus’s pain-glazed eyes shift slightly, moving to lock on Tage. He stares up at him, nostrils flaring beneath the ridges of his long nose.
Words pass unspoken between them. Cyphus’s monstrous head, square and blockish, gives a single nod.
Tage huffs out a breath and lifts an arm. His claws with their razor nails glint on the air before he brings them down in the blur of a single swipe, delivering a deathblow across his throat.
Cyphus’s body goes limp.
I must have made a sound. Viggo shoots me a look. “Profa ends with one dead, one alive. That’s the law.”
“Law?” I echo, marveling at the brutal practice. “And what would happen—”
“Cyphus would heal up and come again for Tage. He would keep coming until he succeeded. Until he killed Tage.”
I make a slight sound of acknowledgment at the explanation.
By the time I look to Tage, he’s shifted back again, puncture marks and scratches all over his body.
He straightens from where he hunkers over Cyphus, wiping the back of his hand along his bloody nose, the only nod he gives to being less than wholly intact.
He’s as cold as ice, his expression merciless.
Gesturing to the body, he directs the others, “See to him.”
The three jump to action.
Tage’s voice rings out with more ferocity.
“And just so there is no confusion among any of you, she is under my protection. If anyone mistreats her again, you can look for another pride to join. It won’t be this one.
And if that means it’s just me . . .” He shrugs fatalistically.
“I already left one nest of vipers years ago. I’d rather go at it alone than live again in a pride without heart or honor. ”
Viggo answers. “Understood, Alpha.”
“We’re with you,” Danhy adds.
Merik nods vigorously.
Eyes still fierce, Tage turns to me, but I stand my ground. I even manage not to shrink away when he approaches and sweeps me up into his sweat- and blood-streaked body. I swallow back my sound of protest.
“Now.” Tage looks at each of them, adjusting me a little higher in his arms. “I’ll attend to her wounds—”
Danhy speaks up, coming alive. “What of your own injuries?”
“I’m fine. I can tend to the both of us.”
“Viggo or I can attend to her for you,” she offers, “so that you may—”
“I have her.”
Danhy blinks her umber eyes. “In . . . your den?”
“Not that it is anyone’s concern, but it won’t be the first time she’s shared my den.” At the truth of that, Danhy’s face burns bright beneath her tan skin, and I have no doubt she’s remembering Cyphus’s words. You want to fuck her.
Viggo looks away uncomfortably, and I know he’s recalling it, too.
Merik, the newcomer, hangs back, watching with wide-eyed interest.
In my touch-starved state, I don’t relish spending another night alone with him in his den. Not after how I behaved with him in the hot spring. My throat suddenly thickens at the memory of us locked together.
Invisible—unseen or not—I really need to get back to Penterra. I don’t know how much more of this I can withstand.
I look up at the hard set of his handsome features, determination etched over every line and hollow—in the deep set of his eyes, in the sweep of his inky lashes, in the sensual curve of his mouth.
The scent of battle clings to him . . . the fight still fresh on his body, in the flex of his jaw, in the strain and contraction of his muscles beneath his skin.
I tell myself sharing his den is a perfunctory move.
For him, it’s about my safety. Maybe he feels guilt after what happened to me and thinks I deserve the comfort of his furs.
I don’t know. But I do know this does not involve emotion or intimacy.
He’s the leader of this pride. The alpha.
The blood on the air, filling my nose, just made that indisputable.
I can share a den with him. He can even remain naked.
It doesn’t have to mean anything. Nothing has to happen. I can keep my hands to myself and stay to my side of the furs. The echo of his words replayed through my head. I won’t touch you again.
Carrying me, Tage sweeps past the others and marches down the tunnel into his den. I twist my fingers in my lap to keep them from brushing all of his warm, beckoning skin still humming from recent combat.
I clear my throat and decide to try to steer the conversation into something other than the dead body behind us. “What happened out there? While you were gone? I heard the fighting. They sounded so close.”
“Humans at war. What else?” Tage expels a weary sigh. “They were close. For now, we’re safe. The threat has passed. The humans have moved out of our territory.”
My shoulders ease a bit at this, and I didn’t realize how much this still lurks in my mind as a worry.
We enter his den, and I look around as though it might have changed in the time since I was last here. Five days, I think. I’m not even sure how much time passed while I was tethered to that boulder. Even beyond that, how long since I first joined them in this cavern.
A lifetime came and went since I stood in the ruins of a smoldering Isstad—an overwhelming blur of blood and pounding wings and flashing dragon eyes and sweat and drudgery and mist and cold, insentient rock.
Time doesn’t feel real here. It does not exist. In this cave, I’m an insect trapped in a jar.
Tage lowers me down onto a pallet of furs, and I try not to think how it will be just the two of us again. A relief . . . and a torment.
He avoids meeting my eyes as he settles me in like a child put to bed. “Are you cold? You’re shivering.”