Chapter 7
ESME
“The next step,” Dayn says, his amber eyes shifting toward the window, “is the…”
His voice trails off.
Then his body snaps into a rigid, predatory stance. The change is so abrupt it’s a shock. One moment he was a scholar in a dusty room; the next, he is the obsidian beast in human skin, his nostrils flaring as he scents the air.
“Dayn?” I whisper, my hand instinctively dropping to the hilt of the small dagger at my belt—a poor substitute for the specialized weapons I left at Darkbirch.
“Out,” he snarls, the word more a rumble than a speech. “Now!”
He doesn't wait for me to move. He grabs my arm, his grip bruising, and hauls me toward the door. We hit the stairs just as the front window downstairs shatters, accompanied by a high-pitched, harmonic chime.
“Clearbloods?” I hiss.
We have no time to react. The front door vaporizes. A blast of white-hot energy, laced with veins of familiar blue, tears through the oak. The force of it sends splinters whistling through the air like shrapnel.
I dive for cover behind the couch. Dayn is still on his feet, his hands glowing with a violent, molten light.
Five figures silhouette themselves against the morning light flooding through the ruined doorway.
They aren't the clunky, armored soldiers of Heathborne’s traditional infantry.
These move with a terrifying, liquid agility that makes my skin crawl.
They wear sleek, matte-black tactical gear that seems to absorb the light, and their faces are obscured by smooth, featureless masks.
But it’s the weapons that make my stomach drop.
They carry long, elegant rifles that pulse with a sickening, rhythmic amber-blue light—dragon magic, warped for their clearblood use and distilled into a mechanical delivery system.
I wonder how many more dragons they’ve managed to capture so far.
I imagine some in captivity somewhere, their power being siphoned and corrupted.
However many, the clearbloods are using shortcut methods to weaponize draconic power; faster than going through the process of internal integration like they were trying with Mazrov.
Likely because they don’t have the time currently.
But I’m sure that’s still on the cards for their longterm game.
Just like darkbloods want to evolve themselves with Ide power, clearbloods want to evolve with draconic magic. The cycle doesn’t end.
One of the clearbloods fires.
A bolt of blue energy, brilliant and jagged, streaks across the room.
Dayn deflects it with a sweep of his hand, the gold light of his magic clashing with the distorted color of the bolt.
The impact shakes the house to its foundations.
Dust pours from the ceiling, and the high-backed chair I’d touched earlier—my father’s chair—is caught in the crosshairs and reduced to cinders in an instant.
“Target the darkblood,” a voice hisses from behind one of the masks. “Capture the Draxion asset alive. Kill the Salem.”
The four other clearbloods fan out with unnatural speed.
They almost blur. It’s the kind of movement I’ve only seen from vampires or dragons.
They’ve done something to themselves as well—perhaps injected themselves with short-term draconic mojo, the way darkbloods use injectable infusions for certain emergency situations.
Why are they here? They must’ve had surveillance on this place—surveillance so discreet we didn’t notice—on the off-chance a Salem came back here after decades.
Two of them approach my direction while the other three circle Dayn, their rifles emitting a low-frequency whine that makes my head throb.
I reach for my magic, trying to pull the darkness from the corners of the room to form a shield, but the air feels too…
saturated, with the clearbloods' tainted energy. My power feels sluggish, suppressed by the sheer volume of draconic-infused static they’re putting out. My magic isn’t as strong as Dayn’s.
“Dayn, I can't get a lock!” I yell, ducking as a beam of light shears off the top of the sofa.
“Keep down!”
Dayn catches a clearblood mid-air, his hand closing around the man's throat.
The clearblood tries to discharge a shock, but Dayn ignores it.
He slams the man into the stone hearth with enough force to kill him instantly, then spins, a wall of flame erupting from his palms to intercept a volley of blue bolts heading my way and keep the clearbloods from getting closer to the sofa.
But the bastards are coordinated. One of them vaults over the remains of the dining table, his matte-black boots silent as he lands. He reaches for three metallic spheres at his belt and rolls them across the floor.
“Dayn, watch out!” I scream.
The spheres don’t explode but implode, a vacuum of light sucking the heat right out of the air, turning the room suddenly extremely cold.
The amber energy from Dayn’s palms flickers, smothered by a localized suppression field apparently specifically tuned to draconic frequencies.
They’re siphons—cold, hungry pieces of technology designed to starve a dragon of his fuel.
Shit.
The three clearbloods circling Dayn don't miss the opening. They draw short, black instruments which suddenly click and launch shimmering nets that expand mid-air, humming with corrupted energy.
I don’t get to see what happens next. The other two targeting me don't hesitate. One of them shoves the sofa aside and I scramble backward, my heels catching on the loose floorboard. I try to stand, to hurl a shadow-bolt, but the air is absolutely choked with static now. It feels like trying to breathe through wool. My magic is a distant echo, muffled by the clearbloods’ interference.
Now I’m pinned against the wall, the cold stone biting into my back.
A clearblood raises his rifle, the barrel humming as it gathers a point-blank charge. Through the featureless mask, I can feel his deep-brown eyes, his cold, clinical focus. He isn't a soldier. He’s an exterminator.
“Salem whore-filth,” he rasps from the mask, and his finger tightens on the trigger.
“What did you say?” comes a growl that’s more dragon than human.
Then, a roar that feels like more than just sound shatters the remaining glass in the house. The clearblood in front of me staggers from the shock. It’s Dayn. But he isn't glowing with gold anymore. He looks like a void, his form flickering as if he’s being viewed through a cracked mirror.
My brain short-circuits, trying to process what I’m seeing. He must’ve realized the siphons are tuned to his draconic heat. Traps built for a dragon's fire, designed to swallow his specific frequency. So, with a snarl of pure, unadulterated fury, Dayn… stops being a dragon.
I can sense a subtle pulling sensation, somewhere deep within me, and I realize he’s reaching into our bond, grabbing the cold, fluid shadow of my magic and pulling it into himself.
He doesn't fight the siphons but feeds them a lie.
He forces a massive surge of my energy through the link, masking his signature with the jagged, dissonant frequency of a Salem darkblood.
The siphons choke. The mechanical spheres emit a high-pitched, agonized whine as they try to process a magical signature they weren’t built to contain.
In that moment of technological confusion, the suppression field flickers.
The oppressive, freezing static vanishes, replaced instantly by a heat so fierce it singes the air in my lungs.
Dayn moves.
He doesn’t look like a man anymore. No trace left of the calculating prince. He is a predator, dangerous and absolute. He almost blurs across the room, tearing into the three closest to him with a brutal beam of fire, so fast they’re down before I realize it.
But it’s the one who stood over me—the one who called me whore-filth—who receives the full weight of the dragon’s shadow.
The clearblood tries to retreat through the shattered window, his rifle wavering in his grip. He attempts one more shot but can’t match Dayn’s speed as he swipes the weapon out of the air with a backhand that sends it flying across the room.
Dayn pins him against the wall, his hand closing around the man’s throat. The clearblood’s feet lift off the floor, his matte-black mask cracking under the pressure of Dayn’s grip.
“What did you call her?” Dayn breathes, his voice an almost tectonic rumble that seems to vibrate the very floorboards beneath my feet. His eyes are molten gold, glowing with a terrifying, unhinged light. “And you wanted to… hurt her, even while she stood defenseless?”
“Dayn,” I start, my voice unsteady.
He doesn't hear me. He doesn't seem to hear anything but the roar of his own blood. Dayn’s hand sinks into the clearblood’s tactical vest, holding him like a sack of grain.
Then he drags him, the man’s boots scraping uselessly against the floorboards, leaving jagged tracks in the dust. Dayn hauls him until he’s inches from my feet, then slams him down onto his knees with a force that makes the wood groan.
“Look at her,” Dayn orders, his voice a low, vibrating snarl.
The clearblood’s mask is broken, revealing a face pale with terror and smeared with blood.
He tries to spit, a final, pathetic act of defiance, but Dayn’s hand closes around the man’s wrist. There’s a sickening, wet crunch as Dayn slowly, methodically, grinds the bones into splinters.
The man’s scream is a high, thin sound that cuts through the silence of the summer house.
“You called her what?” Dayn repeats, his golden eyes unblinking, fixed on the man’s suffering. He leans in close to the clearblood’s ear. “Did you know she’s my wife? My blood. You will beg her for the air you breathe.”
Dayn’s other hand entangles in the man’s hair, forcing his head down until his forehead is pressed into the dust at the toes of my boots. I stand frozen, my heart a frantic drum behind my ribs. The violence is clinical, intimate, and utterly terrifying.
“Say it,” Dayn whispers. “Apologize for your existence. Tell her you are the dirt beneath her heel.”
He applies pressure to the man’s broken wrist, a slow, agonizing twist. The clearblood sobs, a jagged, broken sound. “I... I’m sorry,” he gasps. “I’m... nothing. I’m filth. Please... forgive...”
“Louder,” Dayn growls, slamming the man’s face into the floor again. “Let her feel your shame.”
“Please!” the man wails, his pride completely dismantled by the sheer, agonizing pressure of Dayn’s grip. “Forgive me! I am nothing! A piece of fucking shit! Spare me!”
Dayn looks up at me, and for a second, the gold in his eyes sharpens. It’s a question, a dark offering. Do I want him to stop? Do I want this man to live?
I look at the clearblood—at the weapon he used to try and erase me, at the clinical hatred in his eyes before Dayn broke him.
He wouldn't have hesitated. He wouldn't have felt a shred of remorse to end me or any number of my people. And if we let him go, I have no doubt that he’ll continue his campaign of hatred, possibly even worse than before.
This side of Dayn catches me off guard. But I don’t stop him.
Dayn sees my silence and accepts it. He stands, dragging the man up by the back of his neck. The clearblood is a limp, broken thing now, his spirit extinguished long before his body. Dayn’s hands move with a terrifying, languid grace as he reaches for the man’s head.
He presses his thumbs into the soft hollows beneath the clearblood's jaw, forcing it open.
Then, with methodical precision, he hooks his fingers inside the man's mouth.
The clearblood's eyes bulge as Dayn's grip tightens, his knuckles whitening.
With a single, savage motion, Dayn wrenches downward, tearing the mandible clean from its hinges.
The wet, meaty sound of cartilage and bone separating fills the room as the lower jaw dangles grotesquely from strips of flesh.
The man's gurgling scream dies in his ruined throat before Dayn drops the body, and it hits the floor with a heavy, final thud.
The silence that follows is deafening. Dayn stands over the corpse, his chest heaving, his hands still trembling with a dark, residual energy. He looks at me, and the molten gold in his eyes slowly begins to recede.
“You won’t be hearing from him again,” he growls.