Chapter 32
Stesha
The lich inside my head is pain like I’ve never known.
The thing’s fury is agony, as though it’s punching, stabbing, and ripping at everything in my skull.
Memories from long ago bubble up. The sad, gray memories of an orphan, cold and hungry and forgotten.
Memories thick with loneliness and despair.
Loneliness that I’ve always feared will overtake me again.
No family. No one to cherish. No one to protect.
Then, a sliver of hope, in the form of an old man and his lively granddaughter.
And dragons. So many dragons.
The memories come so fast that my head feels like it’s on fire.
All the while the lich hurts me, I can feel it searching.
Rooting around my memories for something to punish me with.
It sees Zenevieve through my eyes down the years, smiling and flush with happiness and health. Embracing her dragon. Embracing me.
You lusted for her. You slaked your rut with her anytime you wanted.
“Never,” I manage through gritted teeth. “She was under my protection. I wanted my mate and no one else, and I didn’t know she was my mate. If I knew, it would have been easy to wait for her. It would have been an honor.”
Never? it sneers. Never? That’s a lie.
It hammers me with my bleakest memories, and I writhe in pain.
The devastation on her face as I told her I have a mate, and it’s not her.
The very same day I spent my rut with her.
Then weeks of waiting outside the Flame Temple, fearful that she would die from lavish sickness.
That first sight of her after she returned to the dragongrounds, stick thin with sores on her mouth and haunted eyes that sharpened with accusation as she stared at me.
“I hope it was worth it for you. Did I give you enough of myself? I apologize if you’re still not satisfied, but this is all that’s left of me. ”
“You think you can hurt me with what’s in my own mind?” I gasp, every nerve ablaze with fire. “There’s not a day that goes by when I don’t remind myself what a failure I’ve been.”
The lich tears me apart in frustration, then seizes hold of something new and thrusts it at me.
It’s been hunting through Zenevieve’s memories, and this must be one that hurts her.
I wince as I see myself through my mate’s eyes as she sits atop Minta, that day after her lavish sickness.
I can feel how her body aches, and that her heart is scarred with pain.
Shame burns through me. I did that to her. I should have ended my life on the spot. I should end it now for what I did to my own mate. I can’t help the plea for mercy that bursts from my lips. “No, please don’t.”
I want to die. Anything but feel that painful moment through her and feel how badly I failed her.
Don’t you want it all to end? Finish it. The sword is in your hands.
I’m on my knees with the tip of my blade pressing against my stomach. It wants me to destroy myself in front of my mate. My muscles strain with the effort not to give in.
The lich forces her memory into my mind, only it holds nothing that I anticipated.
It’s…sad.
Zenevieve relived this memory just now because the lich forced her to, and it’s filled with her sorrow for both of us.
No sharp fury. No burning hatred. There’s softness attached to that memory of us.
She’s taken that memory in her arms, held it, comforted it, cared for it like a wild animal aching to be soothed.
A lump thickens in my throat, and I feel my lips curve in a bittersweet smile.
“Oh, Zen. I already told you, I will decide when I deserve to be forgiven.”
But she’s done it anyway.
“I heard her speaking with your voice just now,” I tell the lich, sweat pouring down my face.
“Calling her useless. Pathetic and forgiving. Can she hear you now, raging at me? You were hoping to throw hatred for each other in our faces, but you couldn’t find any.
Do you know why? We don’t hate each other, you fucking monster.
I have hated myself, but you have given me the gift of something that I would never have believed otherwise.
She forgives me. The worst moment of our lives, and Zenevieve doesn’t push it away.
It was painful, but it’s hers. It’s ours.
Not yours. We will never forget it and it has no power over us, so get out of my head and fuck off. ”
DIE, the lich shrieks.
But I can feel Nilak, and she’s fighting to get the monster out of her head as well. And nothing is stronger than the two of us together. The lich hasn’t got any hatred to sink its claws into, so it goes careening out of our heads with an angry, fading shriek.
I open my eyes and see green light fading at the edges. And my mate, kneeling before me and desperately grappling with the sword I have pushed against my stomach.
I throw the sword aside and pull Zenevieve into my arms, holding her so tightly and shuddering in the aftermath of that thing in my head. I can feel her shaking in relief.
“I said that I would tell you when I deserve to be forgiven,” I say, my face buried in her hair.
“You don’t get to decide that,” she says, laughing and crying at the same time. “I’ve forgiven you, and you can’t make me change my mind.”
I take her face in my hands and look deep into her eyes. “Aash’lin, I don’t ever want to hurt you like that again. I will never push you away or make you doubt my devotion to you.”
“I believe you never will.”
While Zenevieve and I have been enduring our own personal torment at the lich’s hands, the rest of the residents of Lenhale are fighting for their lives.
We get slowly to our feet, hand in hand, and take in the dragons flying overhead, the smoke in the skies, the sounds of screaming.
It’s hard to know where we’re needed most.
Zenevieve points toward the dragon bridge. “Look, the queen has returned from Amriste.”
Esmeral alights on the ground, and Isavelle slides down her dragon’s flank and runs for the castle. The Omega dragon turns and runs in the other direction, straight to the nesting caves to protect her hatchlings.
A massive dark shape passes low overhead, and I hear the rumble of dragonfire. I glance up, and my mouth goes dry. Scourge’s eyes are green. Emerald sparks and flames are licking around his parted jaws.
The lich has found its next victim to possess.
Zenevieve seizes my arm. “While the lich was possessing you, Nilak’s eyes and fire turned green. Zabriel has been possessed, but it’s not Zabriel that the lich wants. It called me weak and talentless. It wants a magic user. It wants Isavelle.”
Zenevieve and I stare at each other in horror.
“You’re right. Zabriel will be with Sylvi because that’s where Isavelle will go. The queen is running straight to the lich. We have to stop her.”
Zenevieve and I turn and run up to the castle, both of us calling out for the queen.
Isavelle can’t hear us over the din of battle and people screaming and crying.
She heads for the royal rooms. We’re joined by the queen’s bodyguards, Fiala and Dusan, and we race up the stairs behind her, Zenevieve informing them of what we have guessed.
“We have to stop her,” Dusan pants as we race along the corridor, and he yells, “My queen, do not go in that room.”
But we’re too late. We see the flick of Isavelle’s cloak as she disappears into the bedroom she shares with the king, and it slams closed behind her.
The four of us beat upon the doors, but they are as hard as stone and magically sealed against us.
I press my ear to the wood and try to hear what is being said within, but there’s only silence.
Several minutes later, we’re still battering ineffectually on the door when it suddenly swings open. The baby is crying. Outside the open windows, Scourge is roaring. King Zabriel’s eyes are a sickly, flaming green.
Isavelle, pale with fright, calls to us, “Take our baby out of here,” and she runs for the terrace.
Fiala goes for the baby, and I lunge for the queen. My fingers snatch at her sleeve as she turns toward the terrace and runs toward Scourge, not understanding that Scourge is also possessed.
“No, no, no, no—” I reach for her, but I’m too late to snatch her back.
Fiala and Dusan have already backed out of the room. I grasp Zenevieve and push her behind me. The lich in Zabriel’s body is standing just a few feet away. It raises Zabriel’s hand, grinning at us, and an invisible pulse of power sends us flying back against the wall.
By the time we’ve picked ourselves up and I’ve checked that Zenevieve isn’t gravely injured, Zabriel has disappeared out the window and Scourge has taken both the king and queen into the skies.
“The lich has them both,” Zenevieve cries. “Do you think it’s doing to them what it did to us?”
I have no doubt that the lich is going to use every last drop of its strength to bend Isavelle to its will, if it’s her it truly wants.
“Go after them, dragonmaster,” Fiala calls to me. “We will guard the princess no matter what.”
I take one last look at the wingrunners’ resolute expressions and Princess Sylvi’s kicking feet as she’s cradled in Fiala’s arms, and I seize Zenevieve’s hand. “Guard her well. Nilak will find the king and queen. Aash’lin, let’s go.”
But when we reach Nilak, Scourge, the lich, and Queen Isavelle are nowhere in sight. I turn on the spot as I stare at the skies, cursing loudly. Nilak didn’t see which way they went. The black dragon disappeared into the darkness, and she can sense Scourge nowhere near the castle.
“Stesha, look.” Zenevieve is pointing at the sky toward the east. I expect to see a deluge of green flames, or some other sign of the lich.
Instead, there’s an ear-shattering roar, and illuminated by the flames of the burning city, an enormous yellow dragon soars low over Lenhale, flanked by a scarlet Alpha and two smaller yellow females.
“Is that Auryn, Ragdyn, Aurissa, and Auriana?” Zenevieve asks.