Chapter Twenty Four
A Prince Scorned
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Dracyg Dominion, Zarynth.
Gedeon.
Sunsi’s hammering heart had betrayed her.
Gedeon could hear it. Knew that Sekun could too. His brother had picked up his own scent on her like a trained hound, and that, mixed with that terrified pounding in her chest, was enough for him to know she was guilty.
Sekun was right. She could not lie to him.
‘Let go of me,’ Sunsi hissed, attempting to wriggle out of his grip.
It was futile.
No longer laughing, Sekun backed her into the corner of the bar, roughly slamming her against the shelves. Bottles tipped and rained down, the smell of sweet mead filling the air as the glass smashed on the hard ground at their feet.
‘Where is he?’ Sekun growled.
‘Get your hands off of me-’
Sekun slammed her again, harder this time. More bottles fell and smashed around them. ‘Where is he?’
‘Go! Get out!’ cried Sunsi, and Gedeon knew that the order was meant for him.
But he would not run. He would not leave her behind. Sekun’s voice dropped as he lowered his mouth to her ear. ‘Even now, drenched in fear… you are irresistible.’
Still invisible, Gedeon moved out of the shadows and unsheathed his sword, the sharp blade ready to swipe across his brother’s ankles, ready to slice through bone like an axe to a tree-
It was not to be.
Sekun heard the movement and spun, drawing his own sword and clanging it against Gedeon’s in a clash of metal. The foreign touch against the blade instantly rendered the illusionist’s spell on Gedeon’s body void.
A wide grin split the crown prince’s face as he beheld his younger brother before him. ‘The elusive, traitorous Prince of Fire, finally found squatting in a shithole tavern, and being protected by a woman. How the mighty have fallen.’
Gedeon warned quietly, ‘Let her go, Sekun.’
‘Ah,’ said Sekun before chuckling. ‘You are still a righteous cunt, I see.’ He took a step back, grabbing Sunsi and forcing her in front of him. His thumb stroked deliberate circles at the centre of her throat, just above her collarbones.
Right where her windpipe lay beneath.
Gedeon dared not move. ‘Let. Her. Go.’
‘It seems a pity…’ Sekun began, giving a great sigh, his head side by side with Sunsi’s. ‘To waste a woman such as this. But alas, the Empress will not allow for such deceit and disloyalty to go unpunished… I predict she will be dead before the sun can slip over the horizon.’
His thumb pressed against the soft dip at Sunsi’s throat. Not enough to stop the air from getting to her lungs, but hard enough for the fear of death to flash in her hazel eyes. ‘Go, Gedeon,’ she rasped. ‘Go.’
Sekun’s answering laugh was a living, taunting thing.
‘What will you do, brother? Burn me where I stand? Shroud the room in your darkness to escape?’ Gedeon’s spine tingled at those words, and Sekun was smiling as though he knew.
Knew the damned curse still gripped his magic.
‘Lower your sword, you fucking fool,’ his brother sneered.
‘You have nothing. And I…’ Sunsi tried to gasp as his thumb pressed harder into her throat. ‘...have everything.’
One squeeze of his hand, and Sunsi would be dead.
But she was no damsel in distress.
His brother would never expect it. Would never expect a woman to outsmart him.
The flash of the small blade gripped in her hand caught Gedeon’s eyes just a moment before. She relaxed her body against Sekun’s, as if she might have fainted, and then she flung her arm up, the tip of her blade embedding itself in Sekun’s eye in a spurt of blood.
His cry was one of rage and imminent pain, and his grip around Sunsi’s neck released immediately as his hands flew to his face, frantically trying to pull the blade from his bleeding skull.
Gedeon struck.
His sword tore through Sekun’s shoulder, the same place the Eternal’s arrow had cut through his own skin just a few weeks back. His brother cried out again, throwing Sunsi’s small blade to the ground, glowering at Gedeon with unfathomable hate in the eye that was not punctured.
Over a hundred years of feuding had passed and he had allowed Sekun to bully him to submission, never truly fighting back, never letting his brother’s loathing for him get under his skin. But now…
‘I said,’ Gedeon murmured, twisting his sword and relishing in the grunt of pain his brother let out. He revelled in his own deliverance. Thrived in this overdue vengeance. ‘You will not touch her.’
He withdrew the sword and Sekun roared.
‘Gedeon!’ Sunsi exclaimed, and as he followed her terrified gaze, he understood why.
Tanwen. Tanwen, I need you. Now.
The commotion had awoken the sleeping city. Heads peeked out of doors, curious faces approached the tavern windows, peering in to locate the source of the noise.
‘We have to get out,’ Sunsi hissed at him. ‘They can’t find us here… they can’t find-’
Gedeon clamped a hand to her lips. His brother may have been incapacitated behind them, but his ears still worked just as well.
He turned to look at him.
But Sekun was gone. Salired out.
Which meant they had mere minutes before a blood-red sea of soldiers flooded the streets.
‘Follow my lead. Hood up, look down. Don’t let them see your face,’ Sunsi ordered, pulling her own over her head.
She pulled the tavern door open, and announced to the few onlooking neighbours, their nosing heads still peering from their doorways, ‘It seems some people do not know their ale limit.’ Her tone was light and cheery.
‘I am taking him home. Sorry to have disturbed your rest. Please, go back to your beds.’
‘Captain, is everything alright?’ came the voice of a man to their right, and as he approached, Gedeon saw from his uniformed black boots that he was a sentry.
‘Krafer,’ Sunsi said, a tight smile on her voice. ‘Nothing I cannot handle. Go back to your post. I have this under control.’
The sentry did not obey her order. Instead, he slowly moved toward Gedeon. ‘Captain…’ he said with hesitancy. ‘Is… is that…?’
Sunsi’s voice lowered, turning stone cold as she stood between them. ‘I told you to leave, Krafer, do not make me ask again.’
Tanwen, hear me. Hear me. You were right, the whole time, you were right. I need you, friend.
Furious footsteps slapped the cobblestoned street, a hoard that would herd them into a corner with no escape. Summoned by a raging, mutilated prince.
‘You’re…’ Krafer said with dawning understanding, reaching for the sword at his hip, ‘...harbouring a fugitive.’
‘Stand down,’ Sunsi said dangerously. ‘That’s an order.’
But Krafer was still pulling his blade from its sheath.
‘Out of time,’ Gedeon muttered from under the hood, then ripped it back, pulling out his sword once more and striking it through Krafer’s heart.
‘No!’ Sunsi cried as her soldier fell to the ground.
‘We have to run. Now.’ Gedeon did not wait for her assent before grabbing her by the arm, forcing her into a sprint beside him. They had only one hope now, and that hope was not answering his call-
At the top of a ridge in the street, breath high in his lungs, Gedeon halted.
Waiting for them at the city’s edge, at the end of the street before the terrain levelled into the dust plains that ran into the River Emor, was a hundred soldiers.
But they were not Sunsi’s sentries.
Death-black armour covered their bodies, and on their heads sat horned helmets, reminiscent of the demonic creatures that had ruled Droria in the Void Ages.
High Wielders. Undoubtedly.
‘Gedeon, Gedeon, Gedeon…’ Sekun’s voice rang from behind through the sooty air.
Gedeon and Sunsi turned to see him passing slowly through the sentry ranks, his coat ruined from the puncture Gedeon dealt him but no longer bleeding, eye swollen shut and bloody. There were some things that even fae blood could not heal. It was unlikely his left eye would ever truly recover.
‘This is the end of the road, Gedeon,’ Sekun said.
‘You cannot run. You cannot hide. You can only face the consequences of your noble actions. And you.’ He turned to Sunsi, face darkening.
He pointed to his bloodied eye. ‘For this… I think I will beg the Empress to let me have you rather than a swift death. I will, of course, have to assure her that you will suffer greatly for your crimes against this Empire. But then I will take good, good care of you, Captain. Do not worry.’ He stepped forward, his gaze flicking to Gedeon.
‘I think I will also beg the Empress to make you watch, brother. I did not give you that courtesy with that half-blood whore of yours… I’ll be sure to be more generous this time. ’
Ignoring the rage that roared inside, Gedeon screamed one last desperate plea into the dragon bond: TANWEN! NOW! I NEED YOU NOW!
The sentries began to close in on them.
TANWEN-
No need to shout, princeling, I heard you the first time.
Gedeon could have wept with jubilant relief.
Dust and ash was whipped and scattered by the beating of the two magnificent wings attached to the wondrous beast that soared above them.
As Tanwen landed on the ground with a great thud in the middle of the street, sentries scrambling to move out of her way, Gedeon could not help the grin that split his face.
I have never been so glad to see anyone in my life.
What a charming sentiment, she hummed. The crown prince does not share the same feeling.
‘Archers! Bring it down! I want its skull mounted in the Throne Room!’ Sekun screamed at the dumbfounded sentries who fumbled with their bows at his command, ignorant to the fact that their arrows would glance off her scales like mere twigs.
Sekun had not seen Tanwen since she was a hatchling. The fear on his face now as his eyes feasted on the mighty sight of her, with raging fire threatening and visible through the iridescent scales low on her belly, would be imprinted into Gedeon’s mind as a very, very happy memory.
Gedeon dived for the open space underneath Tanwen’s neck, dragging a stunned Sunsi along with him, for he knew what his dragon friend was about to do.
Heat rose up from her underbelly, up and up and up until it blasted out of her mouth, an inferno of fire that could only be matched by his own.
The flaming stream swept around them, not to kill but to warn. A deadly line that none should dare to cross.
Only when her fire was a high, protective circle around them, did she lower her belly to the ground, straightening a wing for Gedeon and Sunsi to climb atop her.
Gedeon pulled himself onto the bone of her wing, then turned, hand outstretched for Sunsi to take hold of. Staring at him as if he had lost his mind, she cried, ‘Are you joking?’
‘Would you rather stay here?’
‘Gedeon, this is madness-’
‘She’s a friend,’ he swiftly assured her, hauling her up before she had a chance to hesitate any longer.
They settled in the crevice between Tanwen’s neck and scapula, Gedeon’s hands gripped on one of the three sets of horns on her head.
He did not have to tell Sunsi to hold on, for her arms were already wrapped tightly around his middle in blatant terror.
Get us out of here, Tan.
With pleasure, she replied, her mental voice smiling with triumph.
As Tanwen took off into the sky, Sunsi gave a little squeal in Gedeon’s ear. Both of their legs gripped tight around her muscular, scaled neck. He had ridden Tanwen countless times before, but never had he done so with a petrified woman at his back. It made holding on that much harder.
Where to, princeling?
Anywhere. Just get us out of-
A crack like lightning shot through the air, and the load on his back was suddenly freed as Sunsi was ripped from him. Gedeon whipped around, heart in his throat, to see Sekun gripping Sunsi by the hair with one hand, the other holding onto one of Tanwen’s spikes.
Not an ounce of humour nor arrogance rippled from his brother now. His face had contorted with frenzied fury.
Level out and get low, Gedeon told Tanwen. She obeyed without question, stretching her wings wide to glide slowly over the clouds.
‘This is between you and I, Sekun!’ Gedeon yelled. ‘Let her go.’
Sekun shifted his grip on Sunsi, yanking her close and closing his fist around her throat.
Sunsi’s face instantly turned puce, her fingers clawing the back of his hand for release but to no avail.
Sekun kissed the side of her head, the sensual movement abhorrent next to the hand choking her.
He whispered something in her ear, and as her eyes flashed with panic, Sekun looked at Gedeon, his face splitting into a crazed, malevolent grin. ‘As you wish, brother.’
He flung Sunsi from him as though she were nothing but a lifeless ragdoll.
SAVE HER!
Tanwen dove, chasing the falling Sunsi as she plummeted toward the unforgiving ground.
Gedeon could not stop to watch if Tanwen caught her, for he was falling himself, toward the tail end of Tanwen’s back before his desperate hands caught one of her spikes.
The breath was knocked from his lungs as Tanwen continued to plunge down, and for a few moments, it was all he could do to simply hold on, his brother doing the same behind him.
Dangerously close to the ground, Tanwen’s wings shot out to the side, and she finally levelled out once more. I have her.
Through the atmosphere Tanwen climbed once more, her wings beating against the ashy air. The angle of her body was sharper this time, an almost vertical ride into the heights of the dark sky.
Hold on tight, princeling.
Tucking her wings in toward her body, Tanwen twisted, rolling suspended in the air. The swift movement dislodged Sekun from her back, sending him careening back to ground, but Gedeon watched as he salired in mid-air, leaping to safety before his body could splatter the barren plains beneath them.
Will he salir back? Tanwen asked him as her wings flew out again.
Gedeon managed to lodge himself safely in between two spikes, letting his head fall back against the one behind as the wind rushed past him. No. His power was already depleting. It was a miracle he even got up here. Is Sunsi…?
Your woman is unconscious but alive.
Relief swept through his body like a rush of adrenalin. Good. Get us to high ground.
The highest ground in Zarynth is the Apex. You know I cannot go there.
Gedeon’s irritation rose. Vrethian, then! Anywhere, Tanwen! Just anywhere away from here.
Tanwen was quiet for a moment. I understand you are in the midst of a breakdown. She paused. But if you snap at me like that again, I may have to do the same to you as I did to your brother.
Gedeon, despite feeling like his entire life had been thrown in the Emor and was smouldering before his very eyes, almost laughed. Noted.
He did not look nostalgically back at the home they soared away from. The moment he had withdrawn his flames from Phaenon city, his fate had been sealed.
Dracyg was home no longer. There was no going back now.