Chapter 56
MYRA
Myra screamed. She raged. She tossed and kicked at the guards as they grabbed her.
She was wrong.
Wrong.
Wrong.
Wrong.
A web of blue veins ran across Laurince’s arms and neck as he bellowed.
Agony flooded her senses and forced her to her knees.
Myra dug her nails into a guard’s limb, and the man hissed, snatching his arm away from her.
Another immediately replaced him. There were too many, and she couldn’t fight them off.
She had no weapon, and her power was beyond her reach as she spiraled.
This wasn’t happening.
This couldn’t be happening.
Myra couldn’t breathe. Her lungs felt like they had collapsed. The air felt too thick. She was hyperventilating.
Laurince fought against the restraints, his muscles straining against them. One strap ripped free. His arm swung out and struck the nearest guard in the jaw as the man tried to hold Laurince down.
People in the audience shrieked in terror. Sebastian spoke, but Myra didn’t hear him.
It was the first time Myra had seen the serum in action. Whenever Dr. Thorne had given his victims the shot, Myra hadn’t stayed around for it to sink in, for the throbbing veins to turn blue, for the whites of their eyes to turn red.
Through her panic and sobs, she tried to aid him, but Laurince’s fury was unquenchable. It lashed out violently and with a ferocity she had only come across once. But this was entirely different from Graeson, though. Laurince’s emotions were wild, feral, and lethal.
Guards came forward, and Laurince fought them off as he freed his other arm.
With a primal roar, Laurince broke free from his bindings.
He snatched the leather strap holding his legs down and snapped it in half.
In seconds, Laurince was on his feet, chest heaving and sweat dripping from his forehead.
The guards hesitated, fear freezing them in place.
"Chain him!" Sebastian ordered.
The men snapped into action.
Myra shouted a warning through the gag, but it was too late. A guard kicked Laurince from behind, and Laurince’s knees buckled. The guards pounced, forcing him to the ground. One guard grabbed Laurince’s right arm while another grabbed his left. Together, they forced his hands behind his back.
"This is the work of your king! This is what he’s been hiding from you!" Sebastian shouted.
Laurince bellowed. His back arched, and his arms sprang free from the guards’ grasps. He convulsed, and his palms hit the floor with a thunderous crack as another violent scream poured from his mouth. As his skin took on a green hue, the veins became more prominent.
Sebastian shouted more commands at the guards, and a few approached Laurince with frightened steps.
Laurince was in too much pain to even notice the guards. With his eyes pinched shut, he collapsed, his jaw smacking the ground.
Laurince’s pain and torment wrapped around Myra and forced her to the ground along with him. She peeled her head up off the floor and gasped.
Something akin to bone ripped through Laurince’s shirt, tearing the fabric to shreds. Laurince thrashed on the ground as the bone grew. Pieces of his shirt fell to the floor, leaving the torn collar hanging around his neck.
Bile rose in Myra’s stomach, and she squeezed her eyes closed, unable to witness the transformation. But even with her eyes shut, she couldn’t erase the image.
Fabric ripped.
Screams of strangers echoed off the wall.
Still, Laurince’s painful bellow was the loudest. It pressed down on Myra, and she trembled beneath its weight.
The ground shook. At first, Myra thought it was only her body reacting to the pain, but then she heard nearby glass shattering, followed by feral shrieks echoing outside the throne room.
"We’re being attacked!" Sebastian yelled.
She snapped her eyes open. Sebastian wouldn’t.
Desperate screams filled the hallway as winged beasts flew into the throne room.
Sebastian had orchestrated this entire thing. He had attacked his very own people, all because he wished to paint Rian as the villain.
Those in the audience who sat closest to the doors fell backward. Some hopped over the benches, sprinting for safety, as drakonises poured into the room.
Bax, who had been held back by a set of guards when Laurince came out, broke free. He grabbed his sword as he charged at the drakonis that flew over the crowd. Several men followed him. Others ran toward Sebastian, surrounding him, their weapons drawn as they sought to protect him.
Even after meeting Nyrri, Myra was unprepared for the sight of the beasts.
These creatures were rabid, not docile like the familiar drakonis who chased butterflies.
These were the drakonises that Sebastian and Domitius had been creating together, the ones Sebastian was now claiming were Rian’s doing.
Each drakonis differed from the next. Some wings were nearly translucent, the glow of the torches peeking through the thin membranes.
Others were covered in feathers. And if Myra’s stomach wasn’t in her throat from fear already, she would have admired the beauty in their varying shades of gray.
Their black and gray wings sent gusts of wind toward the crowd, pushing anyone close backward. Myra fell.
One after another, the drakonises swarmed inside the throne room. The beasts’ feet smacked the ground with a crash that vibrated through the floors and rocked every nerve in Myra’s body.
In the fray, the guard behind her had abandoned her. She frantically searched for Laurince, Rian, and Bax—for any friendly face—but chaos reigned around her. She looked toward the dais, but she could not find Sebastian. Had he sent the drakonises on them and then abandoned his people?
The people, once seated, were now running, tripping over one another and screaming in terror as chaos erupted. Some escaped the drakonises’ claws as the beasts flew inside, but others weren’t as lucky.
Myra turned as a beast opened its jaw and snatched a stranger near the back of the room. The man’s scream pierced the air before a teeth-chattering crunch cut it off.
Somewhere, Rian yelled over his gag, and Myra spun around. She made to move toward Rian, but movement to her right caught her eye.
Red eyes bore into hers. The drakonis kicked at the ground, lowering its head and curling its lip as its wings flared out behind it. Drool dripped from its razor-sharp teeth. Then, the beast charged.
With her hands still bound, Myra scrambled to her feet. One, two, three steps in and something twisted around her ankle. Her bottom hit the floor, sending a shock wave of pain spiking up her spine and knocking her breath from her lungs. She looked down at her feet and cursed.
The chain had twisted around her right foot, causing her to slip. She yanked at the manacles, trying to free her ankle from their grip. She didn’t dare look up, afraid of what she would find barreling toward her.
Myra pulled and pulled, but the manacle wouldn’t budge.
Then, with nothing left to do, she flung herself on the ground uselessly, slamming her eyes shut as she braced for impact.
And in that moment, as the beast sprang toward her, she nearly laughed. It was only fitting that she would die by the creatures Domitius had forced her to help create.
In the seconds before the God of Death greeted her, Myra did not beg for forgiveness.
She could not be forgiven for the atrocities she had committed, for all the lives she had destroyed—Kallie and Mynhos and Laurince—and the lives her mistakes would surely destroy now. Myra was past the point of forgiveness.
So, as her death came for her, Myra did not cry.
She did not scream.
Death, she knew, was a mercy—something she did not deserve but welcomed either way.
She took one final breath, allowing the air to fill her lungs.
She thought of Laurince, Rian, Kallie, and the others—the people who did not deserve this fate. The people who deserved to live and to live freely. She prayed to any of the gods who were listening to protect the ones she loved. To let this war end before they suffered the same fate as she did.
This was how it ended for her—death by cowardice and weakness.
A heavy weight knocked into her side, and she slammed her eyes shut.
She waited for the pain, for the torment, for the drakonis’ teeth to tear apart her skin. But it never came. All she felt was a slight pang in her spine where her back had smacked into something hard.
Someone said something unintelligible, and her brows bunched together.
Was the God of Death here?
She tried to peel her eyes open, but she was afraid to look the god in the eye.
Her body shook as someone grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled the gag from her mouth. "Gods, what were you going to do? Just sit there and let it trample you, Haze?"
Myra’s eyes sprang open.
Concern and anger swirled within Laurince’s dilated, red-streaked eyes. Sweat soaked his thick black hair, and pain still twisted his features. Yet he was here, with her.
"Laurince, you’re—" She struggled to speak, and her heart hammered in her chest. "I’m not dead?"
Laurince scoffed, then grimaced as a spout of pain warped his features. He shivered and said through gritted teeth, "Not yet, but you might be soon if you don’t snap out of it."
Laurince sat up and rolled his shoulders back, and Myra gasped.
With a shaking hand, she reached out. Her fingertips hovered over the violent red skin around his shoulder blades. His skin was twisted and so red that it appeared as if he had been burned.
"Laurince," Myra whispered.
"Not the"—he shuddered, and the muscles around his shoulders rippled—"time."
He snatched the flimsy collar and ripped it from his neck. Then he grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her up to her feet, the chains rattling on the floor. "This might hurt."
Before she could question him, Laurince bent down and tugged on the chains, snapping them as if they were made of twine.
Myra’s jaw dropped in shock. "How did you do that?"