Chapter Twenty-Five
Haide
“Yeah?” Legend pushes into my face. “How are you so fucking sure?”
I get where he’s coming from. If it weren’t our lives at stake here, it might even be kind of hot.
Well, it still is.
But he needs to fucking trust me.
The answer is simple—to me. The others might need a while to catch on.
Because I can hear it now.
The island doesn’t feel like a prison when I think of it anymore, not fully.
It feels old. Hungry. Waiting. The soul stone at my temple throbs, and with it comes that same low awareness I felt in the vision: like the land itself is no longer some distant memory but a friend turning toward me.
Reaching for me, yes, but not as a trap or missing piece to its curse.
Salvation. That’s what it feels like.
My first home needs me.
That prison now feels so fucking precious, it’s almost confusing. Like part of me can’t recognize what I saw it as my whole life, with what I now know it to be. But the deeper, less bitter part knows it with every nerve in my body.
“Because I understand it now,” I say quietly, and the room goes still around the words. “Or maybe it understands me. Either way, it’s the only thing that’s made sense all damn night.”
Knight drags a hand down his jaw. “That’s not reassuring.”
“It wasn’t meant for you.”
Sinner snorts.
Legend doesn’t laugh. His eyes stay locked on mine, searching, probably trying to decide whether that answer calms him or pisses him off. Going by the hard set of his mouth, I’m guessing both.
Cosima, still lounging in her chair like she didn’t just light a match and toss it into the center of our lives, again, swirls the wine in her glass. “Then by all means, children. Go chase your answers but be warned. In order for magic to give, it must take.”
I want to throw the damn glass at her head, but Creed beats me to it as hellhounds leash around her wrists. They wipe the smirk clean off her mouth as she growls, attempting to break free, but the leashes hold steady.
“We’ll deal with you later, Mother.” Sinner chuckles. “Can’t have you disappearing into thin air to come bite us in the ass down the road.”
Okay. Guess I’m in charge here.
I push back from the table. “Cool. Great. Love that. Let’s go.”
Knight straightens. “Where to?”
“Outside.”
London moves first, already cutting toward the archway that leads back into the courtyard. Silver and Vicente follow, Creed a step behind them, still carrying guilt around him like a second coat. Zev hops down from the table with a stretch, expression bright in a way I don’t trust.
“Please tell me the plan involves violence and terrible decisions,” he says.
“It involves you shutting the fuck up and keeping up,” I shoot back.
He grins. “So yes.”
We spill out through the broken hall and into the open courtyard where skies wash the stone silver-blue. For one strange second, it almost feels peaceful. Then the wind shifts and drags smoke over the walls, and the illusion dies like it should.
Knight lifts his hand, power already gathering at his palm, the familiar shimmer of a portal starting to bend the air. “I’ll open—”
“No.”
The word leaves me hard enough to cut.
He pauses, frowning. “What?”
“No magic markers.” I keep moving, boots striking the stone while my eyes sweep the open space ahead. “If Arabella’s watching for us—and she is—then the first thing she’ll look for is portal use. You tear open enough sanctioned magic and we may as well send her a handwritten fucking invitation.”
London’s brows pinch. “Then how are we getting there?”
A smile pulls at my mouth before I can stop it.
I step into the center of the courtyard and tip my chin toward the open sky.
The dragons are already there.
Every single one of them lined in perfect formation along the outer wall, wings tucked, claws gouged deep into stone.
Great heads lift toward me as if they’ve been waiting for my next breath to move.
The moon catches scales in flashes of different colors—red, green, gold, smoke-black, bronze, silver.
Massive bodies. Ancient eyes. Fire banked behind teeth and bone.
All of them.
Except—
My heart gives a vicious little wrench.
Except Thyrix.
The empty place where he should be hurts worse than I’m prepared for. The grief hits fast enough that I have to swallow around it before it claws its way up my throat.
Legend comes in close without making a show of it, his knuckles brushing once over my cheekbone. I hate how easy it is to breathe when he touches me now. Or maybe I love it. Hard to tell.
Worse to admit.
“Who do you want to ride with, baby?” he rasps.
I open my mouth to answer and then frown as something new stirs under my skin.
“Beast?”
Legend frowns, listening.
“Not me, Hellpet.”
Power rises sharp and sudden through my spine, so quick I don’t even have time to brace before the ground falls away beneath me.
I jerk and in the next breath, I’m fucking hovering several feet above the courtyard—and only lifting higher.
“Luda, what the fuck?” Zev blurts, grinning.
London laughs. “Well, that’s fucking cool.”
The air curls beneath my feet like invisible hands, steady and sure, lifting me higher until I surpass even the dragons. My black hair whips around my face while the jewels at my temples blaze hot enough to hurt, and below me every dragon in the courtyard lowers its head.
Legend looks up.
The expression on his face almost knocks the breath out of me.
It isn’t just awe.
It’s reverence. Pride. Something deep and male and feral that says mine so loudly through the bond I can practically taste it.
My lips twitch.
Then I laugh and shoot higher.
The wind catches me hard as I rise, arms spreading without thought while the power carries me in a smooth arc over the courtyard. I spin once, black flames flickering at my fingertips, and for half a second the grief eases enough for something almost like joy to slip through.
Below, the dragons answer with a collective roar.
Then reality punches all of us in the teeth.
A portal tears open above the far side of the courtyard. It splits the air jagged and wrong, and something drops through it so fast it hits the ground with a wet slap that turns my stomach inside out.
“Is that—”
A fucking body.
Time seems to stop for a moment before another portal rips open not far from the first.
Another body falls.
Then another.
And another.
The air fills with the scent of blood so thick it coats the back of my throat.
The courtyard erupts into a confusion of shouts and scraping steel as gifted surge backward, trying to understand what the fuck they’re looking at.
Warriors and guards storm in from every angle but keep their distance until their kings give an order.
I drop fast.
“What the hell are you doing?” I hear Legend shout, looking to see Zev running up to one of the bodies.
“Haide!” he shouts but I’m already following as he drops beside the fallen boy.
Creed gets there first, voice low and disbelieving. “That’s the boy from the photo.” He looks back to me. “The one you saw at the murder site in Darkadia.”
He’s right.
The young exile’s chest is caved in on one side, skin torn open and slick with blood and ash, but his clothes smell like salt water. His eyes flutter before going wide in blind, animal panic.
“How?” Knight asks, but everyone must have figured it out by now. He just wants someone to say it.
“That’s how Zev got here,” I say, “And your mother.”
Another body hits the ground rolling ten feet away, coughing blood across the stone. I look around at the portals still splitting open overhead and everything in me goes cold.
“Someone figured it out.” Legend frowns. “They die on Exile, come back to Rathe trick.”
My eyes narrow on the chaos raining into the courtyard. Every guard has come to attention. So has every king, as the brothers stare across their lands with knitted brows.
“No,” I say.
Legend’s head whips toward me. “What do you mean no?”
I tear my gaze from the bodies and look at the Kings of Rathe, settling last on the one who belongs to me. “Not to destroy us.” My voice hardens. “To distract us.”
Vicente is already barking orders to the nearest warriors, but I cut across him anyway, power still crackling at my skin.
“Vicente,” I snap.
He turns instantly.
“Fight to kill. If they die here, that’s the end of the game for them now.”
He doesn’t hesitate. “Done.”
He pivots and roars commands across the courtyard. Silver moves with him; their soldiers break into formation as more bodies drop from the sky like broken sacrifices.
I look at the Kings.
At Knight who watches his mate with worry.
At Sinner whose grin has vanished entirely now that there’s real blood on the ground.
At Creed, pale and furious. At Legend, whose attention keeps cutting between the falling bodies and me like he’s trying to protect me from ten different things at once and hates that he can’t.
“Let’s go.”
“I call Ben!” London shouts, already sprinting for the massive green beast.
Knight growls something that sounds suspiciously like her full name, which only makes her laugh. Ben lowers himself enough for her to grab a scale ridge and haul herself up. The green dragon immediately throws his head back with an arrogant roar like he’s proud to be chosen.
Show-off.
Zev whistles low. “I want one.”
“You can earn one,” I mutter. “But for now, looks like she’s willing.”
“Aren’t they all?” he murmurs as he hops up and strokes her scales.
Everyone is seated and settled, aside from me. I shoot upward, spinning once through the moonlight as the entire formation rises with me like I’m the center point they’ve all been waiting for.
Wings slam downward with enough force to shake the courtyard, dust, blood, and scattered petals blasting across the stone as they rise in a thunder of scale and fire.
Below, chaos still tears through the castle grounds: warriors intercept the fallen exiles as they hit the ground, steel flashing, magic sparking. Above, the sky opens black and wide.
This is what I was made for.
I know it now in my marrow.