30. Quill
Quill
My heart felt like it stopped beating. All around me the room began to sway as panic filled me from head to toe. Ringing filled my ears and my stomach turned over. For a brief moment, I thought I was going to be sick.
“I’ll… I’ll never…” I began, gasping for air.
“Yes you will,” Thaddeus nodded, his fangs gleaming. “Whether you want to or not.”
“There is no amount of magic—”
“Oh please,” he laughed, his voice cutting me off.
“You can make all the empty threats you want, but I know the truth.” He stepped past Aeron chained to the floor and over to me.
He towered over me, his horns backlit by the chandelier high above.
“You are nothing. You come from a witch family that can barely light a candle without a match. The greatest thing your parents have ever done in their lives is pay their mortgage.” He leaned in closer.
“You do not scare me, Quill Aster. You don’t scare anyone. ”
I wanted to scream that he was wrong, that I wasn’t nothing. But the words wouldn’t come. My throat had closed up, and all I could do was stare up at him, at those golden eyes that were so much like Aeron’s and yet held none of the warmth I’d seen there.
Behind me, Aeron let out a sound I’d never heard from him before, something raw and broken that didn’t belong in a throat that could roar loud enough to shake stone. The chains rattled as he thrashed, and I felt more than saw the witches step back, giving him a wider berth even bound as he was.
“You son of a bitch,” I heard him choke out, the words distorted by the metal crushing his jaw. “You’re my grandfather. You raised me. You told me… you told me family meant everything—”
“And it does,” Thaddeus said, not even bothering to look at him.
His attention was fixed entirely on me, studying me the way someone might study an insect they were deciding whether or not to squash.
“Which is precisely why this will work so beautifully. The whole paranormal world already believes deep down that witches and monsters can’t coexist without disaster.
A little push in the right direction, and they’ll believe it with their whole hearts. Out loud. Forever.”
“You’re insane,” I whispered, my voice cracking. “You’re going to kill your own grandson to prove a point?”
“I’m going to save our world,” he corrected, something like genuine passion flickering across his features for the first time.
“Do you have any idea how many centuries witches and monsters have been clawing at each other, pretending at peace while resentment festers underneath? The Elder Council is weak. Divided. They’ll never make the hard choices necessary to keep our kind safe.
But show them their precious mixed-species academy burning.
Show them a Pyre heir murdered by the very witch he loved.
They’ll beg me to separate us. They’ll thank me for it. ”
Morgana laughed softly from where she stood, and the sound made my skin crawl. “He does love a dramatic flourish, doesn’t he?”
“I won’t do it,” I said again, forcing steel into my voice even though my whole body was shaking. “You can’t make me hurt him.”
“Oh, Quill.” Thaddeus almost sounded sad, like he pitied me.
“I’m not going to make you do anything. You misunderstand the plan entirely.
” He reached out, and before I could flinch away, his clawed fingers closed around my chin, tilting my face up toward his.
“Aeron is going to die tonight. That much isn’t negotiable.
But how the world sees it happen, well. That’s where you come in. ”
Ice flooded through my veins. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that I don’t need you to swing the blade of your own volition,” he said, releasing my chin with something like distaste, like touching me had dirtied his fingers.
“I’ll just kill you and bring you back to life.
Fresh undead are almost impossible to distinguish from the living.
When you cut Aeron down, the whole world will believe you did it without question, without hesitation, and without any interference from me. ”
I looked past him to Aeron, chained and bleeding on the marble floor, his golden eyes wide with horror, with grief, with something that looked terrifyingly like resignation. He wasn’t looking at his grandfather anymore. He was looking at me.
“Red,” he rasped, the chains distorting his voice into something broken. “Whatever happens—whatever they do—I need you to know that none of this is your fault. Do you hear me? None of it.”
“Don’t,” I begged, tears burning hot down my face. “Don’t talk like that. We’re getting out of here. We are.”
But even as I said it, I didn’t believe it. Not with Thaddeus standing over us both, radiating that terrible, patient calm of a man who had already won.
Thaddeus turned away from me then, his attention shifting to the two witches still holding my arms. “Prepare him,” he said, as though he were ordering a meal rather than my death. “I want it done cleanly. No struggle, no visible wounds beyond what’s necessary for the show.”
The witches untied my hands and I pulled back, yanking my hands from their grasp for one brief second.
“Tell me why first,” I shouted, shoving my hands in my pockets to show I wasn’t a threat.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know or if I was just buying time.
But I felt the glass potion bottle as my fingers wrapped around it.
“Tell me why you’re doing this. I deserve to know that much before you kill me. ”
“Silence that boy—” Morgana began, but Thaddeus cut her off.
“You want to know why?” he barked, turning on his heel and storming over to me. “I’ll tell you why.”
His golden eyes burned with something ancient and raw, a wound that had never scarred over properly no matter how many centuries had passed.
“Do you know how my mate died?” he asked, his voice suddenly quiet, almost gentle in a way that terrified me more than his shouting had. “No. Of course you don’t. Nobody remembers her anymore. Even Aeron doesn’t know her name because I still can’t bear to speak it aloud.”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. My fingers tightened around the vial in my pocket, feeling the cool glass against my palm, knowing it was my last hope and that I’d only get one shot to use it.
“She was murdered,” Thaddeus continued, pacing slowly in front of me now, his tail dragging across the marble with a soft hiss.
“In the middle ages, when dragons were hunted for parts. Our blood, our scales, our hearts, all of it worth a fortune to anyone desperate enough or greedy enough to try their luck. She was out hunting while I tended our nest when they found her. Witch hunters. They didn’t even have the decency to make it quick.
They wanted every piece of her while she was still breathing.
They said the magic was stronger that way. ”
His claws curled into fists at his sides, and for just a moment, I saw something almost human in his expression. Grief. Real, undiluted grief that hadn’t faded no matter how many years had passed.
“I felt her die,” he said. “Across an ocean, while I kept our one egg safe. I felt the bond between us snap like a twig underfoot. And I couldn’t do anything. I wasn’t there. I couldn’t do a thing to save my mate from being tortured to death by those monsters.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, and I meant it. Even if my mate was chained to the floor, and even knowing what he was about to do to us. “But that doesn’t mean—”
“Let me finish,” he snapped, rounding on me with a fury that made me stumble back a step.
“You want to understand? Then you’ll listen.
Because it happened again. My daughter, Aeron’s mother, and her husband.
They trusted witches. Befriended them. Thought the industrial age and the Elder Council had made everyone civilized, made everyone equal.
And those witches slit their throats in their sleep for their scales.
Then they sold the parts to alchemists practicing illegally who wanted eternal youth.
” His voice cracked on the last word, just barely, just enough that I caught it.
“Aeron wasn’t hatched yet. He never even got the chance to meet them.
But I do. I found their bodies. I raised their son alone because witches, your kind, decided dragon blood was worth more than the lives attached to it. ”
Behind me, I heard Aeron make a small, wounded sound, and I understood in that instant that this was the first time he was hearing any of it laid out so plainly, so brutally.
“So don’t talk to me about fairness,” Thaddeus said, leaning down until his face was inches from mine.
“Don’t talk to me about love, or mates, or whatever nonsense you and my grandson have convinced yourselves is real.
I have watched my family die at the hands of witches twice now.
Twice. And I will not watch it happen a third time when I hatch my daughter’s remaining eggs.
I will not raise more dragons in a world where witches and monsters are allowed to mingle and betray one another. ”
Aeron made a strange sound, but I needed to keep Thaddeus talking.
“So you’re going to kill him yourself,” I said, my voice shaking but somehow steady enough to get the words out. “You’re going to do exactly what you’re trying to prevent. You’re going to be the reason another dragon dies at a witch’s hand.”
Something flickered across his face, there and gone so fast I almost missed it.
“Better by design than by chance,” he said quietly.
“Better a lesson the world learns on my terms than another surprise slaughter in the dead of night. At least this way, something good comes of it. At least this way, no one else’s grandson has to bury his parents in unmarked graves because you witches can’t stop lusting after power.
” He leaned in close, his lips against my ear.
“And the best part?” he whispered. “The witches take all the blame.”
Everything suddenly clicked into place. For years the Purity Front had been run by witches.
Everyone knew that. It was the most talked about thing in witch society.
They tried to keep everyone separate at Widdershins, they spoke openly and proudly about being involved before things went south.
The whole world had painted them as the bad guys because, deep down, they believed what they were fighting for.
But all of them had been deceived, manipulated by the monsters they despised, and made into a pawn to be sacrificed before the entire world.
I stared up at Thaddeus, my mind reeling with the horror of what he’d just admitted, and something inside me shifted. The fear was still there, cold and heavy in my gut, but underneath it a different feeling was building.
He wanted witches to take the blame. He wanted the world to believe I was a monster capable of murdering my own mate in cold blood.
I wasn’t going to give him that.
“You’re wrong about one thing,” I said, my voice trembling but audible. “You said I don’t scare anyone.”
Thaddeus straightened, tilting his head with something like amusement. “Is that so?”
“I’m not scared of you,” I lied, my fingers curling tighter around the vial in my pocket.
“I’m just sad for you. All that grief, all that pain, and you still couldn’t figure out that it wasn’t witches who did this to you.
It was cruelty. It was greed. And now you’re the same thing you hated, just wearing scales instead of skin. ”
Something dark passed over his features, and for a moment I thought I’d pushed too far, that he’d simply snap my neck right there and save himself the theater. But instead he laughed, a low, humorless sound.
“Clever boy,” he said. “Trying to bait me into losing my composure. It won’t work. I’ve had centuries to perfect my patience.”
“I don’t need you to lose your composure,” I said quietly. “I just needed you close enough.”
His brow furrowed for half a second, confusion flickering behind those golden eyes, and that was all the time I needed.
I yanked the vial from my pocket and hurled it directly at his feet.
The glass shattered against the floor, the opalescent liquid splashing over the marble, a cloud of shimmering smoke rising from it.
For one terrible, silent moment, nothing happened.
The potion just sat there on the floor, glimmering faintly in the chandelier light, and I felt my heart plummet somewhere down into my shoes.
It hadn’t worked. All that effort, all that risk, and it had done absolutely nothing.
Thaddeus looked down at the floor, then back at me, and began to laugh. It was a deep, rolling sound that echoed through the foyer, full of genuine delight at my apparent failure.
“Oh, Quill,” he chuckled, shaking his head as he looked up at me. “Is this truly the best you could manage? Some backwater concoction thrown together in my basement? Even with your pathetic background, I expected more than that.”
Behind him, Morgana’s masked laughter joined his, and several of the witches snickered too, the sound bouncing cruelly around the marble hall. I felt my face burn with humiliation, felt the last threads of my hope fraying to nothing.
“You really thought a witch’s little parlor trick could touch a dragon of my power?” Thaddeus said, shaking his head as he stepped toward me again, closing the distance with slow, deliberate strides. “How precious. How utterly—”
He stopped mid-sentence as a sudden boom filled the air followed by one of the large doors being blown off its hinges.
Splinters of wood and metal rained across the marble, and through the settling dust came a voice I recognized instantly, bright and mocking and utterly unbothered by the carnage he’d just caused.
“Well, isn’t this a party?” Wild called out, sauntering through the wreckage of the door like he owned the place, green magic crackling playfully around his fingers. “And nobody thought to invite me? Rude.”
Behind him came Elias, dark and furious, his eyes already scanning the room with lethal precision. Atlas filled the doorway next, fully shifted into his werewolf form now, fur bristling along his massive shoulders, teeth bared. And Caden brought up the rear, hands already crackling with magic.
“Oh good, you’re here too Mother,” Wild said, rolling his shoulders. “That’ll make cleaning up this mess much easier.”