Chapter 42
Covering herself in a dome of shadow and using the blackness to blast everything off her body, she remained conscious.
But covered in dust, she still struggled to breathe, almost choking trying to get air into her lungs.
Even moving was painful. Her whole side was wet, and so much dirt filled her eyes that she felt they were bleeding.
Sitting up, she barely grasped her wand. But once she did, her magic shot up, shadows blasting a hole through the mess crushing her.
A nightmare had unfolded. Ash fell like rain. When she lifted her chin to the sky, she coughed until she felt her lungs splintering. Half the castle had been blown out, engulfed in flames, with grim, black smoke pouring out of it.
Another blast of flames exploded from the north tower, and in a rumble, it collapsed onto itself.
Floor, after floor, after floor tumbling into ruins, pancaking so fast she didn’t have time to react with her shadow protection.
All she could do was scream and cover her head against the cloud of debris.
The whole realm would be grappling with this insanity.
With the violence against ordinary citizens by one man, there would be a response from the Essenheim Kingdom.
This was a declaration of war against the entire realm.
Their whole way of life was at risk with Kiran wielding so much power. Of that, she had no doubt.
While she could understand Kiran’s rage, this was something that wouldn’t go unchecked.
She gripped her wand as she started digging herself out of the rubble.
She gritted her teeth and tried to focus on one step at a time.
It didn’t feel right to blast these human remains with her shadows, so she moved painstakingly slow, taking her time.
Move this piece of wood. A shoe with a foot still inside.
A deck of playing cards with blood. Singed books and paper.
Human bone fragments and splinters from wands. Move it all, one step at a time.
She gagged as she pushed aside a bloody hand missing half its fingers. Something about the way the muscles and ligaments feathered into a small, delicate hand reminded her of her sister. Who did it belong to?
No one. It belonged to no one now.
There was hardly anything to bury. Kiran had completely obliterated these people from existence, without mercy.
The more ubiquitous objects she moved and the more remains she encountered, the angrier she became that he hadn’t let her in on his plans. She could have helped him do this with less violence. Her darkness would have been more merciful—a faster death for all.
Unyielding power and flames, gruesome and unmerciful, he was just pure strength. Saevel and the king hadn’t stood a chance.
Soaring above the carnage, Kiran was an unstoppable weapon in animal form, his flames everywhere.
She would have stood at his side—maybe not endorsed such ultimate destruction, but she would have helped him take down his father in a better way.
The smell of burning flesh hit her in waves. After gagging two or three times, she grabbed another piece of debris to find a shard of glass impaled through a man’s torso, his guts spilling out. She promptly vomited. The way his dead eyes bulged from his skull would haunt her nightmares.
Finally, she was able to stand. She walked haphazardly up the stairs to the main courtyard.
Slinking alongside the piles of rubble and bushes that remained, she stayed out of sight from the guards and legions that had gathered for the end of the battle.
Magnus stood tall, tossing his wand to the ground and striding confidently forward to look up at the beast that was his son.
After a whoosh of air, the prone bodies of two dead dragons smashed into the earth.
An ear-piercing roar boomed over the valley and mountainside, rattling her bones.
The black dragon tucked its wings in and fell downward.
When the creature dipped low to the ground, rapidly beating his wings until a swirl of magic from the Fabric surrounded him, it was not the beast that landed—it was the man.
Hands on his knees, his cloak whipping behind him, Kiran was panting but looked dead inside, and focused.
Dread kicked her in the gut at that vacant look on his face. She beat it away, however, forcing herself to pay attention.
Magnus roared as he shifted into his beast, a wyvern. He looked like Kiran’s dragon but not quite as large or imposing. And without fire.
Imani watched Kiran, who glanced at the dead dragons, deadly furious.
Smoke poured from his lips, and his eyes shifted to dragon slits, while his muscles trembled with rage.
He was a dangerous creature. Violent. Strong.
Ferocious. His father’s son. A monster just like she’d always known he was from the first moment she had laid eyes on him at the palace in Stralas.
If Imani was a smarter girl, maybe she should have been more afraid than she’d been all these months with him.
Kiran started to shift back into dragon form.
It started in the middle of his chest, where his heart lay.
Black scales then appeared and started to spread like an ink stain.
It permeated his skin as it moved, changing the smooth, pale texture to something rough and scaly, dark as onyx as it moved out to his shoulders, while more blackness spread up his arm from his hands, encasing his whole body.
One moment, he was still something she recognized, still a man, still an elf.
And the next, he was more than twice in size, in every single way.
She was lost to the horror as the beast took shape.
Kiran’s face was no longer his, but another creature’s entirely, something from a nightmare. The creature she had always seen peeking out from behind his eyes, finally in corporeal form.
Now seeing his sheer size compared to the wyvern, Imani knew Magnus didn’t stand a chance against his son.
Kiran jerked back, his attention snapping to Imani. He canted his head to the side in recognition, a slow smile spreading across his dragon’s face, dousing the flicker of rage that had been there, as if he was pleased to see her close by, watching.
He moved gracefully, effortlessly, unworried by the impending encounter.
His carefree attitude only fed his father’s frustration and rage. The wyvern roared at him from above.
Pushing up off the ground, Kiran followed his father into the air, causing the great hall to rumble. With the throne room deep underground in the center of the palace, it likely remained untouched.
The walls and floor shook, and Imani scrambled for balance as dust and debris plummeted from the dark skies. Kiran circled once, dropping low and bellowing a roar that unleashed fire on the trees and burned through them in a glorious blaze. It ate through everything in its path in an instant.
All it did for her was meld terror and wonder into one monstrous entity.
They wrestled in the air for several minutes, but then Kiran lashed out, quick as a lightning strike, and tore through his father’s neck with razor-sharp teeth that dripped enemy blood.
The wyvern fell to the ground, and Magnus shifted just in time to land unsteadily on his feet. Holding his bleeding neck, he crumpled to the ground. His only sounds were choked gasps.
The beast—Kiran—breathed in and out, smoke puffing from his massive nostrils. He roared a blast of fire into the air then fell from the sky in one swoop.
The prince slammed gracefully onto the stone.
A massive beast turned into a man, as if he’d shifted into that unholy creature a thousand times.
His cloak whipped behind him as he stood in one smooth motion, brushing his black hair back off his face, eyes narrowed at Magnus.
Kiran then grabbed a knife strapped to his thigh.
“We’re going to finish this the old-fashioned way, Father.” He curled his lip in disgust.
When Kiran stuck the tip into the back of his father’s neck, Imani had to squeeze her eyes tight. She did not need to see to know what kind of horror the Mad Prince was unleashing. She could hear it just fine.
Even though the burning fires were still raging above and around her, the sound of skin being removed from muscle was unmistakable. It was a wet, thick, ripping sound.
Imani doubled over and dry heaved since nothing was left in her stomach. At some point, Magnus stopped screaming. She knew why and lifted her eyes up once more.
A vicious kind of grin pulled at Kiran’s lips, as if the pain his father had just endured ignited some dark fire in him.
He was fucking beautiful.
Imani didn’t feel an ounce of regret, remembering the king’s face and the torture that he had put his people through in his quest for power.
Relief flooded her, hot and heavy, now that this tyrant was dead.
Thank you, she thought to Kiran, breathing deep and shutting her eyes.
A hand tangled in her hair, one that was too deft to be the heavy fists of the monsters around her. Her head was yanked back sharply, and she looked up at the demon himself. This horde king did not grin like he had earlier. Spattered in blood, he stared down at her with an unreadable expression.
Imani looked into his eyes, those mismatched, glossy irises. They were emptier than they’d ever been. Imani no longer saw him deep inside. In fact, she didn’t see him at all.
His hands dripped with his father’s blood, but something else was in his hand with the knife. It was …
She felt ill again.
“But … but why? He was already dead.”
“Why?” He chuckled. “Still so na?ve, my darling.” He held up the item in his hand, bloody and raw, draping like fabric. “Allow me to demonstrate.” He released her, and she could smell the coppery tang of blood that he had left staining her hair.
She tried not to look at the previous king’s body as Kiran removed his father’s scalp that he’d cut from his head then ripped the crown from the skin and placed it on his head.
The horde and death angels dropped around him, protecting him, and gods, he was beautiful. Awful. A monster. He’d burned all those people alive without a thought. It didn’t sit well with her as she remembered the bodies smacking onto the ground.
She could at least admit his sharp jaw, broad shoulders, and arresting gaze, rich with more magic than she’d ever felt, was something to behold.
Rubbing the tension in his neck, he rolled his eyes and sighed before pointing his wand to murder five guards coming at him, ripping them into pieces like the savage he was.
He was a marvel.
Perhaps her scorn was misplaced. Did the ends justify the means?
He’d saved them all from Magnus, and there was collateral damage.
That she could understand. A sacrifice of the few for the survival of the many was no choice at all, and given the choice, Imani would have made the same one.
Perhaps they could finally be honest with each other now—with her own plans.
She would not stand for this to happen to her own people, but if she could convince him to take Essenheim with her another way, they might stand a chance.
Imani bit her lip in approval at his victory, though practically drooling watching his powerful body move effortlessly through everyone in his path with that stupid arrogance he had. He deserved retribution, to be sure.
Underneath the smirk, however, she felt a deep unyielding sickness and hatred that reminded her of a caged, beaten animal that wouldn’t hesitate to bite the hand that fed it.
She knew the sensation and felt like they both should be put down. There was something wrong with both her and Kiran.
But however horrible, his plan had been brilliant. Brutal.
He was good. So good at getting exactly what he wanted, at using people like pieces in a game they didn’t know they were playing. Imani had been—and still was—one of those people.
She slinked into the shadows to avoid being seen, not wanting to chance such a public encounter with him right now as he made his way inside the unharmed parts of the castle to go to what she assumed would be the throne room while people rushed to put out the other fires that raged nearby.
This would be the true test of his right to rule.