50. Maxim
Chapter Fifty
Maxim
Iram my back against the rockface behind me, burning through the stone at the side of the mountain’s narrow crevice.
The memory of Thyra’s kiss scorches my lips.
The sweet taste of her mouth and the press of her naked body against mine are imprinted on my memory.
Fucking inescapable.
So is my fire and the growing darkness in my heart.
She said impossible things. About Blood Fae. And blood binds. And hope.
The runes along my arms have faded from sight, but my skin itches and my fire has burned for hours, a lava trail now marking my erratic path back and forth through the mountain range. The sun’s full rays haven’t helped, the shadows and cool crevices filling with heat as midday approaches.
Driving my fist against the rock behind me, I exhale my frustration in a roar, muffled between these rock walls. “Where do I go from here?”
I jolt when my serpent appears high above me, craning his head into the narrow pass, appearing dangerously close to slipping and sliding down to me. A real danger that he could get stuck in this narrow chasm, given that he has no claws or talons with which to grip the stone.
He hisses at me, sliding along the edge of the pass, his body snaking in and out of view before he turns and hisses at me again.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was frustrated.
“You don’t want to be near me right now!” I shout at him. “I nearly killed you.”
I did kill him.
“Go to Thyra!” I shout. “My fire killed you. Her blood brought you back. You’re only alive because—”
Huh.
Thyra’s blood.
When her arm pressed against my bicep, her skin was still bloody from swiping at her nosebleed. I thought the Dragonstone Blade had triggered these runes on my body, but maybe… it was her blood.
My serpent dips his head into the crack high above me before withdrawing with another long hiss that sounds like a humph.
He flops to his belly along the ledge, his head to the ground, slumped low, his body only partially visible as he gives a long, sighing hiss.
I rub my temples, trying to process.
“If I am a—” I can’t even say it. “I have no way forward. Even if I knew how to remove a blood bind, I can’t safely touch Thyra to help her because of my fire. I need her to break the curse first so my fire is safe. But she clearly can’t do that until the blood bind is broken and—Fuck.”
Again, I thump my fist against the rock behind me.
I’m caught in an impossible situation with impossible options.
The dragon’s hide was a solution as long as I could wrap Thyra completely up in it. I can’t very well have her huddle beneath it with her arm outstretched and hope the rest of her doesn’t accidentally catch fire. Ugh.
Is that really my only choice? Or…
Or.
I find out what these runes on my arms mean and work on my own body first.
I clamber to my feet, sliding upward in the cramped space. My pants are in tatters, but I don’t much care as I climb the wall, my fingertips melting the rock to create handholds.
Minutes later, I emerge into the hot sun on the side of the ravine opposite my serpent. The way he’s lying, the charcoal scales on his left side are fully visible to me.
He raises his head and doesn’t retreat.
“I’m going to the Tol-Dakri,” I call to him across the narrow ravine. “I don’t expect you to fly me there.”
He huffs at me, then launches himself across the air toward me. I don’t insult him by ignoring his offer.
Leaping upward, I catch his left horn and swing myself onto his back before he soars into the air.
I can’t unsee the runes along his left side, marks that even now look like scars. They lit up when he revived and now the shapes are burned into my memory. As are the images along my arms. Some are the same between us. Some are different. Their intent unknown.
One thing I do know: Blood Fae originated from among the Tol-Dakri.
The Tol-Dakri’s fiercest warriors, the Merovians, developed blood magic out of necessity when dragons threatened to wipe out their entire tribe. The Merovians took down the fiercest dragons with that dark sorcery. It was blood magic that won the Battle of Fire Dragons.
Ortansia, the Tol-Dakri’s formidable leader, must have answers.
I scale the wall of the coastal city, where the Tol-Dakri live aboveground.
Before coming here, I went to my cave, where I retrieved a full set of clothing, including a hood and cowl with which to conceal my identity.
Once we got near the city, my serpent slithered into the dunes to wait for me while I ran on, carefully evading the smaller, tawny-brown serpents patrolling the sky.
Like the last time I visited, I’ve arrived at dusk, both a boon and a danger. Into the shadows I creep, praying my fire won’t light up and betray me.
Reaching Ortansia’s quarters, a humble clay building like nearly every other, I slip through the side entrance and toward the back rooms.
I make it ten paces.
Three daggers fly from the darkened room at the end of the hall, each blade shooting at a different part of my body: heart, throat, groin, fuck!
I throw myself to the side and down, evading the first two, only for the third to slide across my lower thigh, a deep cut. With a burst of flame, the wound seals, but the onslaught doesn’t end.
Swoosh-swoosh, the blades keep coming as I dart back and forth, running up the walls before I crash down toward my assailant.
Ortansia somersaults backward through the darkened room, landing at a crouch in the empty space between a table and the wall, two more blades in her hands and an arsenal of daggers strapped to her person.
“You were seen, Ember King,” she hisses, her long, deep-black hair and black clothing camouflaging her against the darker-than-normal room.
Huh?
I quickly register that the windows have been boarded over. The pungent scent of tar tells me she’s smothered the gaps so not a ray of light can enter.
The only entrance or exit is the one I’m now standing in.
“What are you talking about? Nobody saw me come here.” I tense, ready to retreat if I have to. Killing Ortansia would shatter the uneasy truce between the Tol-Dakri and Ember Fae and start an instant war between our people. Not to mention, I’d get none of the information I need.
“The dragon’s hide,” she snaps, rising to her full height, her dark-gray eyes furious in the gloom. “You were seen.”
Damn. I promised that her people would never know I had the hide. Over the last few days, I used the hide as a saddle while I fought the Iron Fae. But that was at the border, far north of here. Tol-Dakri don’t venture there and Ember Fae aren’t permitted to come to this city.
“Who talked?” I demand to know.
“One of your lords,” she says. “Boaz, I believe his name is. He was here, spreading stories that you have our sacred artifact.”
So that’s why Boaz and his men appeared to have come from the south before they accosted my Mothers last night, but how Boaz gained entry into the Tol-Dakri city is a mystery. “What business could Boaz have here?”
Ortansia exhales heavily and now she sounds exhausted. “Apparently, the business of overthrowing me.”
I’m genuinely surprised by this. “What issue does he have with you?”
She snorts and waves her hands at herself. “I’m a woman, Maxim. In case you hadn’t noticed.”
Ember Law prohibits women from ruling, but those laws don’t extend to the Tol-Dakri. They govern themselves. Even so, I’m not surprised by Boaz’s prejudice. I’d like to see him come face to face with Cassia or Lilis. I’m certain he would have shrewdly evaded Ortansia while he was here.
Ortansia lowers her arms and puts her daggers away. “Well, you’re here now. The least you can do is kill any brotherfuckers who come down that hallway while I take a moment…”
Her knees buckle, and I lurch forward, then stop myself.
Her eyes widen. “Thinking of catching me, were you?”
She veers away from me toward the nearest chair and collapses into it. Quickly snatching up a flask of water from the table, she drinks the liquid all in one go. “I’m in more danger from you than I am from any of these challengers.”
I step inside the room but stay near the door. “I thought the Tol-Dakri had very specific rules about how a challenge to leadership could be carried out?”
“Oh, we do,” she says. “Tonight is what we call the Moon of Death. That is, once a formal challenge is made, it’s a fucking free-for-all for a night. One night only. All night long. You’re the fifth man to charge down that hallway since the moon appeared in the sky.”
“That explains the tar on the windows,” I mutter, keeping away from the wall, conscious of setting this refuge on fire.
She grunts. “Considering how flammable tar is, possibly not my best choice, but I wasn’t expecting you, and it keeps the weaker challengers out.” In the next breath, she asks, “Why are you here, Ember King?”
“I need everything you have on the Merovians.”
She blinks at me in the gloom. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
“Their runes, how their magic works, who they were, what they did.”
“If you want all that, you’ll have to take it up with your aunt.”
My brow furrows. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure how she convinced my predecessor to do it, but he gave her every piece of information we had.
” Ortansia picks herself up out of her chair, her voice becoming as sharp as a blade.
“Including everything we knew about the Merovian man who was gifted as a slave to the first female Oracle.”
I don’t conceal my surprise quickly enough. “What Merovian?”
“You didn’t know?” Ortansia stills, then shakes herself. “He forged the Dragonstone Blade for the False Queen. We all talk about the curse, as if that’s where all this started, but that Merovian man… I believe everything started with him.”
Without taking a breath, she snatches a blade from her belt, but I’m ahead of her.
Spinning to the hallway, I charge the few steps it takes me to reach the black-clad figure sprinting toward us, his sword raised. The assailant is fast enough to leap clear of my punch, but I expected he might because the Tol-Dakri train all their lives for battle.
My second fiery punch cuts a hole through his ribs, pinning his body to the wall before he slides to the floor.
His final hissing breath sends an unwanted shudder down my spine.
“Long live the Eternal Heir…”
I crouch over the man. So far, I’ve burned through a glove and one leg of my pants and now I quell my fire as fiercely as I can to tear off the man’s sleeve.
Hadrian’s mark is burned into his arm.
To Ortansia, I ask, “How the fuck has Hadrian infiltrated your tribe?”
“You don’t know?” Ortansia prowls toward me, but she stops in the doorway, her upper lip curling. “Hadrian is working with Stanimir, the commander of the assassin who tried to kill us that night you took the dragon’s hide.”
I did know about Stanimir. I promised Antony I would hunt him down, a task I’ve failed to complete. In fairness, I’ve been fighting to keep my people safe since then and even if Stanimir traveled through this city, I didn’t suspect Hadrian’s influence might have spread this far south.
“It seems that before Stanimir fled my city, he spread his poison about the return of the one true Serulian King.” Ortansia backs into the darkness of the room behind her. “We’re all in danger from these fucking fanatics.”
“Does your main challenger follow Hadrian?”
Her nod is nearly imperceptible. “Challengers,” she says. “There are three of them. All three wear that mark.”
“Even more reason for you to win.” I snarl, rising to my feet. “If you survive tonight, how will the challenges proceed?”
She glares at me. “If I survive?”
“When you survive.”
“Well, then the real fun starts.” She folds her arms across her chest. “Three challengers mean three separate fights to the death. The first will happen in a week, then the other two a week apart each.”
“Four weeks total,” I say.
Her expression hardens, her form now in shadow. “That’s how long you’ll have to prepare.”
My eyes narrow. “For what?”
She exhales heavily. “You stole our sacred dragon’s hide, Maxim. No matter who wins this challenge, the truce between the Tol-Dakri and Ember Fae is over. Now, you must prepare for war.”