Chapter 26
Something’s not right.
The feeling came in like a rising tide. Slow and steady until it was unmistakably there. It felt like a crack inside, splintering until it was held together by will and not force.
Over the years, she’d learned not to ignore the strange sensations her body experienced, because more times than not, they were trying to tell her something.
She suddenly jerked out of the blissful state she’d been trying to distract herself in. The woman between her legs jumped, looking up at her with wide eyes.
The man who’d been kissing her neck scooted away.
People didn’t follow Marlena only because they were scared. There were some who truly felt she should be worshipped—that her powers were given to her because she deserved them.
Since announcing her status as a god? More fell at her feet every day.
Saying she was a god felt almost impertinent. Marlena was more.
She had more.
“Marlena, is—”
Marlena was already moving, grabbing her clothing from the floor. “Get out.” The door flew open on her command, assisted by her wind.
Invisibility and air, her two original abilities—the strongest of them inside her only becoming enhanced when she’d taken on the gods her powers descended from.
She didn’t have to repeat herself as she dressed, pulling her long, straight hair from underneath the dress she slipped over her head.
The two, who moments ago had been set on giving Marlena the pleasure she could never quite reach, sprang from the bed, grabbed the clothing they’d shed from the floor, and left without redressing.
Her door shut, and Marlena stepped through the abyss, leaving Atrox, where she’d stationed herself while Bridger was gone, and jumping into the room of mirrors.
Shattered.
Glass everywhere.
A gasp slipped through her parted lips. “No.”
The gods were quiet. Too quiet.
The mirrors were shattered, pieces of their frames littered among the glass or hanging to the wall by nothing more than their nails and wire pieces.
“The curse,” a voice whispered… but Marlena was almost positive it was her own.
Shards of glass crunched under her shoes, her reflection staring up at her from jagged edges on the floor. She snapped her jaw shut when she realized it hung open.
This was exactly what Marlena had dreamed of making this room look like at one point in her life. She’d wanted to blow all the mirrors down with gale-force winds and dance on their broken corpses… but instead she’d used them to anchor Vega’s memories to her curse.
Marlena had given the mirrors a new life.
Vega had ended them with hers.
The Aeris home under her feet trembled with an aftershock of a power Marlena would know anywhere… because it was hers.
After the portal she’d made for Bridger imploded, Marlena had been on edge—waiting for something to happen.
She needed to get to the portal, but Marlena was stuck staring at the remnants of a room she thought she’d be the one to destroy one day.
Vega takes everything from me.
The rasp of a maid’s panic made Marlena spin, more glass crunching under her heels.
“Miss Marlena!” The round woman rested her hands on her knees, drawing in deep breaths from what Marlena assumed was a short run. Her eyes were wide, sweat glistening across her brow. “Atrox,” she gasped. “A dragon is attacking the prison.”
Marlena had just left. Had just made it to Aeris to find the mirrors shattered.
Without responding, Marlena stepped through the in-between and back to Atrox.
She wasn’t prepared for the sight unfolding.
Marlena stood at the top of the stairs to the prison, and coming up from below were the faces of horrified guards and filthy-looking prisoners. Behind them was a wave of flames with the unmistakable roar of a dragon.
The shake of its vocal cords and the rumble deep in Marlena’s chest had her dumbstruck.
How the fuck did Khort find his way in?
A guard with life-threatening burns crawled up the stairs, his screams shaking Marlena’s eardrums. “Help! Help me!”
Marlena reached down, gripping the boy by his shoulder. His skin melted off at her touch. She felt the warmth of her healing powers from the dead god Juno slither up her arm, pushing only enough to numb his pain. She didn’t care if he lived or died. “Tell me what’s happening.”
The young boy, who probably wasn’t much older than twenty, relaxed under her touch, but the fear in his eyes didn’t disappear. “Your prisoner, Arlet, she—she…” he stuttered, unable to get his mind to work clearly. “That’s not the normal black dragon. That’s not him.”
“What did Arlet do?” Marlena shook him, trying to get him to make sense.
“One second she was quiet, and the next she was screaming, convulsing.” The boy sobbed in pain.
Marlena almost lost her cool waiting for him to spit it out, but everyone else was either dead or had already fled, so her options were limited.
“The dragon… it—oh gods. It came out of her. Shooting out of her, but her body stayed behind, unlike a regular shifter.” The boy began to shiver, his body unable to keep up with his injuries. “The brown dragon from the battlefield returned, but it’s bigger, angrier.”
A rush of flames shot up the stairwell. Marlena shielded herself, dropping the boy. The sound of his scream was washed away by the crackling of the fire roaring around her bubble of safety.
Most would flee, run away from the dragon, but Marlena didn’t run from fights. She walked into the flames, parting them as she descended into whatever might be left of the fort’s dungeon.
The mouth of a dragon Marlena had only seen once before, on the battlefield in Schoenus, cut through the flames shooting from its unhinged jaw.
Ducking, she rolled out of the way in time to hear the dragon’s jaws snap shut, drool splattering from the force.
Marlena jumped, moving through the dragon and its tail whacking against the cells, old stone crumbling around them. With nothing to support from underneath, this wing of the home would fall, crushing anyone left behind.
The dragon couldn’t turn around quickly enough, slamming into the sides of the walls as Marlena approached the cell where Arlet had been kept. Had.
Arlet was gone.
“She’s back.” Arlet’s voice startled Marlena, a small gasp leaving her lips. She hadn’t heard her—it was like she appeared out of thin air.
Arlet must have seen that realization on her face, and a sickly sweet smile spread across her lips.
Marlena’s eyes traced the outline of them before looking back to her eyes.
“You’re not the only one who can hide, Mar.
” She held her arm up, displaying the soft and unmarked skin where a power block once was.
Confusion watered Marlena’s senses.
The cell around them shifted, bringing Marlena back to a time she’d long since burned from herself. Marlena stood in the bedroom of a home she’d let crumble to ashes.
Her fingertips burned with her green flames, the taste of anger rising up her throat. “How?” she asked after turning in a circle, taking in the room she could almost believe was real if it weren’t for the dragon swinging its head into the cell after her.
Arlet held up a single hand, and the mirage fell away. The angry deep brown dragon with golden eyes and a spiny tail hissed, pausing at Arlet’s command. “How, what? How can I do these things?” Arlet asked, letting a fake stream of fire swirl through the air towards Marlena.
Marlena didn’t move, letting the forged flame break in two against her face and disappear around her.
“Or how did I get my powers back?” Arlet’s dragon’s head swayed back and forth on its front legs, hunching to fit its head inside the cell with Arlet and Marlena. It still towered over them both.
It had been years since Marlena was stunned in the way she was now.
Speechless and unable to wrap her head around exactly what was going on.
She’d seen Arlet in action during the Saturnalia battle, but she hadn’t been aware of the power she possessed, the secret she’d been keeping from their realm.
Now, she was seeing it in action for the first time with the knowledge of just how fucking powerful Arlet had become.
“Vega set us free from the shackles your curse put on our bond.” The dragon dipped its head down, and Arlet’s tiny hand almost got lost in the size of its massive scales as she petted the beast.
Every morsel of shock must have been pictured on Marlena’s face because Arlet started laughing. The laugh was a few short chuckles at first before turning into an all-out belly laugh that rivaled even the most maniacal villains.
Marlena felt the only emotion she had left.
Fury.
Her flames shot up her arms, spreading across the already charred floor, reaching for Arlet, who was climbing up the leg of her dragon like she’d been doing this for years—had she?
Over the bellow of the dragon, Arlet called down, “If I were you, I’d run.”
Marlena didn’t wait around to get stuck in the rubble of Atrox’s collapsing east wing. She stepped through the pages of their realm and landed where the portal was—where it should have been.
It was gone.
The portal’s gone.
The trees’ overlapping branches were just that—branches. No debris scattered the ground. It was as if this portal had imploded on itself too, leaving behind only its memory.
Vates was no longer home to the portal. It no longer sat at the end of a cobblestone road overlooking what remained of Arlet’s childhood home.
Instead of the portal, Marlena was met with Vega straddling Bridger’s lap, wrapped in a tight hug on top of the ivy-covered forest floor.
From her hiding spot in the trees, blending in with the shadows, Marlena watched the relief wash over both their faces. They were covered in blood, and their clothes were dirty and tattered.
They had fought for their lives.
Marlena knew what that looked like.
“You’re okay?” Vega asked, her eyes inspecting Bridger like she’d expected him to be dead.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay. You fucking did it.” He laughed, his hands cupping Vega’s face. He ran a gentle thumb over her blood-splattered cheek.
Marlena had seen this before. She’d lived this life.
“You broke the fucking curse.” Bridger laughed again, a happy sound. Marlena hadn’t heard that in a long time though—the lightness of Bridger’s joy. “Do you feel that?”
“Power. Raw. Untouched. We—” Vega started but was cut off by Bridger’s lips meeting hers. She was rigid at first, like she wanted to fight him off, but quickly she sank into their kiss.
And that was more than she needed to see.
“Well, well, well, what do we have here?” Marlena strutted into view, the sun overhead burning off the shadows as she stepped into the clearing.
Vega jumped off Bridger, her lightning sputtering to life.
The smile lighting Vega’s face was from that first zap of unbound power. The power Marlena possessed since her summoning—the power Vega would have felt earlier if Marlena hadn’t cursed her.
Bridger pulled himself up slowly, too relaxed compared to her sister. He casually wiped his hands against his pants, holes indicating he’d been stabbed a few times.
“Breaking the curse wasn’t part of the deal, Commander,” Marlena purred, watching the cold warrior shift back into place after his interrupted kiss. “But it’s good to see you’re taking kissing Vega very seriously.”
Bridger rolled up his sleeves, returning to the commander of Tolevarre.