Chapter 34 Rhystan
Rhystan
My father has never been a patient man.
The three hours he promised last barely two.
I'm in the throne room with Kess and the mystic, lighting the braziers, filling the space with herb-smoke that's supposed to prepare her body for magical trauma. The sun is still a hand's width above the horizon when the air pressure drops like a stone.
"He's back." I'm moving before the words finish leaving my mouth. "Early. With reinforcements."
Kess's head snaps up from where she's been centering herself for the ritual. "How many?"
I reach out with senses that go beyond sight—feeling the disturbance in the air, the weight of multiple dragons approaching fast.
"Fifteen. Maybe more." My jaw tightens. "And blessed weapons. I can feel the holy fire from here."
"Go." The mystic doesn't look up from her preparations. "We'll start without you if we have to."
"Kess—" I cross to her, cup her face in my hands. "Stay in the circle. No matter what happens, no matter what you hear—"
"I know." She grips my wrists, strong despite everything. "Go kill your father. I'll be here when you get back."
I kiss her—hard and desperate and far too brief.
Then I'm running for the courtyard, letting the shift take me before I'm fully outside. Bones crack and reform. Wings unfurl. Fire builds in my chest like a furnace stoked to killing heat.
I launch into the sky as my father's forces descend.
Fifteen dragons in tight formation. War God priests in blessed silver armor that catches the dying light and throws it back wrong—designed to hurt dragon eyes, to blind and disorient. They're mounted on six of the beasts, weapons already blazing with holy fire.
And at the center, my father. Massive. Crimson. Ancient and terrible and utterly certain of his righteousness.
"FATHER." The word tears from my dragon throat. "YOU GAVE US THREE HOURS."
His laugh rolls across the sky like thunder. "I lied. A habit you should understand."
He hits me before I can respond.
Three hundred years of combat experience behind a collision that sends us both spinning through clouds. His claws rake my shoulder, drawing blood that sizzles against scales. I snap at his throat, miss, catch his wing instead and tear membrane.
We plummet together, grappling, fire and blood and screaming wind.
I wrench free before we hit the courtyard. Stone explodes beneath his impact—he's slower to recover than I am, age or arrogance making him careless. I use the moment to gain altitude, to put myself between the castle and the dragons circling above.
"Stand down," I roar at the priests. "This isn't your fight."
"It's exactly our fight." A woman in silver armor raises her spear—blessed fire dancing along the tip, designed to pierce dragon scales. "You're destroying everything the War God built."
"I'm destroying a curse that murders children."
"You're destroying power." She hurls the spear.
I twist. Not fast enough.
The blessed fire catches my flank, burns through scales that should be impervious. Holy weapons. Fucking holy weapons. The pain is extraordinary—white-hot and wrong in ways that go beyond physical damage.
I tear the spear free with my teeth. Hurl it back at her dragon. Miss the rider, catch the beast in the shoulder. It screams and wheels away, trailing smoke and blood.
One down.
Fourteen to go.
Dragon combat is brutal.
Not the elegant aerial dance of songs and stories. It's close and vicious and ugly—claws tearing flesh, jaws snapping at throats, wings used as weapons. My father and I have fought before, training sessions that drew blood, but never like this. Never with killing intent on both sides.
He knows my patterns. I know his. Every advantage cancels out until we're just two dragons trying to destroy each other while the castle burns beneath us.
A blessed chain wraps around my wing—holy metal that sears where it touches, disrupts the magic keeping me airborne. I plummet twenty feet before I tear free, leaving scales and skin behind.
Two priests dive at me while I'm recovering. Their dragons are smaller, faster, bred for harassment rather than combat. Their weapons make up the difference. Holy fire scores my back. A blessed blade opens my shoulder to the bone.
I kill one of the dragons. Snap its neck with a twist that sends the priest tumbling toward the ground. The other retreats before I can reach it.
But the damage is done. I'm bleeding from a dozen wounds now, some shallow, some deep, all burning with that particular agony of consecrated steel.
My father slams into me from above.
His weight drives me toward the castle roof. I twist at the last moment, take the impact on my shoulder instead of my spine, but stone shatters beneath us anyway. We crash through into a corridor, through a wall, into what used to be a sitting room and is now rubble and dragonfire.
"You could have been great." He pins me beneath him, claws sinking into the wounds the blessed weapons opened. "Could have ruled for another three centuries. Had heirs who carried the bloodline forward with pride."
"My heirs will carry something better." I get my hind legs up, drive them into his belly. "Freedom."
He staggers back. I gain my feet. We circle each other in the ruins of my castle, both bleeding, both exhausted, neither willing to yield.
"She's going to die," he snarls. "Your contaminated omega. The ritual will tear her apart and you'll have nothing—no mate, no children, no kingdom. Just the ashes of everything you destroyed for a woman who was already dead."
The words hit harder than his claws.
Because part of me fears he's right. Part of me is terrified that Kess won't survive, that I'm fighting for nothing, that I'll descend from this sky to find her broken in the silver circle with our children dead inside her.
The fear nearly costs me my throat.
His jaws snap closed an inch from my neck—would have killed me if I hadn't twisted at the last moment. His teeth score a line across my scales instead, shallow but bleeding.
"Fight back properly," he growls. "Or this ends now."
So I fight back properly.
We tear each other apart for what feels like hours.
Through the castle, through the sky, through courtyards full of the dead and dying.
My guards are falling—good men, loyal, utterly outmatched by war dragons and blessed weapons.
I see Corvith go down with a spear through his thigh, see stable hands dragged from hiding and cut down, see the home I've known for three centuries turned into a slaughterhouse.
And still my father keeps coming.
He's wounded too—I've torn chunks from his hide, broken one of his horns, left claw marks across his face that will scar even with dragon healing. But he's driven by something beyond pain. Righteousness, maybe. Or just the desperate need to preserve what he's spent his whole life building.
I understand that need. I just can't let it win.
We crash together again over the throne room. I'm trying to keep him away from Kess, from the ritual, from everything that matters. He's trying to get past me. To end this the quick way—kill the omega, kill the children, let the curse pass to the next generation the way it's always done.
I won't let him.
I can't let him.
A blessed arrow takes me in the wing—fired from somewhere I didn't see, buried deep in the membrane. The pain is blinding. I falter, lose altitude, and my father is on me before I can recover.
His claws sink into my chest. His weight bears me down toward the castle roof.
His jaws open wide, aiming for my throat, and I know with cold certainty that this is how it ends.
Three hundred years of guilt and grief and desperate hoping, and I'm going to die ten feet from the woman I love while she—
The bond ignites.
Not pain. Not fear. Something else—something ancient and powerful, words in a language that died before I was cursed, resonating through the connection between Kess and me like a bell being struck.
She's started the ritual.
Power floods through me. Not mine—hers. The curse recognizing its own, responding to the call of blood and magic and three centuries of divine punishment about to change hands.
My father feels it too. His eyes go wide. His grip loosens just slightly.
"No—"
I tear free. Launch myself at him with strength I didn't have a moment ago. We crash through the roof, through stone and timber, into open air above the courtyard.
"You're too late," I snarl into his face. "It's already happening. You can't stop it."
"Then I'll stop her." His eyes are wild now. Mad. "Before the transfer completes. Save what I can."
He breaks away from me. Dives toward the throne room.
Toward Kess.
I follow.