THICK. CLOYING. PUTRID.
Usually, the quicksilver rolled away, beading from clothes, hair, and skin alike whenever we exited one of its pools. Not so this time. Whatever the foul substance was that filled the pool at Ajun, it was nothing like quicksilver. It probed up my nose and coated my tongue, filling my mouth with the taste of rot. Passing through it felt like drowning. Unbridled panic ratcheted in my chest as my lungs pulled, desperate for air, urging me to Breathe! Breathe! Breathe!
My head breached the pool, and I immediately sucked down a lungful of—
PAIN.
I'd inhaled razor blades.
I—
I couldn't—
Easy, Osha. Don't panic. Khydan was close.
I didn't so much rise from the pool as find myself being spat out by it. On my hands and knees, I crawled forward, gasping and choking as I tried to make sense of the sensations assaulting my body.
The reek of sulfur and a wall of tremendous heat slapped me in the face. Until very recently, I'd spent my life in a desert. I'd never imagined anything could be hotter than the Third during reckoning . . . but this? This was unimaginable.
I was in shock. Panic spiraling up and down my spine as waves of adrenaline warned me to move, to step out of the fire, to retreat to safety. But there was no retreat. There was no safety. There was only a crushing dark, and air so superheated that it felt like it was tearing my lungs to ribbons.
My eyes stung—either from the sulfur or from the heat, I couldn't tell. It seemed as though they should be watering. Perhaps they were, and the moisture wicking from the surface of my eyes was the source of the unbearable stinging.
"Osha? Can you stand?" Khydan's voice was low and quiet, but the worry in his words made them loud as a shout. I felt his hand on my back, then on my arm. He helped me to my feet as I tried to hack the tar-like, disgusting filth up and out of my throat. "That's it. Spit it out. Whatever you do, don't swallow it."
Oh, gods. "What is it?" I rasped.
Khy took longer than I would have liked to answer. "It's probably best if you don't ask," he said. His voice was too quiet, as if it were being carried away by an invisible wind. "Are you okay?"
His hand found mine in the dark again; the squeeze he gave me calmed my nerves enough that my voice only shook a little when I spoke. "I'm fine. At least I think I am. I can't see anything. And I feel like I'm being cooked."
Pale green light flared next to me, almost white but not quite. Khydan held a thin tube in his other hand, the top half of which glowed with evenlight. He held it out to me. Once I'd accepted it, he produced another of the strange tubes from his pocket and shook it hard, activating it so that he held one, too.
My mate's eyes were dark as drowning pools, the brilliant green muted almost to black. His hair dripped with foul liquid that still churned in the pool behind us. It mottled his skin, viscous and thick, his fighting leathers sticky with it. My own hair was plastered to my skull, the liquid soaking all the way through my leathers.
I would have taken that fall into the lake outside Gillethrye all over again, broken ribs and everything, if it meant that I could wash this filth from my body. It wasn't right.
Shooting me a lopsided smile that was probably supposed to be reassuring, Khydan said, "Two hours. That's all the time we can spend here, otherwise you will wind up cooked. Your body wasn't made for this place."
"Then we'd better get moving. But . . . where do we need to go?" Had I really been so foolish? "You'll need to pass through the gate at Ajun," Lorreth had said. "You'll need to bargain with the creatures there for access to their brimstone." I had accepted that doing so would be gravely dangerous—but I hadn't thought to ask how to find these creatures. Didn't know where they would be . . . or where we would be when we stepped out of the pool, for that matter. Our evenlight torches were far from enough to fully illuminate our surroundings. A six-foot-wide sphere of light embraced us, but on the other side of it waited the unwavering darkness.
Roiling beyond the bounds of evenlight, it felt sentient. Cold and cruel. Khydan swept a hand over his face, smearing the black muck in a futile attempt to wipe it away. His eyes roved, sharp, staring out into the dark. The moment he opened his mouth to speak again, a thunderous rumble split the fetid air, and two glowing orange-red points blazed to life in the near distance, piercing the veil of dark.
They were balls of living flame, those twin points of orange and red. Only they weren't, because they were eyes, and they burned with hate. The ground shook beneath our feet as a booming voice spoke: "Bolddddd."
The darkness retreated, unveiling a cavernous stone hall draped in shadows and littered with bones. When the beast ahead opened its maw, its giant jaws parting to reveal the glowing glands at the back of its raw, bleeding throat, the air buzzed with sulfur so badly that the stench nearly upended my stomach.
I knew what it was.
The name of the monster bounced around inside my head.
I didn't dare speak it out loud.
It was seventy feet tall from its huge, taloned feet to its withers. Its long, articulated neck was stooped thanks to the rough rock ceiling. The gods only knew—possibly feared—how tall it might have been if it was able to rise to its full height. My breath stoppered in my lungs as I took it in.
Flashing scales of gold? No—black. It was hard to tell, given that the beast itself was the only source of light. A horned ridge protruded from its wide, bony head like a crown. Enormous bulky wings were tucked tightly into its sides. And its teeth. They were three feet long and jagged, like the edge of one of Elroy's saws.
I had been filled with awe at the sight of the massive skull that had loomed behind Belikon's throne at the Winter Palace, but it hadn't translated, not truly: just how big the rest of the creature would have to be to warrant a head that monstrous. I understood now . . . and I was afraid.
The temperature climbed, fresh waves of sweat breaking across my brow and evaporating as the dragon slowly propped itself up on taloned elbows and then pushed itself up from the ground. "Boldddd indeed," it rumbled.
Don't . . . run. Khydan's warning was fortuitously timed. I'd been considering it. The noxious pool was right behind us, still open. How many seconds would it take to turn and dive back below the choppy surface? Two? Three at most? From the edge in my mate's voice, any amount of time wouldn't be long enough. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as Khy slowly reached over his shoulder and drew his blade.
Should I—
He gave a single, firm shake of his head. Don't touch your swords. If it takes umbrage with anyone, let it be me. Don't move, Osha. Just . . . stay exactly where you are.
Smoke rolled off Nimerelle, thick and angry. If the dragon cared, it was impossible to tell. Like a dog waking from a long nap, it shook its giant head, sparks flying from its flared nostrils. The horns atop its head smashed awkwardly into the rough-hewn rock, and a large section of the ceiling sloughed away and came crashing down around the beast, rock turning to shrapnel where it struck the ground.
Run, my heart urged. What in all five hells are you doing, Fane? Fucking run.
I stood my ground, boots firmly planted, heeding Khydan's command.
"Two thousand yearrrrssss have I lived. Never has a meal walked straight into my mouth," the dragon snarled. Its mouth didn't move. The words were spoken out loud—the walls wouldn't have quaked so terribly otherwise—but it must have formed its words differently to Fae and humankind. Its tongue, forked and blackened, darted between its teeth, as if it was tasting the air. I'd seen plenty of dune asps do this back in Zilvaren. I'd never seen a snake lick a mouthful of yard-long yellowed teeth, though.
"You are not of this place."
"We are not." The hall rang with Khydan's voice. Clear and steady, he didn't sound afraid. I sensed his fear, though. He didn't try to shield me from it. "We're from—"
"I know the name of your home," the dragon interrupted. "Do not speak it out loud." It seemed to gather, pulling back, its neck arching and tucking into its broad, gleaming chest. The temperature in the ancient hall rose a degree or two. "Why have you come?" it demanded.
"We—"
"The other must speak!"
Me. I was the other. For some reason, it wanted me to answer. But I wasn't as practiced an actor as my mate. Khydan's hand tightened around Nimerelle's hilt. The blade was kicking out so much smoke that it almost drowned out the light cast by our torches. Was it Khydan's worry, bleeding into his god sword? Or was it the spark of Ren's sister that still resided in the blade concerned for me? Don't give it much, Khydan warned. Tell it we need to speak to—
"I hear you, boy," the dragon snarled. "There is no dark corner where you may hide your whisperings from me."
Boy? How old was this thing that it would consider Khydan a boy? And, disturbingly, it could hear us speaking directly into each other's minds? Could it hear our thoughts, too? Our—
"I hear the grindings of the gears that drive the universe toward destruction. I hear all. I know . . ." Its tongue probed between shattered teeth, flickering back and forth in the air. ". . . all."
The stone floor was formed of hexagonal tiles covered in husks and dried leaves and all kinds of debris. When the dragon spoke, the ground rocked so hard that the tile in front of me cracked into three pieces.
The beast breathed rancid smoke as it slowly advanced. "You know nothing, name breaker. Your mind is too young to even know itself."
"You're right." I felt my pulse everywhere. In my fingertips. The roof of my mouth. At my temples. I was going to throw up, for fuck's sake. My very first confrontation with a mythical beast, and I was going to lose the contents of my stomach like a fucking coward. I would not piss myself. Just . . . no. "I am young. But at least I'm not hiding in the dark, waiting to do my master's bidding."
"Saeris." This time, the warning was immediate. Out loud. Khydan's tone suggested he thought I had lost my fucking mind. And maybe I had. Maybe a little madness was what it would take to make it through this situation alive. Who knew. But trying to approach this from a sane person's perspective was beyond me. A sane person would never have stepped into that pool.
"What master do you claim rules me, girl child?" the dragon hissed.
Lorreth hadn't told me who ruled Diaxis when we had spoken of this place. Ren hadn't, either, as he'd led us up the winding stairs toward our death. Maybe they didn't know the name of the god who ruled these dark, dead halls. Or maybe they didn't speak his name because, as I knew all too well, to speak a name gave it power. But Khydan spoke it now, his voice flat and cold.
"Styx. Lord of the charred aerie. King of dragons. He is your master. He is the one you must obey."
The dragon had been creeping forward, lithe and sinuous. It was too big to conceal its approach, though. It stopped dead now, snarling at Khydan's declaration.
"Who are you to speak his name?"
"I am Kingf—" Khydan stopped himself. Old habits died hard. It was true—I had made the shift and referred to him by his true name easily enough, but something inside of me knew it was right. His whole life, Khydan had only known himself as Kingfisher. How much of a person's identity resided in their name? How much of their soul? A strange thought. Khydan's soul was the same as it had ever been. His personality, too. But . . . something fundamental had changed inside him. It was subtle. It was because he was free.
"I am Khydan Graystar Finvarra. I walked these halls before, many years ago—"
"Little more than a Faeling, you were then. You were tortured here, I remember. You have come to exact revenge upon this place, then? To destroy my kind, and all who call this place home?"
"No. I come as an ambassador of my realm, as does my mate. We request an audience with Styx, per the rules of engagement between our realms. Etiquette—"
A jet of stinking, superheated air suddenly spewed from the dragon's mouth, a plume of fire and molten rock chasing after it. There was no time to react. No time for anything. There was only the fire, and the heat, and our imminent deaths. Too late, I drew my shield, bigger and brighter than it had ever been before. It flickered and guttered as the brimstone tore through it.
We were dead.noveldrama
We were fucking dead!
We were . . .
. . . hunched over, clinging to each other, panting breathlessly, but somehow still alive. The flames ripped over our heads, slamming into the wall behind us, flashing blue and green as they struck the stone. The beast had missed us. On purpose, it seemed. It could have easily engulfed us if it had wanted to; the fact that it wasn't roasting us to char and bone must have been intentional.
Khydan's heart sang in my ears. He cradled the back of my head, pressing my face into the front of his leathers, his blood spiked with adrenaline and panic. I could smell it roaring through his veins in the hollow of his throat; even now, with death sharing the same air as us, the scent of his blood was enough to drive me toward insanity.
I should have drunk from him. At least that way we'd both go out on a high. But that was a ridiculous thought. Selfish. We weren't allowed to die. There was too much riding on us. Khydan and I held the future of Yvelia in our hands. More than that. If Zareth was to be believed, we held the futures of millions of realms in our hands. Billions of lives.
We stood at a nexus in the threads of fate. If we died, so did everything else. For a moment, I believed the dragon had seen that in our minds, and that was why it had redirected its fire. After all, if it killed us, chances were it would die soon, too.
I clung to Khydan so tightly that my hands went numb. Then they started to tingle. No . . . huh. Strange. Only my right hand was tingling. The sensation was neither pleasant nor painful. It built until the unnerving feeling had traveled all the way up my arm and settled in my shoulder, blooming up my neck and prickling along my jaw.
The air was alive, as if a thousand flies were buzzing around a corpse. The brimstone kept coming. It spattered as it hit the wall, throwing burning gobs of glowing molten rock and metal in every direction.
Khydan stiffened, his fingers digging into my back, but he didn't let me go.
A hollow thrum pounded inside of me. A hammering at a door. A second pulse that served no purpose. Magic. Unfamiliar. Unrealized.
The brimstone. My body was reacting to it. It drew me to it, but I didn't know what to do. I couldn't reach it. And even if I'd been able to, I wouldn't have known what to do with it once I had.
We would die soon. What else was there to do? My power over the quicksilver wouldn't help me here. Khydan was more powerful than most of the Fae, but his shadows wouldn't be enough to bring down this beast. The air burned, scorching my airways, but all we could do was endure.
Eventually, the torrent of fire stopped.
Mercy. The reprieve from the heat alone was a mercy . . .
"I am Arissan, keeper of this gate," the dragon boomed. "And I have not spared you out of mercy. That word does not exist in this place. Your lives are temporary. I have spared you for one reason, and one reason alone."
"Why?" My voice echoed around the dragon's lair.
Khydan reached out and gripped my hand. The muscles in his jaw ticked as he glowered up at the megalithic monster. Flames and smoke wreathed her teeth as it ducked its head and snarled. "Your mate knows the answer to this question. Don't you, Khydan Finvarra?"
Slowly, Khydan nodded. "You've spared us so that I can be brought before your master for judgment."
"And your criiiiime?" Arissan's tongue dripped blue-tinged flames as it flicked back and forth through the air like a switch.
"I've committed no crime. I have done nothing more than defend my people and my lands. But you've seen my thoughts . . . and my past. You have seen me on the mountainside at Ajun. The undergods of Diaxis will charge me with murder—"
"The murder of my offspring!" The dragon roared. There was fury in the deafening sound, but also anguish. A pillar of flame erupted from Arissan's throat again—though totally different from the thick, molten brimstone it had spewed at us just now. This was white hot hellfire. It bloomed against the ceiling of the cavern and fanned outward, rolling over the soot-stained rock as if defying gravity.
The heat swelled beyond imagining. Too much. Too hot. I was physically far stronger than I had ever been, but there were still limits to what my new body could endure.
As my vision tunneled, Khydan's voice echoed inside my head.
Don't speak. When you wake, for the love of all the gods, do not say a single word.
Metal.
Hot metal.
I knew the smell well. So well, in fact, that I could identify it in my sleep. I was back in the forge. Elroy was chiding me for spilling metal shavings all over the floor. I was—
Fuck!
I was upside down! I was hanging over a hall ten times the size of the one at Ammontraíeth. I was fucking swinging . . .
Blood rushed in my ears. A thunderous swelling of sound, so loud my head spun. But it wasn't my blood. It was the crowd.
Below, a thrumming mass jostled and shouted. Thousands of people were gathered beneath my head, and from their raised voices and the way they were throwing their fists in the air, they were celebrating something monumental.
Khydan.
Where the fuck was my mate?
I couldn't spin. Couldn't turn. Open space stretched out around me, eventually giving way to darkness. My arms hung loosely over my head. Pain sang along every nerve I possessed as I tried to reach down to my hips. My short swords. My knives. Were they still there?
Relief exploded in my chest as my hand found hot metal. The hilts of my god swords were almost too hot to touch, but they were there. And so was Khydan. When I'd moved my arms, I'd turned a fraction—just enough to see him hanging upside down in the air next to me. His chest plate was still strapped tight, Nimerelle still in her scabbard. Khy's face was pale and running with sweat. His eyes were closed, eyelashes stark, midnight-black against his skin. Even passed out, he looked troubled, a small frown drawing his brows together as if he were hammering at the door of his consciousness, demanding to be let back into his body.
A thick chain, pitted orange with flaking rust, looped around his ankles, suspending him. The same kind of chain cinched around my own feet, cutting off my circulation. Above, a huge statue of a robed figure clasped the ends of the lengths of chain in its huge stone hand. There were other lengths of chain dangling from the statue's grasp, some longer than the ones we were suspended from. Some shorter. All were vacant bar one.
A corpse hung from a chain dangling from the statue's other hand. The body—or what was left of it—was rotting, its skin swollen and purple, its tongue fat and protruding through its teeth. The remains of a shredded white cape hung from its shoulders, partially shrouding its head from view. A huge black spear with a vicious, serrated razor head lanced through the body's torso—a very clear cause of death.
The cheering below surged, reaching a fever pitch of excitement.
Khydan? Why the hell was I whispering? I wasn't speaking out loud. Khy!
Nothing. He couldn't hear me. Couldn't answer.
A maelstrom of energy whipped and whirled behind my breastplate, begging to be unleashed. The magic tied to my quicksilver rune was awake here. Alert. It would answer if I called, there was no doubt about that. But who the fuck was I supposed to attack? There were thousands of people—
"Silence."
The noise stopped. My uneven breath was all I could hear.
Below, the mass of bodies was so quiet it felt as though they'd suddenly disappeared. They hadn't. They stood stock-still, their arms by their sides, staring straight ahead, none of them looking up at their new captives.
The voice that had ordered silence spoke again, the sound reverberating and inhumane. No creature—human, Fae, or otherwise—had a voice that low. "Bring them down," it intoned.
No one on the hall floor stirred. There must have been others lurking in the shadows, because a moment passed and then the thick chains clanked, jerked, and dropped us. We only fell a foot before the tension returned to the chain, but terror still turned my blood to ice. I didn't scream. It was damned near impossible to trap the cry behind my teeth, but somehow, I managed it.
With more clanking and jerking, the chains slowly began to descend toward the hall floor.
Cursed Fae eyesight. I'd already been able to see what was going on below perfectly, but with every inch we lowered, more details came into view.
The sickly pale cast of the people's faces.
Their cold, oddly flashing eyes.
Their threadbare clothes and worn leathers, and the weapons strapped to their chests, hips, and backs.
The crowd was an even split of males and females, from what I could tell. Some had pointed ears, some rounded—both human and Fae.
"Khydan?" I spoke loud now. "Khy!" Speaking into his mind hadn't worked. Maybe the sound of my voice would help wake him. "Shit's getting weird out here. I could really use you right now."
He didn't stir. Damp waves of hair hung in his face. He might have been unconscious, but the ink on the backs of his hands was not; it swirled wildly, forming shapes and geometric patterns that I didn't recognize.
We were almost two thirds of the way to the ground now.
"Khydan!" I let my fear slip in this time. I could not navigate whatever was about to happen alone. I needed him. "Please, Khy. Wake. Up."
In an instant, eyes the color of the tall grasses that grew around Ballard met mine. Silver rimmed the pupil of his right eye, constricting the pool of black with a band of solid quicksilver. It didn't move. Didn't shift. I could feel it bristling, attention sharp, reading the situation. "Saeris," Khy whispered. We were hanging upside down in a strange new place. Danger waited for us below, but my mate's gaze didn't waver from mine. "Breathe," he said. "It's gonna be okay. I won't let anything happen to you."
Only once he'd said this did he glance away to assess our surroundings. His mouth flattened into a taut line as he took it all in.
There was no dais here. A circle had formed in the middle of the crowd, at the center of which stood two figures. As the ground approached, I braced, tucking my shoulders up as best I could to protect my head and neck. It didn't do much good. The top of my head cracked against the stone as I struck the ground, and then I toppled, landing hard on my side.
Boots and filthy bare feet: That was all I could see for a split second. I tried to sit up, to kick my feet free of the chains, but no sooner had I touched down than there were hands under my arms, dragging me . . . dragging me upright.
A trail of black smoke slashed through the air to my left. A male had been standing there. Now he was three wet pieces of meat, smoking on the floor. The female standing on my right stepped forward, gritting her teeth, her hand still gripping my shoulder, but a second later her whole arm was thumping to the floor. Khydan swept Nimerelle through the air, both male and sword flowing like liquid smoke. He moved too fast to see, but I knew what was coming next. The female who had lost her arm was about to find herself headless. But . . .
"Enough." A different voice this time. Slightly higher in pitch, but no less commanding.
My knees buckled.
I dropped, agony exploding in my kneecaps as they struck stone. Khydan hissed as he, too, fell to his knees next to me. I couldn't move. Invisible pressure encapsulated my body, rendering me immobile. My hands wouldn't respond. My arms hung pinned to my sides. My chest was so tight I could only expand my ribs an inch, barely allowing me to breathe.
I didn't need to move to speak to Khy. What the fuck is going on?
It's okay. Don't panic. Just try to stay calm.
Are you calm? You just killed someone and disarmed someone else!
Despite everything, Khydan's mouth twitched. Disarmed? You've been spending too much time with Swift, Osha. You're cracking jokes now?
I'm being serious! You just attacked two people.
Slowly, his hint of a smile faded, leaving behind cold, hard fury as he scowled up at the strangers who surrounded us. Well. They shouldn't have touched you if they'd wanted to live, should they?
The male hadn't made a peep when he'd died. The female, who was still on her feet next to me, hadn't made a sound when Khydan had taken her arm, either. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that she was suffering. As she held her bleeding stump, she shook violently, tears tracking down her cheeks, but her jaw was clenched shut as if she didn't dare cry out.
Legs came into view. A torso. A tall, thin male with sunken black pits for eyes. A moment later, he was followed by another tall male, almost identical in features and stature, except that his eyes were glowing red coals. Long black hair hung down their backs, knotted into the most elaborate war braids I had ever seen. They were dressed for battle.
On the right, the male with the black eyes spoke first, revealing himself as the owner of the deeper voice. "Look, Githrand. The old one has brought us some new toys to play with. Warm bloods. Yvelians."
The red-eyed male sniffed, his upper lip curling in disgust. "That one isn't Yvelian."
"Oh? Really?" The male regarded me with a curiosity at war with Githrand's distaste. Gods, but their features were strikingly similar. Surely they had to be brothers. "And what might she be, then?" he pondered.
"I know not, Crave. But there's a scent on her that I dislike."
"It's called soap. Maybe you ought to try it." Khydan had warned me not to say anything, and then he came out with that? He wasn't that stupid. This was something else. A tactic designed to . . . what?
The males didn't look at either of us, didn't even acknowledge that Khydan had spoken, but the look they shared implied that he had just made our situation significantly worse. A laughable thought, really, considering how bad our situation already was.
Next to me, Khydan tensed, his back stiffening as he straightened. Nimerelle was still in his hand, the end of the blade resting on the ground. The god sword rattled, as if the piece of Mirelle's soul that lived inside it was doing her best to shatter the magic holding us in place and get back to the business of killing.
Red, burning eyes drifted slowly down to look at the sword. "Where did you get that, pet?" Crave might have asked in a disinterested way, but damn, was he interested. He cocked his head to one side, narrowing his gaze as he studied the sword, even going so far as to take a step toward the god sword. As he came forward, the female with the bleeding stump let out a tiny whimper. She took a step back, away from Crave, and scores of eyes widened as the crowd realized what she'd done. Some of the strangers gathered around us even looked down at the ground, as if they didn't have the stomach to watch what would happen next.
Crave just smirked coldly at the female, then ever so slowly crouched down and turned his head so that he was eye-to-eye with Khydan. "I repeat," he said icily. "Where did you get the sword, pet?"
Anger roiled in my mate's eyes, plain as day. A muscle ticked in his jaw as he spoke through gritted teeth. "It was a gift from the gods." He still couldn't lie, even here. He had no choice but to tell the truth.
"Hmm." Crave arched an eyebrow down at Nimerelle, for a second revealing the hunger that he was trying so carefully to hide. "You see this, brother?" He spoke loudly for show, so all could hear. "A weapon from one of the dead houses. Older than the halls of this kingdom and theirs combined, and he expects us to believe that the traitor gods gave it to him."
"It's just a sword," Khydan growled.
Crave huffed down his nose, looking at Khydan, a sour smile twisting his mouth. "That sword could end worlds in the right hands. If it's what I think it is, it is one of the forgotten blades of our ancestors . . . and you do not have the right to wield it."
"Is that so?" Khydan answered Crave's smirk with one of his own. "You should probably go ahead and take it, then."
"Mm. Yes." Crave nodded enthusiastically. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
"I really would."
Crave made a sucking sound, rocketing to his feet. There were golden clasps on the straps of his leathers. They gleamed like someone had spent hours polishing them. Crave let out a bark of laughter, drawing his own sword that hung at his waist. It looked very similar to Nimerelle from where I was kneeling. A little smaller, perhaps. Less beautifully made. In short, the sword in Crave's hand was a very poor imitation of Nimerelle. The male held the weapon aloft and pointed it at Khydan's god sword. "I can scent the magic on that thing," he said. "It smells like death."
"You're afraid to take it from me, then?" Khy suggested. As soon as he'd uttered the accusation, Githrand launched into action. He let out a raw shout, tearing around his brother to get at Khydan, but Crave calmly grabbed Githrand by the arm and held him tight.
"It's all right. He does not know how he insults me. He does not know his place. Not yet."
"Oh, I know my place here," Khydan said. "And I know what's about to happen."
Githrand let out a stiff, disbelieving laugh. "I doubt you can imagine the kind of torment you're about to suffer. If you wanted to survive this place, you should have guarded your mind a little better. Arissan saw what you did to her child. 'Shacry was her only surviving offspring. You desecrated his body and let your king carry off his head. For that alone, your penance will be death. But you killed our father's emissary, too. You severed his only thread of power in Yvelia. You weakened him—"
What emissary? What was he talking about? Khydan didn't kill an emissary. He—
Oh.
Oh, no.
He couldn't mean—
"Ereth was a traitor to his people," Khy said. "His own actions against Yvelia signed his death warrant. But he tried to attack my mate. Of course I killed him. No one will ever harm her while I still draw breath."
Ereth. The Lord of Midnight who had attacked me at the coronation. He'd been a religious leader of sorts. He had told Khydan that he worshipped different gods. Undergods . . .
"Petulant fool," Githrand scolded. "You spill blood in the defense of your precious mate, but then you bring her here? You've condemned her to hell, Khydan Finvarra. You will be dismembered piece by piece. She will watch, and when we're done with you, we will make her one of our concubines. We will breed from her until it kills her or we grow tired of her. She will know nothing but humiliation and shame in this place. She will never see the sky again—"
Shadows and smoke tore out of Khydan—a blast of magic so powerful that, for a moment, glittering darkness stole the light from the flickering torches. It happened fast. When the shadows drew back, a tall, semitranslucent wall stood between us and the crowd of Diaxians who had gathered to watch. Even if Githrand or Crave commanded them to attack, they wouldn't be able to. At least for a short while.
Khydan rolled his shoulders and shook his arms out, casually shrugging off the magic that still pinned me to the floor. How? How was he doing that?
Sorry, Osha. Arissan has always guarded Diaxis. I've spent centuries practicing at hiding information behind locked doors in my head. She saw what I wanted her to see. But you? I knew she'd look into your mind. You wouldn't have been able to hide it from her. There just wasn't time to prepare you. Khydan's words were laced with regret.
My heart had already been laboring, but now I couldn't hear myself think over the sound of my blood thrumming in my ears. I stopped it from beating altogether, then said, Prepare me for what?
Khydan's jaw worked. I'll tell you everything. I promise. As soon as we're safe, I'll explain. He wasn't looking at me. He was focused on Githrand and Crave.
"Impossible," Crave whispered. "You can't—You aren't—" The male shook his head, clearly struggling to understand what he was seeing. "Shadow magic doesn't belong in your realm. Where did you get this power?"
"The same place I got the sword," Khydan snarled. Tendrils of shadow whipped from his hands. At the same time, shadows spilled from Crave and Githrand, but their magic was nothing compared to Khydan's. Paler. Weaker, somehow. Less . . . corporeal. Khydan's shadows cut through the magic they hurled at him like a blade slicing through water.
The two males flew back through the air and landed on the ground with a bone-shattering thud. Still holding Nimerelle loosely at his side, Khydan stalked forward toward the males. He held the point of the sword over Githrand's throat. "Release her," he commanded. "Now."
The pressure pinning me to the floor vanished in an instant. I toppled forward but caught myself, preventing myself from falling onto my face. Khydan was there immediately, helping me to my feet. His hands were in my hair, then, cradling my face, his beautiful eyes full of concern, skipping over my features and searching for injury.
"I'm okay," I said. "Don't worry about me. Just . . . tell me what's happening."
My heart squeezed as he took my right hand in his and pressed my palm against the center of his chest, holding it there for a second. "Do you trust me?" he asked.
"Yes. Always. Yes."
And for a split second, he smiled the most heartbreakingly beautiful smile. "I love you, Saeris Fane." He kissed me hard, and so many unspoken things passed between us as he did. Promises and hope. Oaths and regrets.
He tore away from me and was gone.
In four long strides, he was towering over the one called Crave, grabbing him by the front of his armor and pulling him up from the ground.
"Who . . . are you?" Crave choked. "Only . . . half-gods may wield shadows."
Khydan drew in a deep breath, ignoring the male's question. "I've come for a dragon, as is my right. Summon our father. Tell him I've come to make a trade."