Chapter 44

CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

P ain splintered through my every movement, my enormous, scaled body cramped in this dank cavern, my neck bowed low from being unable to fully extend it for so long.

My whole world existed in a glow of green light emanating from the jagged lumps of crystal which were driven into my flesh, the agony of them punctuating each lingering moment of my existence.

A distant thumping pricked at my ears, my eyes cracking open as the sound drew closer, a ragged gasp falling from the unwitting lips of the Fae who approached.

The dark consumed me here, but the light of the passage beyond the bars winked in the distance, the silhouette of a Fae with pale pink hair passing through them, a sob rattling her chest.

I inhaled deeply, the raw scent of life which clung to her awakening the beast in me, even as the fog of my own thoughts threatened to drown me again. I was dying. I had been dying in this place for hundreds of years. Ever since I had emerged as a Dragon and been presented to the Reapers as a miracle by my father. His tremendous claim to much of the green lands of Avanis, alongside his countless victories in battle had made him believe the stars favoured him above all other warlords. And in his arrogance, he had believed that my Emergence as a Dragon was a symbol of that supremacy.

I could still smell the burning of his flesh, the screams of my family, the pleas for it to end.

I scoffed at my family name. Bastian Carderrin. Some Heir to the Crown of Bones I'd turned out to be – more like Heir to Decay and Ruin.

A second figure emerged beyond the bars, a second set of footsteps pounding into my lowly domain, this one a male, far larger than the first, reeking of bloodlust and spoiled earth.

My lips pulled back on a snarl, my claws flexing against the rocks beneath me, Dragon Fire growing in my chest.

Gold glinted in the fist of the woman as she raced into the darkness before me, an axe clasped in her grip which sang to me in a melody at once unfamiliar and utterly devastating.

Magic clawed through my veins with every step she took, the treasure awakening a power inside me which I had almost forgotten in my years festering in this cavern at the mercy of the Reapers.

Fire rolled up the back of my throat, my eyes on the pair of figures who dared disturb my torturous existence.

I bared my teeth, the glow of molten fire shining through them, illuminating the dark cavern and making the man stumble over his own feet, a choked curse escaping him.

But my attention didn't linger on the male. My focus fell to the female who didn't check her stride as she ran for me, her hair knotted and clinging to the blood which splattered her skin.

I met her storm grey eyes and in them I found a river of agony so like the pain I had come to call home. A bolt of energy surged between us in that look, like a spear of light driving into my chest and cracking it open. She was wild and furious, devastating in her beauty and ruinous in her suffering. She was a creature born of the same torment which lived in me and the taste of her death would be the sweetest tonic to my suffering.

A roar broke from my lips, loud enough to shake the dank walls of the cavern I was chained within. And as my gaze stayed locked with hers, I let hellfire spew from my lips with the hopes that it would burn this pain right out of me and take every piece of suffering in her tempestuous eyes with it.