Chapter 21

CHAPTER21

Abraxas wasn’t a fan of plans that weren’t iron tight. He knew there were a million ways for this to go wrong, namely that they’d already let Margaret know where they were. The elf would anticipate that they were coming for Zephyr, and considering the magical handprint that Lore had left behind inside Solis Occasum?

They would have little time at all to save their friend.

But Lore was adamant that this was their only opportunity. She was frantic as they packed, muttering under her breath about all the weapons they would need. She barely even saw Abraxas and Beauty as she swept past them, her gaze turned inward. As though she had done something wrong and couldn’t quite look them in the eye.

He hated it. He didn’t know how to fix this, though. They were all very aware that Zephyr’s time was limited. And if Lore thought this was the only way to save him, then... he didn’t know how to question her about that.

Sighing, Abraxas made his way out of the tunnel, following the two women who were already bickering again.

“I’m going,” Beauty said, glaring at Lore as if hoping her eyes might set the elf on fire. “You can’t say that I cannot come with you to save him. He will need me.”

“He will,” Lore agreed, adjusting the strap on her shoulder and ignoring that Beauty was glaring. “But that will not happen right now. He won’t even be conscious when we get there if I’m right.”

“Why wouldn’t he be conscious? What did you do?”

“What I had to do for him to stay alive. They won’t kill him outright, but I had to... Look, I don’t have time to explain myself to you, Beauty. We have to go. Now.”

He moved ahead when Lore glanced back for him. He was not wearing his pack or much at all. The clothing on his form would easily be destroyed, because he already knew what she wanted from him.

Though he hated to be used, Abraxas had already been itching to change. It had been far too long since he’d been in his dragon form. Far too long since he’d heard people scream in fear when they saw his shadow pass overhead.

“So, it is time,” he muttered, standing beside her and looking up at the sky. “In daylight?”

“Plan changed.” Lore, again, ignored Beauty, who was now waving her hand in front of the elf’s face. “We’re fighting to get him.”

“How many?”

She shrugged. “Not enough. The guards on the outside I can put to sleep, or you can take care of the issue. That’s up to you.”

Oh, he’d always wanted to be a good man. He’d wanted to be a valuable partner and someone his mate could rely on. There was a time when he thought that man had to be genteel, honorable, stuffy. He’d thought he had to wear nice clothing and sit at a desk, or at the very least smile at strangers as they passed him by.

But now?

His mate had freed him from those terrible thoughts. Lore did not ask him to be anything other than a dragon. He was a man when they mated, and she enjoyed every second of that, but she never wanted him to change who he was or how he reacted.

And the crimson dragon in him longed to scent blood in the air and battle beneath his claws.

Giving her a feral grin, he felt the change rippling through him. “I’ll take care of them.”

Lore was not the same as she’d been before, either. She did not step away from him in fear of the power blast that would surely knock off her feet. Instead, she stepped closer and placed her hand on his cheek. “My terrifying love,” she whispered. “We will take from them as they took from him.”

Scales rippled down his body and a blast of air pushed Beauty away from them. But Lore remained. She stayed still with her hand on his snout now, gently petting the warm scales there before she whispered, “Should I get our armor?”

“There is no time.” He nudged back against her touch. “We have fought without it before. This is not the battle it was forged for.”

Lore’s eyes flashed with pleasure, and then she raced up his outstretched wing. They’d done this so many times, but he felt the honor of it every time she settled between his spines.

Though the air rang with Beauty’s swears, he still felt the power and the luxury of knowing that he and his partner were ready to take to the skies.

Lore leaned forward and patted the side of his neck. “Let them know we’re coming.” Her own voice had turned wild and wicked. “Let them know who to fear.”

Stretching his neck high toward the sky, Abraxas let out a roar that shook the very clouds. It tore through the air and he knew that all who heard it would tremble in fear. They would know what it meant to be terrified and frozen as they waited for the attack. They would know what Zephyr had felt all these long nights.

His wings beat at the air and they were off. They soared through the air like an arrow loosed from a bow. Two weapons with their sights on the elves, who stood at the ready on the battlements of a castle that once stood for peace.

Though the wind whipped at her words, he still heard Lore as she shouted, “Drop me off in the center! Just get rid of the ones above me.”

He would, and gladly.

They were close enough that he could see the white terror in the eyes of the elves, who pointed weapons at him. Acid dripped from the tips of those arrows, so at least Margaret had learned something from all the battles she’d fought before.

It would not help them.

He had also learned from those same battles.

Licking his lips, he gave them all a terrifying, toothy grin while banking low over the courtyard. Though his body was larger than its entirety, Lore had enough space to slip from his shoulders just before the first volley of arrows reached him.

Abraxas banked again, hard. He tilted his body, rolling through the air so that none of the arrows hit him. They would have to anticipate his movements. And considering they had never fought a dragon before, that would be a difficult task, indeed.

He circled the castle and let loose a surge of flames down one side of the parapets. Every elf on that side was soon torched, their bodies flailing as the blast of his flames sizzled the fat on their bones.

Shifting quickly, he avoided another round of arrows before raising up in the air, too high for them to reach. He took his time, watching Lore’s fluid body as she fought the elves on the ground. Her fighting style had changed. She trusted her magic, even as she leapt through the air, rolled over the back of a bleeding elf, outstretched her hand to release a pulse of power that sent others staggering back.

Twenty men could not stop her, no matter how hard they struggled to contain her. And ah, it was a lovely sight. His bloodthirsty little mate would stop at nothing to get those she deemed family.

He sank low again, timing the moment when the elves turned their attention back to Lore. This time, he scooped their bodies up with his wide jaws, thrashing some off the edge of the parapets and onto the hard stone below.

The crunch of bone between his teeth was a familiar pleasure, and one he rarely got to enjoy. His eyes rolled back as his hunger abated for a few moments until an acid arrow sank through his wing and tore a hole in the membranes that remembered this pain all too well.

Blinking, he shifted, clinging to the side of the wall like a great bat and glaring at the elf who had dared. There were only two more walls, and one wall was entirely empty where the elves had fled. But the remaining soldiers all started preparing their weapons, their hands shaking in their rush.

Ah, well. Not everyone could be so brave.

Abraxas opened his mouth and a wall of fire dripped out. He burned them all, listening to the sweet sound of their screams. It felt right. It felt wrong. He shouldn’t want to be a good man and still be able to do this, but war was war. And he would no longer deny the desires of a dragon.

A sharp whistle pierced through his hunting haze. Peering down at Lore, who stood in the center of the courtyard, surrounded by a ring of bloodied bodies, she pointed at a door that led underground. “We still have to go down there!”

Well, this size would not do then.

His sides heaving with disappointment, he crawled over the edge and then landed as a man at her side. He didn’t want to go back to this form. Every ounce of his body wanted to remain as a dragon for just a little while longer.

He’d gotten used to how hard it was to change back into this weaker form.

“Better?” he grunted, teeth gritted against the need to change back again.

“Very.” She cupped the back of his neck and drew him in for a long kiss. She tasted metallic and warm and everything that he’d always wanted.

Wrapping an arm around her waist, he tugged her against him. Her hands flattened on his chest and he wanted them on his skin. But he knew now wasn’t the time, even if he wished it to be.

Pressing one last lingering kiss to her lovely, soft lips, he whispered, “I had forgotten how wonderful it is to watch you fight.”

“I have never forgotten the terror of watching you.” Lore leaned back and traced a finger over his bottom lip. “To know that a dragon protects me is a heady dose of power. I adore you, my love. Now let’s go get our boy back.”

Humming low under his breath, he turned on his heel and stalked toward the door. Throwing it open, he asked, “How many?”

“I have no idea. The last time I was here there were maybe thirty? She might have a lot more now.”

A shadow raced toward him from the depths of the darkness. The elf brandished his sword high, clearly thinking he had the high ground, but he had never fought a dragon before.

Abraxas ducked underneath the man’s swing and came up with his hand wrapped around the elf’s throat. He threw him against the wall, the man’s skull making a horrible cracking sound against the stone before he slumped.

“Hm,” he grumbled. “I used to think so highly of the elves. Their fighting was renowned throughout the kingdom.”

Lore stepped over the man’s body and palmed the two knives in her hands. “They were.”

Another elf launched at them, smaller than the other. Female, perhaps? Lore parried her sword, catching it in between her knives and twisting them. The woman was unarmed when Lore plunged her blades into either side of her throat.

Tsking, he maneuvered around the woman’s body. “Then what happened?”

“Years of servitude? Years of becoming servants and bakers and farmers. Margaret forgot these people are not fighters. They were not born into the life that our ancestors were.” Not even breathing hard, she gestured for him to go in front of her. “Your turn.”

And so they fought. All the way down the stairs and into a larger room lined with cells. He didn’t look at who occupied them. They were not important to him, and Lore knew that. Neither of them would waste time on anyone else. If she wanted to save them, then she would.

Considering Lore also didn’t look at them, he could only assume they deserved to be there.

A wall of broad warriors stood between them and a final door at the end of the hall. Abraxas tried to relax his shoulders, but he was getting too old for this. His right shoulder was already stiff.

He should have stretched before they came down here.

Pressing her lips into a thin line, Lore stared the men down. “I will let you leave here alive,” she said, her voice ringing in the dungeon. “All you have to do is put down your weapons.”

“You think we’ll trust you?” The man who spoke was tall and blonde, a lithe looking creature who would likely be difficult to kill. “You forgot your own kind.”

“I’m half elf,” she snarled at him. “I won’t make this offer again. Drop your weapons and leave. Go back to Margaret and beg for her mercy, or flee from this isle and find yourself a new land. I don’t care what you do.”

Two elves did so. A man and a woman who looked at each other with history in their gazes. They skirted past Abraxas, flinching when he even so much as breathed. But then they raced from the room and up the dark stairwell.

The remaining eleven elves stayed where they were.

Lore handed him one of her knives and rotated her wrist. He heard an awful cracking noise, and then a continuous crunching as she moved it.

Perhaps they both should have prepared better for this. They were far too old for such things.

His mate cleared her throat and then said, “It’s a shame you didn’t go with your friends. That was a mistake.”

She lifted her hand and all the elves froze where they were. Their eyes bulged in their heads and he realized they couldn’t breathe. Their mouths dropped open, sucking at the air like fish before they fell to their knees. One by one.

“Lore?” he asked, his voice shaking with the violence of what she’d chosen to do.

This wasn’t her. She wasn’t the same woman who had urged them to be kind to people or to ignore them entirely. He remembered her not wanting anyone else to die and now...

Reality slammed back into him. The blood thirst drained away as he suddenly worried about what all of this would do to the woman he loved.

She met his gaze and then shook her head. “It’s all right.”

“Is it?”

A flash of sadness moved through her, and Lore’s shoulders rounded in despair. “I gave them a choice. And then I had to make one myself, Abraxas. I will not make the same mistake I did in the first war. I will lose no one else who is dear to me.”

He couldn’t blame her for that.

Abraxas nodded and moved toward the last room. Wrenching the door open, he saw Zephyr laid out on the floor. Poor boy didn’t even move when he heard them. They must have knocked him unconscious.

Without another thought, he ripped the door off its hinges so it wouldn’t be in their way as he carried Zephyr out. It was time to gather up their friend and take him somewhere safe.