Chapter 39

CHAPTER39

Abraxas watched Lore slip away into the castle and his gut churned. He knew this was a trap. Why couldn’t she see this? It was so clear to him that Margaret was going to use whatever cards she could pull to get them apart.

The last time it had worked. Lore had died and everything had fallen apart. Sure, they’d all won the war, but everything else had shattered in the wake of his darling, wonderful mate. And if Margaret thought she was going to make a repeat of that damned moment, then he would make sure that she was stopped.

Abraxas landed hard on the edge of the castle, scrabbling with his claws to haul at least half of his body up onto the top of it.

“Hyperion,” he barked out, his eyes catching on his sons. “Keep the elves off the wall. I’m going after your mother.”

His son nodded, and he saw the rage blooming again in his emerald eyes. Hyperion was enjoying himself, just like a true dragon should. His son was ready to beat at the world and rage with his flames until it was all ash at his feet. And then he knew without a doubt that Hyperion would take his time to make sure that green things grew upon the graves of those who fought against him.

Turning in the other direction, he locked eyes with Nyx. “Make sure the others stay alive,” he snarled, glancing down into the courtyard where their people were fighting for their lives.

He’d hoped...

Well, it made little sense to hope right now. Lore had done what she could, and in doing so, she’d saved him and his children from the wounds that the acid balls would have left. But their people were still fighting. Just as she’d promised they would.

She was no goddess to walk into a battlefield and end the fight there. They needed to prove themselves to her, and they would.

“Father!” Nyx shouted, sweeping elves off the castle ramparts near her. Their screams echoed for a few moments before she snarled for their silence. “Bring her back to us.”

“I will.”

And then he let the change ripple through him. He was still half on the wall, even in his human form, so he had to drag himself upright. Already breathing hard, he rolled onto his feet and balled his hands into fists.

Three elves stood between him and the door that Lore and Margaret had slipped through. Three elves who would now meet their end.

He stalked toward them, shaking out the tense muscles in his shoulders. “Have you heard what happens when a dragon kills you?”

They looked at each other, then back at him. The elves gripped their swords a little more tightly, bringing them closer to their bodies as they walked toward him as one.

Perhaps they thought it would be easier to attack him because he was no longer massive. They must look at him now and think that even though he was a significantly large man, that he must be less of a threat.

They were wrong.

He didn’t have a sword or a weapon, but he had his body and that was all he needed. These elves had no clue what they were about to fight, but he would at least warn them. Like the good man Lore had taught him to be.

“The old legends say if your body is burned by dragon flame, that your soul is consumed.” He flashed the three elves a grin. “Are you willing to risk your soul?”

Again, they all looked at each other, as though they could bolster courage just by looking at other elves. It wouldn’t help. One of them dropped his blade, lifted his hands, and backed away. The other two remained where they were and only gripped their sword hilts with even firmer grasps.

Abraxas tilted his head to the side. “Your friend is smarter than you two.”

“You are not a dragon at this moment,” one of the elves snarled, her voice revealing that she was a woman. “If only you had your scales and your flames to intimidate us.”

Ah, so Margaret had lied to them about his abilities as well, or perhaps they were merely too young to remember that a dragon was to be feared in whatever form they chose.

He gave them both another sharp toothed smile and then held out his hand. With a flex of his stomach, he expelled a bright flame that turned into a fire sprite in his palm.

They had frozen where they were, suddenly realizing that they were in more trouble than they had realized. And when he smiled, their hands trembled and shook their swords.

“Burn,” he said, his voice guttural in his order to the sprite that suddenly looked so pleased to do as he asked.

It would burn whatever stood in front of it, and right now, that was the two elves who now would know what true terror felt like. The sprite hopped off his palm, struggled to stand on the ramparts, and then sprinted toward them with all the speed of lightning.

One elf shouted, the only remaining man. The sprite went right for him. It grabbed onto his leg and tunneled underneath the armor. Though it would not melt the metal, it could melt whatever was underneath.

The elf’s screams echoed across the castle as he desperately tried to yank his armor off, but whoever had put it on him had done so very efficiently. He was having a hard time removing it, and that left Abraxas staring at the female elf, who glared even harder at him.

“I will end you, once and for all,” she snarled.

“You will not,” he replied, and cracked his knuckles. “Now, fight.”

She sprinted toward him, all lithe body and smooth movements. Abraxas recognized her attack form. It was one that Lore used to use. He’d battled with Lore before, and his elf would not confuse him with her liquid moves. He dodged and ducked, moving away from the blade step by step until he had her where he wanted her.

And with a snap of his arm, he grabbed her around the throat. She thrust her blade up between them and it caught on wood. She stared down, realizing that he’d placed his body behind a rack that held their arrows, and she was on the other side of it. Now her blade was stuck, and he had her by the throat.

“You should never fight a dragon,” he said, his voice tired and disappointed. “What have they taught you?”

Then he threw her off the edge of the castle. She let out a little shriek before her body hit the ground, and he could not find it in himself to feel any pity.

There should be more elves. He wanted the world to see them more and to experience all that the elves had done. He wanted them to fall in love with the world, just as he had. But these elves... They were a poison to this world and did a disservice to their kind.

The elves he knew of, the ones in the old legends, were more interested in growth and expansion and adventure than war. These sad little ploys to drag more power toward them made them seem more like dwarves, wishing to find treasure like they could bury themselves in it.

It was a sad day when he realized the elves had fallen so far from what they once were.

As he strode past the elf, who was still struggling to get the fire sprite out of his armor, Abraxas shook his head in disappointment. He’d thought to call the creature off. Perhaps it would be more useful in the battle below, but... Now he just wanted the other elf to suffer. This man had stood between Abraxas and Lore and all that honor and respect for their kind disappeared.

He hated how he felt this way. But the dispassionate view of this elf could not be shaken, no matter how hard he tried.

And so he left the man there. Boiling alive in his own suit of armor as he moved away toward the door where Lore and Margaret had slipped through.

Their scents were still strong in the air. Lore’s like a sea breeze and a warm summer day. Margaret’s reeked of fear. The bitter tang of her scent had always bothered him, but now it almost smelled acidic. Like she was leaking the very substance they used to harm Abraxas all those years ago.

He wanted his retribution.

He wanted to take her neck in his hands and squeeze until she could no longer breathe. He wanted her to look him in the eye as she felt her life draining out of her body, so she knew even in death who had killed her. He wanted that satisfaction to know without a doubt that she was wrong, she had died, and that he could be certain she would not come back.

The halls seemed different as he stalked through them. He was used to more silence in a castle like this. But he could hear the tiny scrapings of little creatures moving through the stones. As though the hidden passageways hadn’t been used for months on end. The rats were already taking this place back.

And though the areas where he and Lore had walked before had been pretty and clean, this area of the castle was falling apart. No tapestries remained on the walls, dust had settled in the corners, even smudges of dirt and growing moss on the ceiling. It concerned him. The elves were always so clean.

They surrounded themselves with beauty. That was their greatest vice. They’d always loved things that were made carefully and that proved how much they adored their talents. Margaret and her people should not have been living in squalor.

None of this made sense.

None of it.

Margaret should have at least given her people somewhere clean to rest. Or were there not that many elves here left? He knew that wasn’t true. He could smell them. The hours of time that had passed were not enough to hide the scents of hundreds of people who had walked this very corridor. So why were they subjected to living like this? Why had they agreed to live like this?

Fear reeked. He could smell it, coating his skin like a thick slime. They had all been afraid in these walls for such a long time that the emotion had bred a monster. It was now a living creature within all the elves.

He tracked them through the castle and saw a splash of blood leading to one of the servants’ corridors. Bursting through it, he ran as soon as he scented it. Elf blood. That’s all he could tell, but the metallic scent sent him surging through the halls in fear of what he would find. Lore was stronger. Lore was faster. She had more power than Margaret had, and surely that meant something.

One door had a bloody handprint on it, and so he burst out into the sun in human form to see two elves locked in battle. Lore’s blade flashed in the air, and another arc of blood splattered upon the grass.

There was no one here but them. No one but Margaret, who eventually ended up on her back with Lore crouched above her. The sword flashed again, but this time it was interrupted by the bitter sound of laughter erupting from the Darkveil elf.

Even Lore paused. She held her blade over the other woman’s throat, hovering there.

Lore spat, “Why are you laughing? You are defeated!”

“Am I?” Margaret asked. “Or have you fallen into my trap? Did you think I was so much a fool, so doddering and old, that I would sacrifice my entire army in a courtyard full of weaklings? You have led them to a slaughter, goddess.”

Margaret spat the last word as though it was a curse, and Abraxas’s mind tried to catch up. What did she mean she hadn’t sacrificed her army? That was all they had expected. Surely they would know...

Except, he’d smelled hundreds of elves in that castle and they had been there just hours before. Where were they now?

Shit.

His eyes met Lore’s as she glanced over her shoulder as though she’d felt him there. They stared at each other, both of them realizing the danger they were in and how much more they were going to fight.

Their people were far behind them in the castle. He had to...

“Go,” Lore shouted, and he knew what she meant.

The change rippled through him again. He was too close to the castle and bumped up against it until the stones rocked against the blast of his change. He was fine, but he needed to lumber forward so he could take flight. Hyperion and Nyx would shield their humans while he doused the courtyard in flames.

But Margaret swung her legs, knocking Lore off and standing. She pointed at Abraxas and he saw the rage in her eyes. The rage that threatened him and sent his blood running cold.

“First, I will take your dragon!” the Darkveil elf screamed. “And then I will take all the rest!”

He smelled it first. The bitter scent of acid that had seemed to surround Margaret. It swelled in the air like a wave that threatened to overtake him. Then he saw it. The flames that scattered sparks of green and blue. They launched up from the ground behind Margaret, where he realized they’d dug trenches. Deep into the earth where countless elves waited.

Those green acid balls flashed in his vision and he remembered the pain of them. Just three that had shattered through the ceiling of the great hall and sizzled through his wings.

This time, there were twenty. The first round was that many and Lore quickly threw up her hands, holding them at bay. But then another volley launched at the same time Margaret struck. She had twin blades in her hands, wicked and black, and were those grimdags. It wasn’t possible that a Darkveil elf had those.

Lore had no choice.

She could not allow her soul to be sucked up in those knives or they were all lost. She had to turn her attention to saving herself and, in doing so, her spell slipped.

The acid struck him hard. Countless strikes that rained down upon his head, his wings, his chest, his back. They sizzled and sparked and sank underneath his scales, that melted beneath the weight of them. At first, he did not feel the pain. He only felt the shock that they’d touched him, and his eyes widened as he met Lore’s stare.

“No!” she screamed and threw Margaret off herself as a wave of elves erupted from the ground and sprinted toward the castle. Elves. More magical creatures. So many powerful beings, so many he couldn’t count their number.

His breath rattled in his lungs that were dissolving as acid poured through him. He staggered, falling onto his belly on the ground.

He couldn’t get up.

Why couldn’t he get up?

Abraxas had always fought through the pain, no matter how bad it was. But he tried to lift a wing and shove himself upright, but there was no more wing there. Only bone and ragged flesh hanging from it.

He could feel himself dying. The darkness that seeped through his eyes and hovered there, waiting for him to let out one long breath and just let go.

Until it stopped. Death waited as though it were ordered to do so and he... waited. He waited, and he did not know why or how.

Abraxas only knew that he existed in pain and torment, with no relief.