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Chapter 110

Vard's screams of agony ripped through the maze of tunnels, echoing off of every wall and shattering against my skull as I ran down passage after passage, seeking some way out of these foul caverns.

I didn't know what had happened to him but there was no mistaking his snivelling voice raised in purest pain. Perhaps one of his own feral creations had been waiting for him beyond that gate. It seemed as though he had met with the end he deserved for his betrayal at least. But that did not help me with my efforts to escape.

A clatter sounded from somewhere behind us and I whirled that way, spotting a figure striding closer, blue hair tangling around her shoulders.

I cursed and threw out my hand, casting air at my snivelling advisors and hurling them back towards the Vega brat before constructing a shield of pure energy to stop any from following me. Then I ran on into the network of caves, leaving the sounds of her fight with them far behind me.

Left and right I turned, my gaze catching on a pillar which looked all too familiar before I skidded to a halt and whirled around.

"How do I get out of this confounding hell?" I snarled.

"You could try getting through me," a voice replied from the darkness, and I flinched around, fire igniting in my palm and illuminating the cold gaze of my youngest and most worthless son.

"Xavier," I ground out, contempt lining my features as I looked him up and down. He was grubby with the evidence of battle, his roughly-forged armour making it clear that he had fought in shifted form before crafting it. "Are you so keen to reunite with your mother that you thought to find your death in me?"

Xavier's gaze shuttered but I relished the bite of pain I saw splinter through his eyes. So he was grieving that betraying bitch, was he? Good. I hoped her death had cut him to the fucking bone.

He threw a spear at me so fast that I was forced to lurch aside, fire breaking from me in a wild twist of magic as I cast at him in return, my single hand making every spell more difficult, thwarting me in my greatness.

The ground bucked beneath me, the walls threatening to crumble over my head as the fucking horse used his hold on the Element of earth to try and bury me alive.

I blasted him with enough fire to make him cry out in pain, but the cave roof shattered in the same moment, and I was forced to hurl myself backwards on a gust of air.

I tumbled away while rocks crashed down on me, cuts blossoming across my skin, pain lancing through my body until I fell in a ruffled heap beyond the cave-in.

I spat a wad of blood and saliva from my mouth as I pushed myself upright once more, scowling at the heaped rock which divided me from my most worthless child and hoping upon every star that he had met his death in the fire I'd sent his way.

I turned and started running again, my foot snagging in the torn fabric of my cloak and sending me crashing against the rocky wall. I cursed, tearing the damn thing off of me and racing on once more.

A blur of movement ahead made me fall still and I bared my teeth as I found Caleb Altair standing in the passage to my left, his expression filled with amusement as he watched me flounder.

"What's the matter, Lionel?" he purred. "Out of places to run to?"

"I am a king," I spat. "I run from nothing!"

"No?"

A howl sounded from the tunnel to my right and I flinched around again, my head quickly snapping back towards the Vampire who had shot even closer to me in my moment of distraction.

"The True Queens are looking for you. Won't you face them like a true Fae?" he asked.

"I'll destroy them in my own time," I retorted, fire blazing from me in an inferno which forced him back.

An enormous white Wolf ran at me with fangs bared from the passage on my right and I released a noise so unlike a Dragon that blood rushed to my face in reply to it.

I let the flames roar across the path Caleb occupied and the other path to my right before charging ahead, blocking the progress of the two traitorous Heirs and hurrying towards the scent of fresh breeze which I had just tasted on the air.

I simply had to get out of these caves. I would re-group and return. I would poison them in their beds and murder their children in the dark if that was what it took to reclaim my position one day. I had won my crown without ever having to face war before and I could win it back through cleverness and scheming again.

"Oh to the derry of the duneberry he roamed, where the cat was in the bushes and his little whiskers moaned," the insane Grus girl's voice warbled from the path ahead and I faltered, my hand slipping into my pocket and closing around the single gold coin I held there. The rest of my treasure had been lost with my advisors and I bit my tongue as I took stock of my dwindling magical reserves.

I took another path, this one curving up, a glimmer of light ahead of me promising freedom from these cursed caverns at last.

I broke into a run, the air tasting sweeter by the second, the glimmering light of day beckoning me on. All I had to do was make it outside. Then I could shift and fly and be gone from this wretched place and the foul truth of this day for good. I would re-group. I would return. I would win the final-

"We have to stop meeting like this, Father." Darius stepped into my path, right in the mouth of the exit to the cave, daylight gilding his silhouette and making him seem even larger than the last time I'd seen him, his frame towering over my own.

"How dare you," I snarled, raising my chin and holding my ground. "How dare you stand there before me like you think yourself equal to my might. Like you haven't cowered beneath me time after time, snivelling and shaking while tasting the bite of my fury over your inadequacies. How dare you put yourself on the opposite side of this war and call yourself a king above me."

"That's the thing, Father," Darius said thoughtfully, removing the bloodstained axe from his back and hefting it into his hands. "You have always been so fucking short sighted. So desperately hungry for power and so pathetically jealous of those who hold more of it than you that you blinded yourself to the truth."

"And what truth is that?" I hissed, fire blossoming in my hand, the death of this traitorous bastard the one thing I vowed to bring to fruition before my end. If there was any chance at all that I was going to die in this fucking place, then I would be taking him back into death with me. And this time I would make certain he never returned from it.

"I'm not the one you should be frightened of," Darius replied cruelly, a smile gripping his features as he watched me summon every scrap of my power into my fist ready to blast him from this life and see him destroyed for his betrayal.

"I'm not frightened of you," I retorted, the acrid taste of a lie caressing my tongue.

"You are. You have been for a very, very long time," he countered like it was a fact that was so very obvious to him. "But the problem with waiting for the beast at your front to strike is that it's so easy to miss the one aiming for your back."

I whirled around, fire blasting from me in a furious explosion as my eyes met with the bright green, accusing stare of the Vega whore who had stolen him from me in the first place. The girl who had dared to defy me from the very first moment I laid eyes on her, the one who had always seemed so very like her arrogant, all-powerful father.

The world burned as the full might of my power tore from me, the tunnel rumbling and quaking as the stone itself began to melt beneath the furious weight of my magic. She smiled at me as she welcomed the full force of my fire, the entirety of my power nothing at all to her as she raised a hand and let the flames of her Phoenix join the roiling tempest of my own power.

Everything from the air, to the rock, to my own body burned. Everything, except her. And as Roxanya Vega's sword slammed straight into my chest, piercing my heart and ripping my soul from the confines of my living body, her final words to me rang like a death toll throughout my skull.

"So much for the reign of the great Dragon King."

The world of fire and ruin shattered around me, the agony in my flesh evaporating in an instant as I fell from my rightful place within my body and into the freezing waters of the river of death.

"No!" I roared, my arms and legs thrashing as I fought to swim, hands grabbing hold of me from every direction and dragging me back down again.

I cried out in sheerest terror as I was hauled beneath the water, The Veil snapping closed at my back and the screams of the dead surrounding me while hundreds upon hundreds of them clamoured to take hold of me and drown me beneath the roiling waves.

I kicked and fought, the last of my air racing from my lungs, the water burning as I was forced to inhale it and yet I wasn't drowning. I had no body left to die, only this endless, eternal agony of death.

I thrashed against the swarming mass of the dead, their accusations filling my skull until it threatened to split in two. Until I was suffocating beneath the weight of their hatred even more surely than I was suffering within the confines of the water itself.

A hand found mine in the darkness and I clung to it with desperation, allowing it to haul me from the river and throw me down on the bank.

I trembled at the feet of my saviour, coughing and shivering, the cold light of death hanging all around me as my failure closed in on me like a curtain wrapping around my mind.

I had died. My reign had truly ended and everything I had done, everything I had plotted and schemed and worked for had come to nothing…nothing at all…

"Thank you," I choked out, my mind lashing against the reality of where I was and my focus falling on the here and now, the man who had pulled me from that river of torment, the one who had seen fit to save me.

I looked up, expecting to find one of my Bonded there, another soul thrust into death, ready to serve me beyond it.

The faces of five bloodthirsty demons looked down at me instead. My mouth opened and closed as my gaze moved between my brother Radcliff, Hail and Merissa Vega, Azriel Orion and my traitorous wife, Catalina.

"Wait," I gasped as I took in the utter hatred and joy lining their features, the ranks and ranks of the dead who stood at their backs awaiting their turn to meet with me too, but they did not wait. They didn't so much as slow as they reached for me and dragged me into their grasp, tearing at me with nails, claw and tooth. Even though I had no fleshly body, the pain was true and keen. They beat me there between them and I curled in on myself, a whimper rising in my throat and fear spilling into the corners of my soul. A soul that could not escape this torment.

My screams filled the air and echoed out across The Veil and beyond as they kicked and pounded their fists into me with vengeance in their eyes and fury in their hearts.

A dark and forbidding voice dripped over me, the Savage King drawing closer again to see me shudder beneath him. "You will face all those you wronged, and only when they have seized their vengeance and grown weary of your suffering, will we deliver you to the Harrowed Gate where you will be tortured for all eternity by the monsters who wait for you there."

"Please," I rasped, my hand landing on his boot as the souls parted to let him closer.

He gazed at me with a sneer, disgusted by me as my traitorous ex-wife drew closer at his side.

"Catalina," I rasped, my hand moving from Hail's foot to hers. "We had something good once. Remember that. Show mercy."

She kicked my hand away then stamped down on it, making me roar in agony. "I will show you the mercy that you showed our children," she spat.

"It's time for you to reap the results of your life of corruption and betrayal, Lionel," Hail said as he stepped aside to let the sea of souls rush back towards me to take their revenge. My screams didn't stop, my fear a potent thing inside me that clutched at every fibre of my being and in that endless torment I found myself trapped in the reality of the very things I had sworn never to be. Helpless, afraid, alone and entirely without power.

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