I lifted my head and looked down at his beautifully beastly face with its dragon eyes, deadly angles, and dramatic scales creeping down to his chest. The slick, glassy surface of those scales caressed my inner thighs as my own golden scales rose to the surface, drawn by my dragon king's desire and his fire. I stroked one path of crimson scales from his cheek to hipbone, and Arach shivered violently. My sex clenched around him in response, and he trembled even harder.
“How you undo me,” Arach murmured.
“And you put me back together,” I whispered as I leaned over him and demanded another kiss.
As we kissed, flames burst into life across my back and traveled down my arms. Arach's fire rose to twine with mine, and we were soon writhing in a burning bed. Amid the smoke and flames, we found the most savagely satisfying love together, and we clung to it and each other until our limbs were too tired to cling anymore.
Chapter Fifty
Arach and I had slept in a guest room instead of making our castle staff bring us a new mattress. Our faeries were busy dealing with guests and the festivities, and we didn't want to add to their trouble late at night. Despite the change in sleeping arrangements, Brevyn found us, and I woke to my son crawling into bed beside me.
“Hey, little man,” I murmured and then yawned. “Did you have a good birthday? Did you get everything you wanted?”
“I did. Thank you for inviting Thrud; I was happy to see her. And I love the remote-controlled car you gave me.” Brevyn hugged me.
“Good, I hoped you would.” I kissed his forehead. “I think you made Thrud happy too, and I don't think that happens too often.”
“No; it doesn't,” Brevyn said as if he knew her better than I. Which, he probably did. “But I need to show you something, Mother.”
Adrenaline shot through my body, and I came fully awake as I stared into my son's solemn face. Arach had perked up as well and sat up behind me.
“Okay,” I whispered and shimmied myself into a sitting position.
Brevyn crawled up beside me and leaned back against the pillow before he held his little hand out to me. I looked at it and once again wished this power had never found him. It had helped us numerous times, but I would have given all that up in exchange for Brevyn having a childhood free of horrifying visions. I had given Ull a fresh start only to curse him with prophecy; the one gift I hated. How ironic.
“Vervain.” Arach's hand grabbed mine and stopped me from taking Brevyn's.
Brevyn and I both looked over at him in surprise.
“I want to see the vision too,” Arach said to Brevyn. “Can you share it with me, Son?”
Brevyn nodded and climbed over my legs to sit between Arach and me. He held his hands out again; one to each of us. I looked at Arach over our son's head, and he nodded. He wanted to know everything and this was a chance for him to see it firsthand. So be it.
I wanted to prepare Arach for the shock of Brevyn's visions; how real they were. How, lately, they'd even followed me back into reality briefly. Brevyn's power had been growing. But Arach already knew all that; he'd seen me come out of visions often enough. We took Brevyn's hands together.
And the world changed.
Arach, Brevyn, and I stood on the shore of a lake. To our left, the land rolled out bleak and barren over low hills until it hit a gloomy mountain range capped in sooty clouds. One charred plateau held the ruins of a building, structural pillars poking up like the skeleton of some prehistoric beast. The blackened spears of a burned forest surrounded it, not a single spot of green to be seen. To our right, a cliff rose and an ancient castle crumbled atop it. Stones speckled the beach far below, the scars of their passage pocking the sheer cliff.
Cold air, filled with the scent of smoke, hit me but it was an old odor; the ghost of a massive fire. Oily ashes and charred debris sullied the surface of the lake but something beneath their dismal remains caught my eye. Bodies littered the lake bed; decaying corpses in shiny armor. I looked away quickly and glanced behind me at a desolate valley. Nothing lived there; not a bird, beast, or even a blade of grass. Everything was black and gray and dead. Even the earth looked scorched.
“This place looks familiar,” I whispered.
“It's Asgard,” Brevyn's voice fell hollowly from his lips.
“What?” I gasped as my stare raced across the lake to where an outlet led to the sea.
My gaze panned up to the top of the cliffs that guarded the passage and found them bare; the Guardian Stones of Asgard were missing. My head swung back to the right, and I realized that the crumbled castle atop the cliff was Bilskinir Hall. At least, it had been once. Now, it was just rubble. And that meant...
I turned to the left to take in the ruins of Valhalla. The Golden Hall was decimated, not a single shield left to gleam through the soot. The battlefield where the dead Vikings fought lay just beyond the ruins but had become indistinguishable from the rest of the landscape. I looked beyond it, to the mountains that stood between Asgard and Vanaheim. Had all the Nine Viking Worlds fallen?
“No,” was all I could manage to say.
“How did this happen, Son?” Arach asked calmly.
“War,” Brevyn said. “Among the Gods.”
“The Gods are already at war,” Arach protested.
“Not like this.”
