“Kill me—take your revenge—” he heard Rhaif say. “Do it!”
Draven slowly stood off him as saliva emitted from Rhaif’s mouth, as though he were in agony of the thoughts that had just flooded him. Rhaif’s face was askew, and he struggled to roll himself up onto his elbow.
“KILL ME!” he begged through the sobs.
Draven stared at the faltering king on the ground, at the tears that couldn’t evacuate Rhaif’s now absent eyes, instead forcing the angst of his failure to converge itself into the pile of wailing saliva dribbling from his mouth and onto the floor.
“TAKE MY LIFE!”
Draven forced his breaths to even, and for a moment he considered obliging, taking the life that had condemned his love, the one who had blamed Aydra for his mother not loving him…
But the shame in her face the night she’d told him about it all entered his mind.
And his jaw tightened at the weeping man before him.
“That’s not what she wanted,” Draven forced himself to say.
The phoenix purred beside him, her head sniffing Rhaif’s struggling body. She tilted her head to Draven. Draven took the horn from its beak, and the bird shook out a piercing cry that made his ears throb. Cold black flames swarmed the Throne Room.
Draven pressed the horn to his lips again.
The Rhamocour’s roaring bellow filled the air.
And fire once more engulfed Arbina’s tree.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
DRAVEN’S CORE WAS empty.
He ached for the Edge, for this day to be done, to see Aydra’s face again.
His feet led him up the steps to the high tower.
Back to the place he knew would take him from this land.
He slowed as he reached the top step, the large archway on the opposite side of the room staring back at him. The window to the Edge.
He took his boots off his feet and allowed his toes to feel the cold stone beneath him. Wind wrapped through the tower, and he stepped to the archway.
Screams. Fire. His dragon kin.
Their wings flapped mercilessly in the air as they splayed the kingdom with their flames.
The tower suddenly shook, and the roar of the Rhamocour bellowed through the land as it wrapped itself around the tower.
He wished he could tell her goodbye.
“Are you sure about this?” came the voice of Samar at his back.
Draven didn’t turn. His fist tightened around the horn, and a great exhale left him.
“I am,” he told her. His head tilted down slightly, and he glanced over his shoulder. “Send them home once I am gone.”
He could see Samar’s head bow slightly. “I will. And the horn?”
Draven swallowed hard as he stared at it in his hand. “I do not wish for any of my future brothers to have to bear the hurt of losing such an equal. I will take the horn to my death. Perhaps without it in the world, future Venari will not as easily fall as I did.”
The wind whipped his body again, and he closed his eyes.
Aydra’s smile radiated through his bones, and he felt a tear stretch down his face. His toes curled around the edge of the stone floor, and he pressed the horn to his chest.
“Nothing less,” he whispered.
Wind met his falling body.
And the only noise of his death was the splash his body made in Arbina’s pool.
The Rhamocour cried out only once more.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
MAGNICE WAS LAID in ruins.
The shops and homes of the bottom levels were nearly unrecognizable. Rubble crowded the streets. Some Dreamers and Belwarks had managed to get to safety below the Temple where Lex had forced Nyssa and Dorian to hide.
Two boats arrived in the dark of the morning two days later.
It was Lex and Aydra’s old company that met the strangers on the beach and struck them down. Lex spared one for interrogation. Dorian was the first to meet them on the beach.
He slowed his horse upon seeing Lex pointing her sword to the throat of a stranger, men’s bodies strewn across the sand.
“Find the King,” he instructed Corbin.
Corbin lingered only for a moment and then set off towards the ruins of Magnice again. Dorian hopped down off his horse, his blue cape billowing in the wind from the beach as he strode across the sand to Lex.
“How many?” he asked Lex.
Lex’s jaw was taut. “Two boats. Fifty,” she replied.
Dorian looked around to the women and men Belwarks obviously tired from the massacre. “Raid the boats. Then burn them. Make sure there is nothing of value before you set it ablaze,” he instructed them.
The guards bowed and set off to do as he asked.
More hooves sounded around them, and Dorian looked up to see Nyssa as she arrived on scene. Her eyes widened between the pair, and she dismounted her steed at an instant.
“What’s happened? Is it the strangers?” she asked.
“Savages!” the man on his knees dared say.
The pommel of Lex’s sword met his nose.
Nyssa balked and grasped Dorian’s arm. “Have you asked it about where it came from?” she asked him.
“I haven’t,” he replied, eyes flickering up the beach where he could see a string of Belwarks coming towards them, a carriage in tow. “Waiting on him.”
His glare met Lex’s, and as the Belwarks lined up on their horses and the carriage came into view, Dorian had to avert his eyes.
Rhaif’s blind and injured figure held on to his Second as he helped him to his feet.
Dorian wasn’t sure how Rhaif was alive. But when asked about it, he was told Rhaif had managed to get himself into Arbina’s pool, and that her waters had at least been able to heal the burns on his body in the time he was able to stay under.
But what it had not healed was his now absent eyes, and the limp of where the phoenix had broken him. Nor had it truly healed the appearance of his mangled skin.
Bard stood at Rhaif’s limping side, and he straightened Rhaif’s crown on his head as he wobbled to Dorian and
