Rainbow core

Rainbow core
Chapter 168

Ruby’s POV

I slowly settled right into the seat as my movements felt stiff even to me as I sat across from the man wearing my husband's face. I could feel the coldness of the special gun snapped to my thigh with the metal biting into my skin through the fabric of my red gown and i was as ready as a bull to use it at a moments notice in case he tried to make a sudden move across the white tablecloth. 

My eyes were fixed on him as he fell into the seat right across from me, looking relaxed as he took his sweet time to slowly sip from a glass of dark red wine. 

Even as my throat felt parched and tight with a thirst that made me uncomfortable there was no way I was taking a sip of anything. I wouldn't lie, the food looked and smelled delicious, laid out like a royal feast right in front of me, but I knew better than to trust anything in this room.

‘’So what lies do you believe my husband has fed to me?’’ I asked, my patience already running thin as the silence stretched out. Tautia dropped the glass cup down with a soft clink and began to cut at his steak like he had all the time in the world. 

From the corner of my eyes, I caught sight of a black bracelet on his wrist. It had bold designs on it that seemed quite special, and what really dragged my attention to it was how familiar it looked. I racked my brain, but I just couldn't place exactly where I had seen it before. It felt like a memory that was just out of my reach. Gosh! I knew my memory ha always been bad but common!

‘’Oh that… well, we can start from the very beginning… the very, very beginning of him lying to you about who you really are and where you are really from.’’ Tautia said with a pause, his blue eyes holding my gaze with an intensity that made my skin crawl. Honestly, I thought he had something more dramatic or world-ending to say, so this wasn't interesting in the least bit to me. It only just sounded like a cheap attempt to sow doubt between I and Thane.

‘’So what about it?’’ I sighed uninterestingly, leaning back in the chair and crossing my arms.

‘’There are four realms, the heavenly realm, the demi realm, the human realm, and then the realm of sins. They all exist separately, and the vampires and dragons come from the demi realm consisting of the elves, vampires, dragons, shapeshifters, you name it… But the twist here is that you don't come from the demi realm,’’ he said with a pause. 

My eyebrows furrowed as I wondered where he was headed with this long-winded story of his.

‘’You aren't a dragon exactly like the ones from the demi realm. You are a rainbow dragon from the shadow realm, which is the real reason why you can control the shadows too… Thane had come into our realm first to steal you, the last rainbow dragon, for his own selfish desire of world domination. We, the shadow wielders, are only here to take what is rightfully ours…’’ I knew right now my face showed just how much bullshit I thought this was.

Just then, my eyes caught sight of a silhouette draped all in black walking right out of the shadows. Her face was hidden by  a darkened net like material and she was covered from head to toe but from the body structure, I could tell it was a female. 

She walked over with silent, gliding steps then stopped by Tautia’s side, and leaned in to whisper some words to him. Even as I sat right across from them and strained my ears until they hurt, I couldn't hear a single thing. I just watched as Tautia nodded, looking like he had finally received whatever news he’d been waiting for. 

The female straightened up, her deep black eyes staring right into mine with a look of triumph I didn't understand, before she turned around and walked off and then suddenly disappearing.

‘’Well, everything is in place now. I shall proceed to extract your core now,’’ Tautia suddenly growled out. His voice dropped so low and losing every bit of that fake, polished talk in a flash of a heartbeat. The heavy wooden table that had been sitting between us went shattering into a hundred pieces as his shadow tendrils flew out from his skin in dark threads and snapped at me.

I was shocked at how fast his entire demure changed and it finally dawned on me right then that he was just buying time by making that silly story up about the realms, waiting for that mysterious woman to give him the silent signal that his trap was fully set and ready to get the ball rollimg.

My eyes sharpened as I went scooting away, propelled by the sheer force of the blast that sent wood pieces stinging against my skin like needles. I quickly rushed back on my feet, my heart hammering against my ribs as my survival instincts kicked into overdrive.

In the next second, I felt the familiar searing heat rising in my blood, my flames already heeding my silent call and dancing around my fingertips at attention. I didn't waste my breath saying anthing to him as I just focused all my will on the fire, letting it build until my palms were glowing red-hot and the air around me began to heat up from the temperature. Even if Thane wasn’t here i wasn’t going to back down.

‘’No need to make things all the more harder for yourself. Just surrender your core up to me and I shall spare you a tiny fraction of your power to keep you alive as my pet,’’ he said coldly, his voice echoing in the now empty hall as he took slow steps towards me as his shadows began dropping to the ground like a heavy, dark curtain of ink. 

I watched as the shadows rushed across the polished floor towards me like oil spreading on water. My feet kept taking step after step backwards to evade the reaching shadows, but I knew that wouldn't work for long as they soon caught up to me, moving much faster than I could retreat in this dress and heels. Fuck!

Without a second thought, I sent my flames gushing out from both of my outstretched palms in a massive heated blast. I aimed it directly at the shadows that had begun climbing up my legs like cold slimy snakes trying to bind me.

I didn't know what to expect from flame blasting the shadows, but the result seemed to be good for a moment. Immediately, as my red-hot flames made contact with the pitch-black shadows, they shriveled up and retracted with a strange, high-pitched squeezing sounds.

I knew I had made a fatal mistake taking my eyes away from Tautia for even a split second because when I looked back up, he was nowhere to be found where he had been standing just seconds ago. The space was completely empty. All I felt next was a sharp, cold pricking at the back of my neck from behind, like my own body was warning me about something approaching.

Before I could even dodge out of the way or spin around to blast him, I felt a hard crushing blow connect right to my nape. It hit with the force of a heavy sledgehammer, sending me lurching forward like a limp bag of weath. Everything seemed to go dark in that second as my brain rattled against my skull. 

Absolute, heavy darkness swallowed the room as a weakning pain burst throughout my head, radiating all the way down my spine to my toes. I felt myself hitting the ground hard, my face scraping against the smooth floor as I skidded across the room like a discarded paper.

‘’Mmm… mmm… ahh…’’ Groans of pain I couldn't even fathom slipped past my lips as I remained still on the ground, my cheek pressed to the cold floor. I felt like I was paralyzed as the entire world seemed to continue spinning in dizzying circles around me. 

I couldn’t even bring myself to pick my body up, i was too weakened to even piece my thoughts together and my eeys was blank too with my ears ringing nonstop and in the blank state of my eyes my vision was swimming with dancing stars, and I couldn't even feel my fingers anymore as the darkness kept trying to pull me under and i kept fighting it.

Just then, I felt a crushing tight hold on my neck as Tautia reached down and he pulled me up straight, my weight not even being a problem as he lifted me until my feet were dangling uselessly off the floor until my face came level with his own.

My eyes weakly cracked open as i kept groaning in pin as the sight in front of me began to register, and i could already see that smug smirk was back on his face and looking even more hideous on Thane’s features. ‘’You seem to have gotten even weaker after your reincarnation. So pitiful, but it’s to my own favor,’’ he snarled into my ear. 

His long sharp nails dug deep into the soft skin of my neck and began drawing warm trickles of blood that ran down my collarbone. I was still trying to clear my eyes and find my focus, but the pulsing pain in my head was making it impossible to even think. 

‘’Now I’ll just take the core and be on my way. Such a waste... I would have loved to keep your pretty little face alive for my pleasure for a few more centuries.’’ His words trailed off into a low tsk as his right hand raised up to my chest level and all that I felt next was pure, unexplainable pain.