Chapter 62 The Captain of Blaze and Fury pt2
Even in the darkness, my vision blurs. Compared to the heat, the pain is cold. Yet just as much a part of my body. Bile bubbles up my throat and drips down my lips, evaporating in the searing heat before it can drip off my face.
“Don’t make her unrecognizable, my love. Those silver eyes are so important to him. He never stops talking about her, how beautiful she is, how perfect her eyes are. How can he even see them, Malachi? He’s blind!” Cinder laughs, hysteria making her sound crazier by the minute. “Leave her with one eye, so Thorne knows for certain who he’s being served at dinner.”
There’s a roaring in my head, a scream of pain and anguish, anger so strong it terrifies me.
I will kill them for this! I will eat them alive! I will treasure the sound of their snapping bones before their bodies succumb to death!
“Daughter of Hellbane, destroyed by a man who hasn’t even earned his title yet. So strong, so impressive…so dead!” Malachi sneers.
“You’ll never… never survive this… even if I die, you’ll be quickly joining me.” I try to laugh, try to make my voice as mocking as hers, but it comes out a pitiful whimper.
“That blind old man hasn’t been strong enough to kill me for a long, long time. If he were, do you think I’d still be here?”
“Zaries… Malachi, Zaries will destroy you!”
“He’ll get over it. Vengeance will have been served, one way or another.”
“I… I know about you and Elysandra,” I gasp. “There's…there are letters proving it. He’ll find them. He’ll find out you were fucking his fiance, he’ll find out… He’ll find out…she was pregnant!”
“What?” Malachi’s grip falters on my face as he tries to step away.
I take advantage of his distraction and jerk my head, biting the flesh of his thumb and ripping the sinew from his bones.
Malachi screams, yanking his hand away.
I drop my shadows so he can watch me wet my lips with his blood as I spit out his flesh. “He will end you, Malachi,” I growl as I swallow. “You’re a dead man!”
“No! No, he won't! I’m like his brother, I—”
“Malachi, did you hear what she just said?” Cinder hisses, coming up behind him and burning his hand with her fires. It cauterizes, but Malachi just stares at me as if he can’t feel a thing. “She just told you that when she killed the princess, your child roasted alive inside her!”
A roar splits the air.
Too real, too close… Not in my head.
We all look up as the mouth of the volcano blankens. Something is diving in, something furious, something…huge…
The chains binding me evaporate into thin air, dropping me to my knees. My twin daggers are in my hands faster than I can blink. I use the distraction to run towards Malachi and stab him in both his legs, aiming down.
He falls hard, flat on his face, screaming and writhing in pain as I sidestep him and face Cinder.
“No! Don’t kill him, please!” Cinder cries.
Blackness floods my vision, blocking me from seeing her.
I blink and step back, disbelieving.
It’s not darkness, it’s flesh. Flesh with veins and sinew.
The ground shakes, a roar echoing off the walls that deafens everything.
I fall to my knees once more, covering my ears.
I’ve dropped my daggers, but I can’t make myself care. It’s not blackness blocking my view, it’s a wing.
RUN!
I crawl to my feet, nails digging into the ground as I scramble. I have to run, have to escape.
“Ember, no!” Cinder screams at the dragon. “You can’t! Do you know who I am?”
“My food!” a gravelly voice says.
I race for the wall, desperately grappling for a handhold to crawl out of there. Crawl to air, crawl to my powers. For a split second, I look over my shoulder.
Ember has Cinder backed against the opposite wall. She looks truly afraid, but her eyes aren’t on the dragon. They’re on Malachi, who’s pinned beneath the beast's massive claws. “I love you!” she screams.
“One could almost pity you,” Ember says, a sound like laughter rumbling out of her throat. “All humans will die!” she roars. With her last word a stream of fire sprays from her massive jaws and hits Cinder.
I watch, unable to look away.
Cinder’s powers are nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to the sheer power of dragon fire. Malachi roars, reaching for his captain fruitlessly as the rest of her skin melts away and her charred bones turn to ash right in front of our eyes.
Climb, Anara! I’m close!
He’s close. He’s coming to save me. I have to climb, I have to escape!
I turn my attention back toward the wall and start to ascend. The rock's sharp, so sharp that the gloves I wore to climb to the alicorn roosts shred easily, slicing into my hands as if I wore no protection at all.
I make it five feet, ten…
Looking up, I see the mouth of the volcano. It’s so far, much farther than the climb earlier today. I’ll never make it.
Cinder was right, all my training, everything I’ve learned. It’s amounted to nothing. I’m not strong enough. If I can’t face off against a captain and one man, how can I ever face the silver dragon?
“Where are you going, little mouse?”
My blood runs cold and my stomach drops out.
I look over my shoulder as Ember steps off an unconscious or dead Malachi and turns her attention to me.
“You’ve escaped me twice, little mouse,” she sneers, stalking toward me slowly. Her long neck moves back and forth, her head turning from side to side as her red eyes take me in. “No one has ever survived me, but it doesn’t matter. You will not survive me now. There’s no one here to save you.”
Her massive horned head is close enough to touch me, her black iridescent scales close enough to see every scar on her face. She turns her head so her massive eye, which is bigger than my entire torso, is so close to me that I could have stabbed it out if I hadn’t dropped my daggers.
“How does it feel to see your death in my eyes, little mouse?”
I swallow hard, closing my eyes against the reality of my end. I’ll never even see the silver dragon again, much less kill him.
Gritting my teeth, determined not to go down without a fight, I open my eyes and leap. I land on her nose, the scales thick enough to provide purchase much better than the cliff did. I reach up and grab the first of her many long spikes that grow up in a line from her muzzle.
“What are you doing, mouse? Get off me and die with dignity!” Ember roars, tossing her head from side to side, but my grip doesn’t falter.
When she slows, I lean toward the side of her head to look into that huge eye again and smile. “I am Anara, Daughter of Hellbane. If I die here, I shall die with your life as my first and final kill!”
I reach up and grab the hairpin that Maggie gave me, the poison gleaming brightly on the point. My hair rolls out of its bun and cascades down my shoulders, billowing wildly as Ember thrashes.
“I am a slayer. I take your life with relish!”
I raise my arm, ready to jab it down but freeze.
Ember’s stopped moving, her large pupil dilating and shrinking fast as she studies me. She takes a deep breath through her nostrils, the force of her breath pulling my hair towards her nose.
“Who are you, little mouse?” she whispers, her voice almost reverent.
“Anara! Daughter Of Hellbane!” I roar as I fling my arm towards her eye.
Fast as a breath, Ember’s claws reach up and scrape me off her face like I’m little more than a mosquito. She pins me beneath her claws and presses down, crushing me.
I scream, trying to jab the hairpin into her flesh, but her scales deflect each strike. Each and every hit is useless, although I keep trying. Keep fighting until the pin shatters in my hands.
“Little mouse is a liar… The little mouse is more…” Ember whispers, her breath so hot that it makes my blisters stretch and pop.
I scream, the pain overwhelming. Suddenly, all the agony of the wounds I’ve suffered becomes impossible to ignore. I scream and scream, tearing my throat, until my vision fades.
It’s too much. Consciousness slips from my grip. Oblivion is coming.
Ember is watching me, her red eyes so huge, her talons tap tap tapping the ground next to my head. Talons longer than my legs. She doesn’t strike, she doesn’t kill me…
Stay with me, daughter!
I want to shout back that being the Daughter of Hellbane was never enough. Nothing I know or could ever learn will ever be enough. I could never kill a dragon, not alone. Now? I’ll never get the chance.
I see my friends in my mind's eye.
Oberon’s gentle hands, his unyielding love.
Slyvain’s quick smile, her fiery red hair blowing freely behind her.
Alric and his mysterious knowledge, his fierce protectiveness.
Thorne, who I’m letting down by dying. He thought I was so strong, so capable. He claimed me as his daughter…
Zaries.
Zaries, the love of my life…
“I’m so sorry!” I scream, knowing none of them can hear me.
I scream from pain, from sorrow, from defeat, until consciousness flees from me like a leaf on a summer breeze.