Chapter 89 The New Dragon Slayers pt2
The egg thrums under my hands, vibrating, pleading for its own life.
“Do it, Anara!” Thorne roars, all traces of love gone from his voice and replaced by furious anger. “Do it now!”
“No…” I whisper.
No one should have been able to hear it. No one should have registered that I spoke at all, but my voice carries to every ear in Hellbane and the resulting gasp of shock makes me cower in shame.
Still, I can’t do it. I can’t kill this innocent life. Dragon or no dragon, it’s never done anything wrong. It’s not right.
I was meant to kill the silver king, not this innocent embryo.
“It’s not right!” I say, my voice gaining strength as I face Thorne.
I can feel the captains surrounding me from behind.
I watch the faces of my friends and the other slayers draw together in confusion, in anger. Zaries looks at me as if I’ve transformed into someone else, someone he’s never known, someone he would never want to know.
“You will not slay a dragon?” Thorne asks, his voice so deathly cold that it makes me shiver in fear.
“I will not kill an innocent!” I snap back, trying my best to stand tall.
“A fucking dragon slayer who won’t slay a dragon?” Malachi snaps. “This is ridiculous!”
Before I can blink, he leaps. He lands in front of me, shaking the wood beneath our feet, and bares his teeth as he glowers down at me.
“You don’t fucking deserve this honor!” he growls. He snatches the egg away from me, his superior strength and speed dwarfing mine.
“No, stop!” I cry, grabbing his arm and trying to stop him, but he shakes me off like I’m nothing more than a gnat.
“If not for this cheater, I would have been the one to claim this egg,” Malachi declares. “So I take my rightful place as Fire Captain in this moment!”
He raises his arms over his head, spares me one last horrible grin, and impales the egg on the spike in one quick movement.
The egg shatters with a sickening crunch. Sticky fluids spill out, a grotesque mixture of green and crimson. My scream tears through the chaos, a primal outcry of anguish and disbelief. Hands and knees scrabble over the rough wood of the podium, desperate to reach the shattered remains.
The spike retreats, leaving behind devastation.
Shattered black shell.
Sticky fluid, a grotesque mixture of green and crimson.
A small, fragile body, a hole the size of the spike gaping where its ribs should have been.
Tears blur my vision, hot and uncontrollable. With trembling breaths, I slip my hands under the creature as it takes its first, and last, breath. I stare in disbelief and horror at the tiny animal, the horror of a life taken so young.
I sit on my knees, cradling the beast in my arms and sobbing. With one hand I lift a weak, limp wing, and freeze.
Somewhere in the distance a giant creature wails, the sound from a beast I know, a beast I’ve saved.
The tiny dragon is no dragon at all. Beneath its wing is nothing but breast, no front legs. Its scales are brown…brown like…the Wyvern I saved. The wyvern that saved me.
In the distance she screams again, betrayal in every single aching sound.
This was hers…her egg…her child…
“It’s a wyvern,” I whisper.
The world comes crashing back. People are shouting in disbelief. Screaming, rioting against what I’ve done and how I’m acting. This is not a slayer on her knees cradling the enemy and crying. This is a traitor.
I’m a traitor.
Daughter of Hellbane?
No.
“You're right,” Thorne hisses, his voice quieting the turmoil. “It’s not a dragon, it’s a wyvern. A wyvern taken from a beast you never should have grown close to. Anara, you are a failure. You cannot be a slayer.”
My world crumbles around me.
Thorne is facing me with hatred in every facet of his being.
“Why a wyvern egg, Thorne?” I snap, turning to face him, fury burning me from the inside out. “Couldn’t find a real dragon?”
“Exactly,” he says, shattering the anger I was using as flimsy armor. “No one has ever seen a dragon egg. Dragons hoard their young in hidden places, places we’ve never found. But this? This was a test. If you cannot kill the child of the creatures you hate so much, how can you ever kill a dragon?”
He jumps off the podium, rips his blindfold off and stares down at me with his dead, silver eyes.
“If you could not kill an infant, you will never get the revenge you want so badly. You are no daughter of mine, you are no Slayer. You’re an embarrassment to Hellbane.”
My chest feels like it’s about to cave in.
My heart tries to beat and fails.
Pain rips through me, pain of loss, pain of truth.
He’s right.
Warden screams somewhere high above and dives to the courtyard. He rears, nearly kicking Thorne in the face. He whips his head around from side to side, forcing everyone back and away from me. His wings flap, making everyone shield their eyes.
I rise slowly, grabbing his mane and pulling myself up onto his bare back like I’m already dead. I spare a moment to look at my friends, the dismay and disbelief in their eyes hurting more than anything. The betrayal and hatred slowly reheating in Zaries’ eyes is enough to end me on the spot.
I clutch the dead wyvern to my chest and lie on Warden’s back as my alicorn takes flight again. I close my eyes, refusing to see, refusing to check if they’re following. Warden flies higher and higher, directly at the sun, then banks into storm clouds that seem to have been held back from Hellbane by magic.
Cold settles over me the further we get from Hellbane. The place that was meant to be my home. My everything.
I’m not a slayer.
I’m not a warrior.
I’m a failure.
After everything I’ve fought for,
Everything I’ve lost,
I’ve failed.
I’m nothing.