Chapter 92 The Truth Revealed pt3
“They destroyed our nests and built a fortress upon the bones of our children.”
“Hellbane…” I whisper. Despite everything, my heart softens, imagining dragon mothers losing their children. Watching humans build over their corpses as though none of it mattered.
“Yes, Hellbane.”
“I apologize for my ancestors, but—”
“They never stopped, Anara. Destroying our nests wasn’t enough. They hunted us without mercy, destroying innocent wyverns simply because they looked like us. Centuries passed where they wanted only to kill us, but never succeeded. All this time we tried only to keep them away, to keep them in their stone houses and away from our younglings.”
Tharros sighs, deep pain shifting in his enormous eyes.
“That is, until a dragon feared her nest was discovered by humans once more and she fled with her egg. I searched for her for a long time to no avail.” The agony in his gaze shifts, deepens. “I…I was mated heart and soul to her, and yet she hid even from me.”
Because the mother was terrified she’d lose her child like so many other dragons. “Did you ever find her?” I whisper, worried I already know the answer.
“Yes… My love was the first grown dragon to ever be killed by a human. Our child was never found. There was no sign of the egg until the moment you found that scale on the neck of a minotaur.”
My hand darts to my neck, caressing the scale there. I knew it was special. But never considered it was linked to the silver king himself.
“I swore from that moment that I would hurt humans as they had hurt me. I’d take what they took from me, and I swore to never give up until I succeeded.”
I suck in a sharp breath, pain lancing through my chest. A dead mate. A lost child.
A scale that now rests against the hollow of my throat.
“It was nearly two decades before the offspring of the murderous humans were left unprotected and in the open.”
Elysandra… Zaries… The day Tharros attacked us on the cliff. He meant to kill them both.
Tharros chuckles dryly, his eyes narrowing on me. “Imagine my surprise when a servant stood up to me then saved one of the children from my attack.”
“I knew then you were different, but my anger had buried too deep, swallowed me completely. I decided if I could not kill the boy, then I would attack the castles. I devoured the kings responsible for the death of my mate, roasted them before their fae wives and ate them whole.”
Tears are pouring down my face now, my heart torn between hatred and the horrible feeling of understanding. I’m feeling for the dragon that killed Elysandra. I feel sorry for the beast I’ve sworn to kill. My heart aches for him, even as it aches for the kings I had loved so dearly.
“I thought it was over, thought that was the end. Revenge served. I was ready to go back into hiding, lick my wounds so to speak… Until this year's trial.”
When both Zaries and I chose to rise up and seek revenge for what Tharros had taken from us. The horrible cycle of vengeance was continuing.
“I felt a connection to you the day you made the choice to join the slayers, but when despite all odds, you found a scale from my missing child? Destiny had claimed you, Anara. I could feel I’d need you should I ever learn of my child.
“The closer we became, the more I felt as if you were the child I could have had. I became fiercely protective over a tiny human for the first time in my life. Time and time again you surprised me, claiming every power, overpowering every obstacle placed in front of you.”
“I wouldn’t have been able to do it without your help,” I whisper. Admitting that feels like I really am a traitor, but I know it’s true.
“Anara, there's something else I need to tell you—”
The scream of another dragon echoes through the forest. Tharros’s head snaps toward the sky even as his enormous wing spreads over me and flattens me to his side. Anger radiates off him like the heat off lava.
When the sound of powerful wings overpowers every other noise in the forest, I know only too well what’s happening.
“Ember!” Tharros roars, breathing fire into the sky.
Through the membranes of his wing, I watch the outline of the black dragon tuck her wings and dive into the trees, breaking and burning them until she comes face to face with Tharros. A small space opens between Tharros’s wing and his side, and I stare in terrified awe as the ruby-eyed monster storms up to the dragon three times her size and arches her neck, ready to breathe fire directly into his face.
“Ember, I will give you only one warning,” Tharros says, his voice like death itself.
She laughs, the sound surprisingly feminine and melodic, but then those ruby eyes roll to me. She glares, full of hatred and disgust, before looking back to Tharros.
“So, is it true? You attacked me, took this morsel from me, to horde her for yourself? Tell me, great one, is she the reason this ruse has gone on so long? Is she the reason you—”
“Be silent, female!” Tharros roars, flames licking his lips.
“The charade has gone on long enough,” Ember hisses. “We want to leave this place. All of us do. Yet you force us to remain. You play with these humans like pets, and now you’ve taken a favorite?”
“You know why I do what I do, Ember. You have no right to try and stand against me—”
“We are many, Tharros, and as many, we’re ready to leave. There are other dragons out there, not just you, and if you won’t see reason and choose to stay with your little experiments, then we will go find them!”
“I will let you lead the others away from me the day I lie dead on the earth!” Tharros growls, raising himself on his claws and dwarfing me beneath him.
“Your games are over, Tharros. Your dreams didn’t work. Our eggs were destroyed or infertile. We haven’t brought a mixed breed forth in the hundreds of years we’ve tried. Yet we remain here, being hunted like animals by creatures so insignificant—”
She pauses, her eyes flaring wide as they rise beyond Tharros. I turn, spinning on my heel to see what she sees, and my heart sinks.
Warden flies above the treeline, his lead in the hands of a man sitting atop a jet-black alicorn. When our eyes meet, I know I’m doomed.
Malachi sits there, shock and victory painted over his destroyed face.
“I knew you were a traitor,” he yells, dropping Warden’s lead and surging high on Reaper’s back.
“We have to stop him!” I shout, turning back to face the dragons.
Ember’s wings spread, her lips curling back to reveal her fangs. Fire’s already smoldering deep in her throat. She’s ready to take flight, ready to burn Malachi to ash, but her body stalls.
“Ember?” Tharros asks, his head snapping away from Malachi, who’s disappearing into the distance, to focus on her.
“Sil—Tharros!” she screams, her voice raw with terror, body trembling as her eyes roll back in her head.
Green magic crackles and sparks all over her scales, illuminating the air with an eerie, sickly glow. Ember writhes, her muscles straining against the invasive magic, each convulsion a desperate attempt to regain control.
She’s fighting it, fighting this attack of magic, but she’s failing. Her roars of defiance turn into screams of agony as the green energy intensifies, wrapping around her like chains.
All around us, the sounds of dragons screaming pierce the forests, an orchestra of pain and fear. The air is thick with the acrid smell of burning magic and the metallic scent of blood. I watch in horror as a mass of dragons takes flight, each one covered in the same sinister green magic as they fly toward Hellbane, their eyes glowing with a controlled fury.
“I can’t stop it!” Ember shrieks, her claws digging furrows into the ground as if trying to anchor herself against the force overtaking her. Her scales flare brighter, the green magic pulsing with a life of its own. “He’s taken—” Her voice cuts off, a strangled gasp escaping her throat as the magic consumes her completely.
The sight is nightmarish. She kicks off from the ground and launches into the air, roaring flames before her as she flies toward Hellbane with the rest of the attacking dragons.
“No…no this is not possible,” Tharros whispers in horror.
“What’s happening?”
Tharros doesn’t answer. He picks me up off the ground and sets me on his back.
“Tharros!” I scream as I slide between two large spikes and wrap my arms around them. They’re thicker than a tree, and I know my arms could never wrap fully around.
He rises into the air and chases after his flock of dragons.
“What’s happening?” I ask, both aloud and in my mind.
Silas has found the runes.