Chapter 77 The Mighty Dragon King's Fall

Chapter 77 The Mighty Dragon King's Fall
Sable POV

The three guards didn't hesitate.

Drazen shoved me hard behind him. Although he didn't have a weapon, and his left arm was
encased in the fiberglass splint I had wrapped hours ago, he still tried his best to protect me

The first guard swung a heavy steel baton that Drazen blocked with his broken arm. The splint cracked audibly, but he didn't make a sound. He moved, driving his boot directly into the side of the guard’s knee, shattering the joint.

The man went down, but the second and third guards closed in simultaneously.

A short, serrated blade flashed in the dim light. Drazen dodged the lethal strike aimed at his neck, but the blade caught him low on the right side, slicing deep under his ribs.

Dark blood instantly soaked his shirt as he dropped to one knee, his breathing turning into a wet, jagged gasp.

"Take her," Carvek barked from the shadows.

The third guard stepped right over Drazen, reaching a massive, scaled hand toward my neck.

I didn't back away. The paramedic logic that usually governed my brain completely shut down and the survival instinct Nera had tried to pull out of me in the dark training room ripped its way to the surface.

I sprinted forward, grabbing the guard’s thick
wrist with both hands.

I didn't build a mental wall or attempt to regulate my temperature. I pushed every ounce of the stagnant, boiling energy I had been suppressing straight into my palms.

Until the heat didn't just flare, it detonated.

White-hot energy violently transferred from my skin to his. The guard's gauntlet smoked, then blistered into black sooth in less than a second as the heat seared right through the armor and into his scales.

He let out a raw guttural shriek before violently
ripping his arm away, dropping his weapon as the smell of burning flesh filled the corridor.

Carvek flinched, stepping backward in shock. "What is she doing?"

Drazen didn't waste the three seconds of confusion.

He swept his good leg out, knocking the burned guard backward into Carvek. Then snatched the strap of the duffel bag from the floor, wrapped his uninjured arm like a sling around my waist, and threw his entire body weight backward into the dark, narrow fissure in the rock wall behind us.

We fell.

Since there were no stairs, it was a seemingly endless fall as we tumbled down the chute in pitch blackness, scraping against the narrow
stone walls. Drazen held me tight against his chest the entire way down, taking the brutal impacts against the rock to shield my head.

We hit the bottom hard.

A cloud of choking dust plumed into the air as we landed on a flat, freezing stone floor.

Total silence crashed over us. The shouts from the upper corridor were completely gone, buried under thousands of tons of volcanic bedrock. We were in the absolute bottom of the earth. There was no glowing moss down here. No heat from the magma vents. The air was dead, stagnant, and freezing
cold.

"Drazen."

He didn't answer. His arm was still locked around my waist, but his grip was slack.

I scrambled to my knees in the dirt and dug hurriedly into my uniform pants pocket and pulled out my diagnostic penlight. I clicked it on, holding the narrow beam between my teeth.

He was lying on his back, his eyes were closed, his face terrifyingly pale. The slash on his right side was pumping a steady, dark stream of venous blood into the dirt.

Panic tried to claw up my throat but I shoved it down.

I grabbed the stolen hospital bag, ripping the zipper open as I dug straight for the trauma supplies. I tore open a pack of combat gauze.

"Hold on," I muttered around the penlight.

I pressed the chemically treated gauze directly into the deep laceration, bearing down with both hands to apply maximum pressure. Drazen let out a low, unconscious groan, his abdominal muscles clenching, but his eyes didn't open.

I held the pressure for five agonizing minutes in the freezing dark until the bleeding finally slowed. I secured it tightly with a pressure bandage, wrapping the elastic completely around his torso.

I sat back on my heels, shining the light on his face.

His lips had a faint blue tint. He had lost too much blood, and the toxic gas from the human lab was still severely compromising his respiratory system. But worse than the injuries was the temperature.

The cold down here was brutal. It was seeping through the soles of my boots. Drazen was a creature of fire, and his internal furnace was failing. He was slipping rapidly into hypovolemic shock.

I clicked the penlight off, plunging us back into total darkness.

I didn't hesitate in stripping off the jacket I was wearing then pulled my sweater over my head, tossing it aside until I was wearing nothing but my sports bra. The freezing air raised goosebumps on my arms immediately.

But I was far from caring as I reached down and ripped the rest of Drazen's ruined button-down shirt open, pushing the torn fabric off his broad shoulders.

I lay down in the dirt right next to him, pressing my bare chest directly against his, throwing my leg over his thighs and wrapping my arms tightly around his broad back to eliminate any dead air space between us.

His skin felt like ice.

I closed my eyes and called the Hearthblood. I didn't let it spike into a weapon this time. I controlled the output, forcing the heat to radiate from my core in a low, steady, continuous hum as I turned my own body into a living thermal blanket.

For a long time, there was nothing but the sound of water dripping somewhere in
the distance.

Then, Drazen’s breathing hitched. The violent shivering in his shoulders slowly eased. He turned his head blindly in the dark, burying his face in my neck. His uninjured arm came up very weak, but somehow having the strength to wrap around my waist to hold me in place.

"Sable," he breathed against my collarbone. His voice was barely audiblem

"I'm here," I whispered, pressing my mouth against his temple. "I've got you."

We were locked out of his kingdom. We had no guards, no light, and no way up. But holding him in the freezing dark, listening to his heartbeat finally sync with mine, I realized Carvek had made a fatal mistake.