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She’s also the one who told me about the companion prophesy to mine, that although my destiny was to destroy our people, another would be hatched, my younger sibling, who would be capable of saving us all.
“You, too? Or just the people?”
The exact wording is, He who is first hatched of flame, heir of the fire-king, shall herald the doom of all the blessed, casting them back into a darkness that shall consume them for all time and evermore.
Yeesh. “That’s pretty rough.”
But the prophecy given for Azar was, He who is last hatched among the deserters, the final remaining heir of the fire-king, shall redeem the blessed above and below, and shall cleanse them of their stain and drag them through the darkness and back into the light.
“If I’m being honest, his sounds pretty rough, too.”
He was supposed to save them. Hyperion’s voice is ragged, even in my head.
He sounds like he’s in real agony, but I don’t have time to think about consoling him. We’re diving now, right toward the cavern full of demons. “Has it occurred to you,” I shout, “that throwing me in the pit may be the very thing that dooms all of you?”
We’re doomed already, he says. Without Azar to lead us, without Azar to guide the recovery of the heart, we’ll all slowly die. You’re our last remaining hope.
“I mean, that might be a little melodramatic. The whole world hasn’t been searched. There are plenty of places it could be.”
It’s here. I can sense it.
He can’t sense anything. He has no idea what the heart even is, but I don’t bother arguing with him. It’s like arguing with a brick wall.
If a brick wall wanted to kill me and had talons, fangs, and blew liquid napalm.
“We don’t even know whether the heart really is part of the barrier. Those horned people could have been lying.” Azar said this already, but I feel like it bears repeating.
Hyperion lands, the entire shelf of obsidian that forms the floor of the former cavern trembling from the force of his weight. I’ve considered that, but. . . He sets me down. If I’m wrong, all we’ve lost is one useless human.
“No!” Sammy’s not hanging over the lava, like Axel said he was. He is, however, in a cage, suspended from the remaining section of ceiling in the far corner. Coral and Jade are both in the same cage, their feet dangling through the bars. I have no idea where the dragons even got such a thing—unless the other humans helped them craft it.
“It’s fine,” I say. “Don’t worry.”
Why do humans feel compelled to say that when it’s clearly not true?
A strange sort of clanging sound draws my attention to Gordon and Rufus where they’re chained with massive metal collars, the chains bolted into the ground.
“Can’t they free themselves?” I tilt my head. “Earth dragons, right?”
They wouldn’t dare to defy me, Hyperion says. The chains are to remind them that I’ve ordered them to wait here, guarding the tiny humans until you’re brought to this place.
“What if I’d died?” I ask. “Would they have simply starved up there?”
Hyperion shrugs. You’re alive.
He’s right about that, I suppose.
We were feeding them, Rufus says. Prince Axel made sure of it.
Yes, the weak Prince of the Earth was willing to defy me to defend your tiny whelps, Hyperion says. That gave me hope that he thought you might be alive. Hyperion’s smile is terrifying. But now, it’s time for you to pay for their release.
“If I walk into the lava voluntarily, you’ll release them?”
Hardly, he says. If your sacrifice fails to free the heart, we’ll try them next. But if your death retrieves it, they’re free to go.
I unsheathe my swords and lunge for him then, unwilling to simply walk like a lamb to the slaughter, especially when he’s not even willing to release my siblings for it.
He’s unprepared for me to attack, apparently, because one of my blades strikes him right in his massive chest. . .and slides right in. A massive shiver runs through him, and then he bats me away with a paw the size of a semi-truck.
