“Let’s search here and return before Lexi decides to come back,” Sahira said. “She shouldn’t see any more of this.”
“Are you going to be okay, or would you like to return?” Brokk asked Sahira.
“I’ll be fine.”
“Your mother—”
“Could be here or not; she usually resides in one of the outer villages, but it doesn’t matter. I will survive it if she’s here.”
“Okay.”
Brokk picked his way through the wreckage as he searched for any hint of Kaylia amid the ruins. She pissed him off and still looked at him with more derision than anyone ever had in his life, but he’d come to like the uptight woman with a steel rod in her spine.
“What if the Lord’s men captured Kaylia?” Maverick asked as they made their way through what was once the center of the village.
“Then let’s hope she can withstand torture,” Brokk said. “But if they captured her, we’ll have to leave the prison immediately.”
“They don’t know she’s working with us. They wouldn’t have taken her; they would have killed her,” Sahira said. “The Lord didn’t come here looking for prisoners.”
“Very true,” Brokk agreed.
“Do you think he destroyed all of Verdan?” Maverick inquired.
“I don’t know. I hope not,” Sahira said. “Like many other realms, there are different parts of Verdan. Gramarye is the busiest village and where most of the witches live, so he might have left the other towns alone.”
Brokk thought it was more likely the Lord wanted Verdan leveled and would do so. But he might not know all the villages, so some might have survived his wrath.
The wind shifted when they rounded the corner, and smoke billowed into Brokk’s face. Waving a hand to clear his vision, he coughed as his eyes watered.
Once he could see again, he spotted more bodies littering the ground, but it wasn’t as bad as when they first entered Verdan. Glad for the reprieve, he strode across the burnt-out earth as they continued their search.
“We should return soon,” Maverick said. “There’s no one left here.”
Brokk was about to agree when he caught a streak of movement from the corner of his eye. Turning, he searched the area where he’d seen the flash, but nothing moved.
“Hold on a second,” he said.
He strode toward the burnt-out remains of the smoldering home the movement had vanished behind. The houses weren’t as badly destroyed in this area either, but though some remained standing, they all sustained damage.
He stepped around the smoke-stained witch’s teepee and froze when he saw what lay beyond.
CHAPTERFORTY-TWO
“What did you do?”the woman asked the question again, but this time it was stronger. Tears streamed down her face as she gazed at Lexi in disbelief. “What did you do?”
Cole pulled Lexi closer against his side. He was about to pull her away, to take her from this woman and this place. He had no idea what the woman’s problem was, and he didn’t care. He’d be damned if she blamed Lexi for what happened to her child.
She’d been through enough without dealing with this woman’s misplaced grief. He was rattled by what he’d witnessed in Verdan and needed some time alone with her anyway.
He’d known dragon fire couldn’t kill her, but when she vanished beneath its flames, while the inferno the dragon emitted destroyed the land, his heart shredded, his insides turned to ash, and an all-encompassing rage blistered across his skin. The bellow that erupted from him had rivaled a dragon’s.
While Lexi was in those flames, another dragon had come toward him. It veered off course when it saw the shadows leaping from the ground and encircling Cole as they tore into his enemies.
Alina hadn’t been lying, and she hadn’t been wrong; the dragons wouldn’t attack him even if they hated him. Whatever magic the arach instilled in him during the trial, it had granted him protection against those beasts.
He should be grateful; instead, he found himself more infuriated by it. The dragons wouldn’t attack him, but the arach had instilled this darkness inside him, and while he welcomed the power it gave him, he wasn’t foolish enough to believe it couldn’t destroy him.
It would destroy him if he lost control, and that was something far too easy to do. The more death the shadows unleashed, the more they craved.
