I snap my eyes open, meeting Borg’s eerie stare. “Do your worst.”
With one final thrash of Rygun’s head, Grohn goes limp, his frayed wings splayed across the cracked orange stone. From Rygun’s saddle, I see the light in the large Sabersythe’s eyes extinguish, blood dripping from his gaping maw.
Puddling on the ground.
If I were in my right mind, perhaps I’d feel bad that Grohn didn’t make it into the sky despite his vicious nature. But I’m not, hazed by lust for Pah’s blood on my hands. For the feel of his bones breaking beneath my grip.
The battle rages in the distance, smoke and screams billowing from Dhomm’s scooped shore north of where we landed while I pull my lungs full, tip my head, and look to the powdery-blue sky.
No clouds.
Just a scatter of moons, the scorching sun, and a churn of wind to bear witness to what I’m about to do. Even so, I pin it all to memory. Each moon. Every breath of wind. The smell: a violent mix of scorched flesh, sweat, and leather.
Rygun loosens his grip on Grohn’s neck, letting his head thump to the ground with the clatter of loosening scales shaken from Rygun’s dripping maw. Shards of red and bronze that glint in the sun’s harsh rays.
Over the sound of my dragon’s deep, billowy breaths, I hear Pah cough and sputter from where he slipped off the saddle, now over the other side of Grohn. Out of sight. Sure sign he’s still alive despite the blast of fire he just endured and the blood smeared across the back of his perished beast.
The tips of my fingers itch.
Slowly, I bind Rygun’s reins around one of his spikes, toss my leg over the saddle, then move down the ropes. I leap the final few feet, landing heavily.
The ground shudders beneath my boots, like Bulder sees straight through my skin into the violence corrupting my soul.
He understands just how little it would take to tip me over the edge; over the weakening barricade holding me back from stepping into the void in my chest and crumbling the world. The perfect sequence sits heavy on my tongue. A violent command with enough force to wreck …everything.
I could do it, but I no longer want to make the entire world bleed.
Just the male who sired me.
Rygun shifts back with a ground-shuddering heave, making space for me to move around Grohn’s lifeless body. Pah bludgeons out a few mangled commands to the God of Ground, his words echoing on the dry air as blunt blisters of stone bulge up from the otherwise flat terrain—chasing my steps.
He’s trying to spear me, but convincing Bulder to sharpen into a fine point takes eloquent precision. A sharp tongue.
Something, it appears, Pah no longer has.
I step around the spiked tip of Grohn’s lax tail. See a trail of blood I follow to where Pah is spread flat across the ground, clawing at it with jagged motions, dragging himself toward a large rock he’s probably hoping to hide behind—his legs limp.
Useless.
Guess his lower spine was impacted when Grohn hit the ground. Bit into his tongue, too, going by the blood leaking from his mouth and the way he’s shaping Bulder’s language with such lapsing precision.
I almost laugh at the irony.
He looks back at me over his shoulder, the tips of his bronze crown folded over like bent stems—melted like some of the fire-licked flesh on his once handsome face. Despite it, his eyes still hold the same antipathy I’ve seen since I reached the age of ten and only spoke to Ignos and Bulder.
The same antipathy I’ve seen as he’s buried me, fire-lashed me, beaten me. Done everything in his power to break me.
I won’t give him the satisfaction of admitting how close he came to succeeding. Would’ve, had Rygun not patched me up. Strengthened me inside and out.
Another scurried scramble, more blood spitting from his lips with a disfigured command.
I sidestep another blunt squirm of stone punching up from the ground. Another failed attempt to kill me.
Gripping his scorched arm, I feast on his agonized roar as I drag him across the ground and lump him against a rock, wrangling his body into a sitting position. Right in the sun where the fierce rays can nip at his raw, weepy wounds visible through the rips in his red-and-brown leathers.
I crouch, elbows on my spread knees. Watch him cough and sputter for breath before he finally meets my gaze.
A smile lifts his bloody lips; something that must hurt with half his face scorched to the bone in places. “I didn’t know you had it in you.” His words are so weak, rasped and slurred, they’re hard to make out. “To do what it takes to be aking.”
