“And you’ve already seen what I can do,” he counters, voice calm but hard. “That’s what we use. That’s what matters.”
I glare at him for a few more seconds, then throw myself down onto one of the threadbare blankets, exhaling hard through my nose.
“Fine. I won’t pry into your secrets if you don’t want to share with the class, Sin. But damn!”
I pause. Something hits me. My eyes slide toward him.
“Wait…”
He looks at me, wary.
“Can your dragon breathe fire?”
His silence stretches just a little too long.
“Oh my Goddess,” I breathe, leaning toward him.
A slow, wicked smile spreads across his lips. It sends a shiver down my spine.
“My dragon breathes Shadow Fire, Kass,” he says.
My jaw hits the floor. I blink at him. Twice. I’m dangerously close to squeaking in terror. Neris covers her eyes with her paws and groans.
“The black flame,” I whisper.
He nods once. “Yeah.”
Oh, stars above. This guy is just a treasure of terrifying things. Shadow Fire is the stuff of nightmares. It’s feared in all the known kingdoms. Probably the unknown ones, too. It doesn’t just burn — it rots the flesh until it slides off the bone. And then it rots the bone. And then the soul.It’s the kind of agony that makes even demons shiver.
I swallow hard. “Thank you for not using it on Draven,” I mumble, my voice about two octaves too high.
He smirks. “I barely held it back. My dragon was losing his mind during the fight.” Then his smile drops. His eyes darken.
“He wanted to get to our mate,” he says, voice lethal.
He turns to glance out into the forest, then back at me. “I’m going to wash off this blood. You start working that big brain of yours. We need a plan, fast. The witch can’t come into Kunou Forest, but now she’s got control of Draven’s Alpha Command. She can send a whole army of shifters after us and they’ll follow her orders like puppets.”
He starts walking away, then adds, almost casually, “I’ll keep a shield up around the den. Should be enough to hide us for the measly seven days we have left before everything truly goes to shit.”
And just like that, he disappears into the trees.
“He’s just a delight, isn’t he?” Neris deadpans.
“He’s upset about his mate,” I mutter. “Try to be compassionate.”
“I would,” she says, “if the end of the world wasn’t hanging over our heads. And while we were busy surviving that entire madness? We forgot the books. The ones we stashed away, to take with us when we had to flee to save our asses.”
I groan and drag both hands down my face, exhaustion crashing into me.
“Great. Fantastic. We’ll just have to dig through our own heads then. And hope something in there tells us how to kill someone and then bring them back — preferably without turning them into a soulless husk.”
Neris grunts. “Easy stuff.”
Five days later, we have nothing. Zilch. Nada. Not a plan, not even a whisper of one.
“We truly are doomed,” I wail, banging my head against the cold wall of the cave-den. Repeatedly. “Just leave me here to fossilize.”
Well, Draven and Draxis are doomed. Sin is prepared to shoot Shadow Fire straight at them in order to finish this. Says it’s what Draven would want. I get it. I do. But I still feel like crying.
