I forced myself forward, trusting the prince to master his dragons. Agony tore through my back with every step. Sweat pooled beneath dented plates. My breath burned with every inhale.
“Rally to me!” My voice cut through smoke for any soldier still standing.
A nearby door refused my first shove. I drove my shoulder into it. Wood splintered beneath the impact. The taste of dust coated my mouth as I stumbled into someone’s home, a table overturned, cups shattered across the floor.
I moved fast, tearing through narrow rooms. Curtains smoldered near a cracked window. A child’s toy lay abandoned beside a hearth gone cold.
The hall that led to the Heart stood ahead.
My pulse staggered in my chest as I shoved locks aside.
The Heart lay quiet.
Dead.
Darkness pooled along the walls. No shouts. No struggle. Only the faint drip of something striking stone.
A door hung ajar.
Weight settled over my ribs as I jogged toward it. Blood marred the ground, deep and bright against pale flooring. A red footprint marked their path. The stride stretched too far. Too long.
The Ichors had used their speed. Catching them would be impossible.
Helplessness wrapped around my throat like iron bands. I shoved the door wide and stepped into the widow’s home, dust drifting through a thin beam of light. Hope flickered in my chest, fragile and desperate.
She had to be here.
They could not take her.
“King Kallias! It will collapse!” The soldier’s warning struck my back and fell away.
The kitchen remained half intact.
Fallione’s body lay crushed beneath fallen beams. Rubble pinned his legs. His torn neck seeped dark blood that pooled across broken tile. My advisor’s head rested at an unnatural angle against a cabinet, white hair soaked scarlet.
The metallic scent filled my lungs.
A long streak cut through the crimson puddle.
Dragged.
No body.
My lungs seized. Blood thundered in my ears, each pulse a violent tremor. I sank to my knees amid shattered crockery.
They didn’t kill her.
They needed her alive.
Those monsters captured Nienna, the Dragon’s Heart, and took her to Vellos.
They had mywife.
Fury tore free. A scream ripped from my throat until it burned raw. Light flickered beneath my skin, racing along veins in molten lines, pushing past the presence of dragons outside these walls.
We couldn’t chase them. Speed belonged to the Ichors. Dragons could not outrun that blur of shadow. An army would never close the distance.
All the soldiers in the world couldn’t get her back.
