Page 80 of A Court of Darkness and Dragons

He didn’t seem to feel it. His gaze was locked on me. “What do we do about the chest?”

My eyes flicked to where it sat, half-hidden among the broken stones, the key still gleaming where I had turned it. The artifact pulsed like a heartbeat, dark and light magic tangled together in its veins. The ground beneath it hummed with a low vibration, as though the island itself was waiting for my answer.

I swallowed, my pulse pounding in my ears. “If it bound the dragons to Veralin, if it fed him their life… then destroying it might free the rest.”

“Or kill them all,” Zander finished softly, his thumb brushing against my arm like a tether. His eyes searched mine, steady even in the wreckage. “This is your choice, Ashlyn. Not mine. Whatever you decide, I’ll stand with you.”

I drew in a breath, my gaze falling back to the chest. Every scale of Kaelith’s body glowed in the corner of my vision, her gold eyes locked on me, waiting.

And for the first time since setting foot on the Blood Isle, the prophecy echoed in my mind. The destroyer. The savior.

Could I be both?

Chapter

Thirty-Two

The sound reached me first, a wet, gurgling choke that cut through the hum of collapsing stone and the distant roar of dragons. My skin prickled as I turned, every muscle tight. Slowly, I walked back toward the crumpled form of my grandfather.

The spear I had bent against him was gone, dissolved into nothing as if it had never existed, but the wound it left remained. Black blood pooled beneath him, thick and foul, oozing in slow streams from the gaping hole in his chest. It stained the stone in a spreading, glistening shadow that looked too much like corruption leaking out of him.

Veralin’s body twitched, fingers clawing weakly against the ground as if trying to grasp power that had already abandoned him. His crimson eyes, still glowing, though dulled, snapped up to meet mine. Hatred burned in them, hot and merciless, even as his breath rattled wetly in his lungs.

“You think you have won,” he hissed, blood bubbling at his lips. His voice was broken, guttural. “But my revenge is yet to come.”

I crouched, keeping a safe distance, but unwilling to look away. “What do you mean?” I demanded. “Tell me.”

He gave a ghastly laugh, choked and cut short by another wet cough that splattered black blood across his chin. “Even in death, granddaughter… I endure. You cannot stop what is already set in motion.”

My fists curled at my sides. Don’t let him rattle you. “What did you do? What’s coming?”

His lips twisted into something almost like a grin, but it faltered as his chest spasmed. “You will see…” His eyes narrowed, glinting with a last shard of spite. “You will watch everything you love burn.”

My stomach turned cold, but I pressed forward, desperate. “Tell me how. What have you unleashed?”

But he only coughed again, a low wheeze dragging from deep in his chest, the sound ragged and wet. It went on too long, a horrible rattle that clawed at my ears. I knew that sound. I had heard it before on battlefields, in the last moments of soldiers who never made it back.

My throat tightened. A death rattle.

His body stilled, one last shudder passing through him before his head tilted to the side. His crimson eyes, once burning with endless cruelty, glazed over. Sightless. Empty.

I kneeled there for a breath, staring at the lifeless body of the man who had haunted my bloodline, who had tried to twist me into a weapon, who had enslaved a kingdom and called it order.

Then Kaelith’s voice thundered through my mind, strong and certain. It is done.

The words echoed like a bell struck in the marrow of my bones, final and absolute.

I closed my eyes, exhaling a shuddering breath. It is done…

But his last words still coiled like venom in my chest, gnawing at me with questions I wasn’t sure I wanted the answers to.

The clash of steel and roar of dragons faded into something I had never thought I would hear on the Blood Isle—cheers. The sound rang out across the broken courtyard, rising from the throats of the white-haired fae who had come like salvation from the shadows. Their leader, tall and austere in his battle-etched armor, strode forward. His voice carried like a clarion call, unshaken despite the surrounding ruin.

“The isle is free!” he shouted.

The words reverberated across shattered stone and broken sky, echoing into the cavern below where the imprisoned dragons stirred restlessly. His soldiers erupted into cheers again, their braids whipping in the wind as they raised their swords high. For the first time in centuries, their voices rang out unbound upon this cursed land.

Behind me, the heavy thuds of wings signaled familiar arrivals. Thrall Squad’s dragons descended one by one, landing with battered grace. Their scales were torn, wings ragged, bodies streaked with blood that was both theirs and not. My chest tightened as the squad ran to them, seeing how close the fight had come to breaking them.