Page 34 of Three Dark Kings and the Gilded Serpent

Even the meandering smoke seems constrained, shimmering in place.

My mind struggles to process the stillness while my ears register that the howl is, if anything, growing louder.

A heartbeat later, the temperature plummets.

I shudder as icy air wafts across my cheeks and my nearly-bare chest, trying to reconcile how gently the air brushes me, as softly as feathers, while the roar of sound is deafening.

I’m wearing fire-resistant leather pants and beige boots, but across my chest crisscross multiple straps of deep ochre leather, an earthy color that quickly turns white.

Fine particles of frost are landing on my clothes and skin.

At the same time, around my feet, granules of sand begin lifting upward, floating up off the surface of the dunes.

Before my eyes, the granules draw together into the unnerving shapes of⁠—

“Snowflakes.” Kaiba’s voice reaches me, coming across as a whisper, even though he’s clearly shouting where he stands.

His hand rises before a snowflake made of sand—fucking sand!—floats onto his upturned palm, joining the thick, white powder he coughed up.

Ahead of us, from the north, a ripple of icy-blue energy becomes visible from within the wall of white.

The energy flows across the sky, high above the smoke, a single, sharp, half-circle like the blade of a scythe. It flows in our direction, high in the sky, but slowly, almost lazily, angling downward. A trajectory that will bring it right to our location on the ground.

The ripple of energy could be screaming, for all I know.

All I can hear is the roar that continues to cut through my senses like knives, and all I’m certain of is that the ripple of power will reach us within a minute, if that.

I meet Kaiba’s eyes across the distance.

We won’t be able to outpace the ripple of energy, just as we couldn’t outrun this icy air. The frost is fucking everywhere and growing colder by the second.

We also can’t escape north, where the Ember towers are still billowing with smoke. Well, I could, but Kaiba can’t.

Then, to our left, far in the distance, is the dark channel that bled from the bloodlands into my kingdom a week ago, bringing with it the dire threat of vampyrs.

Aeliana Vividari, the Iron King’s powerful mother, lies sleeping in that darkness, her starlight keeping the vampyrs at bay. Kaiba’s mother, my aunt, hasn’t left Aeliana’s side, and neither has our Iron Fae captive, Riven.

Kaiba’s focus flies from me to the far channel of darkness, where his mother could now be in terrible danger.

His thoughts will no longer be of himself. Just as my fears turn to the two women I care about in that darkness. My aunt raised me. I owe her a lifetime of care. And as for Aeliana, I gave Antony my word I’d keep her safe.

In a world where my fire can burn everything to ash, my word has to mean something.

If the burning smoke doesn’t hurt them, the plummeting temperatures could.

Yet I am not the one capable of protecting them.

My presence brings danger, not safety.

“Go!” I roar to Kaiba. “Protect them with your life!”

He doesn’t waste a second. Launching himself into a run, he pushes against the churning air, every muscle in his body visibly straining as he races westward.

He must be whistling for his golden serpent—no doubt a desperate call, since we have no way of knowing if the serpents made it into the sand dunes in time to escape the black smoke.

A second later, Kaiba’s serpent bursts from a dune on my right, spearing across the sand and into the air, dipping sharply southward to evade the smoke still billowing from the Ember Towers before adjusting course toward Kaiba.

Within moments, Kaiba leaps onto his serpent’s back and they dash away.