Page 62 of Three Dark Kings and the Gilded Serpent

The ice covering the rubble melts in a rush as my flames hit it, sending water streaming around my legs. I’m barely clothed at this point, having burned through my pants so I’m wearing only a tattered covering across my pelvis.

I keep up my flames until I can make out the inner base of the tower, clearing it completely of frost.

Another muffled sound reaches me, but I’m not sure if it’s voices or more thumping. I’d give anything to have Stellen’s Lethian hearing right now.

I’m about to blast more fire at the tower’s base when the stone floor moves, a rock slab rising and sliding across the floor, water pouring down through the opening.

I jolt backward. There is a chamber under the tower.

A moment later, ten Ember warriors clamber up through the narrow opening, one by one, their faces smudged with smoke.

I wish I could help them. More so when some of them are carrying the bodies of the dead.

Instead of assisting them, I’m forced to immediately retreat, cautious of my fire again, my focus flying to the next tower, where Stellen and Nara have created a clear path to the next group of survivors.

Before I can race away, one of the emerging men stumbles toward me, his eyes bleary, his facemask torn and clothing blackened with soot.

He takes a knee, swaying on the spot. “Thank you, my king.”

Don’t fucking thank me when I could burn you to death any second now.

“What is your name?” I snap. I know hardly any of my warriors by name. A consequence of having to keep my distance from them.

The man’s shoulders slump and his voice rasps. “I’m Jaivyn, my ki⁠—”

He doesn’t finish speaking before he descends into a coughing fit, spitting out black smoke, just like Kaiba did.

My attention flashes to the white mist stubbornly rising from the nearby ice that hasn’t melted in my fire. I point to it. “Breathe that in.”

Jaivyn looks up at me with bloodshot eyes. “My king?”

“Breathe in the frost! All of you! Do it now.”

Within seconds, the men are hunched over the ice, dragging frosty air into their chests before coughing out black sludge. Expelling the toxic iron.

After which they look at each other and give hushed exclamations that tell me it worked. The frost has cleared their breathing.

I’m edging away, anxious to get to the next tower and the one after that, but I stop myself for another moment because I can’t afford to make mistakes through a lack of knowledge.

“Jaivyn,” I say, pointing to the slab of stone and the opening into the ground. “Explain that.”

He leans over the block of ice, edging nearer to it, his focus now on my hands. I guess he’s alert enough to recognize the danger of my fire again.

“A year ago, General Kaiba ordered us to dig chambers beneath the towers.”

“Which ones?”

“All of them. We started in the east, but we’d only got as far as this one.”

Which is why the warriors manning the next tower to the west, where Kaiba was, had nowhere to hide from the smoke.

“As soon as we started choking, we raced into the chamber, but then the slab froze over. Our fire couldn’t melt the frost sealing us in.”

Their fire can’t. But mine can.

Without another moment of hesitation, I pelt toward the next tower to the east, following the path Stellen and his wolf are creating for me.

I don’t give a fucking shit if I burn off what remains of my pants.