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NATALIE
Istared at the green and gold scale—Rumir’s scale—the Goddess held in her hand, then my eyes drifted to where he'd stood just seconds ago. But he was gone.
The Goddess's scream was like nothing I'd ever heard. The sky darkened, the ground shook, and a lightning storm appeared out of nowhere. Bolts of electricity danced across her black, starry skin, and chills went through my body.
I looked back at her trembling hand, at the thick blood dripping from the scale, and shivered. I could not believe what I’d just seen. He wasn't gone. Rumir couldn’t be gone.
Right?
The Goddess had tried to grab Rumir, seconds before Cedric, the Dragon King, had pulled him into a portal. But she’d failed. Still, before he vanished into the portal, I saw Rumir’s beautiful green eyes turning red, like an infected.
Cedric was Ash, the one behind this war. Rumir’s father was Ash, and we’d come right to him.
We’d journeyed to the Dragon Territory, following a lead about a dragon working with Ash. Only we’d found more than we’d expected. Cedric, the Dragon King, was the one who’d thrown the realm into chaos, killing so many innocent souls. And now he'd infected, and taken Rumir away to gods-knew-where.
I held my chest, an ache I’d hoped I’d never experience spreading through my body. I could feel it. I could feel something changing in my bond to Rumir. He was an infected now.
I closed my eyes.
“Rumir," I whimpered, and I put my shaking hand to my head, a pounding headache making my vision blurry. “Rumir?”
I couldn’t catch my breath no matter how I tried.
“Rumir!” I screamed through our telepathic bond, but I got nothing back. “Rumir! Answer me! Please!”
But there was no response. The seconds ticking by felt like hours, and with each second that passed, our mate bond became something painful, like a rope stretched taut. I'd fought Cedric, I'd fought and even wounded him a little. But in the end, he’d used our sire bond, the control he had over every creature infected with the virus, to stop me.
I’d trained with the Nephilim Sisters to break that bond, but I’d failed. When it had mattered, I’d only been able to step forward, pushing through the bond but not breaking it. And in that moment, he’d bitten Rumir.
I did this. I failed.
Above me, a dragon's roar brought me back to reality. The fight wasn’t over. Lucian fought two dragons above, a red dragon and a green one. My eyes narrowed when I saw the green one. That one was the red-haired bastard we’d come here to find.
He had been whispering with Cedric when I found them together. He had to know where Cedric had gone.
I gritted my teeth, my chaos whistling a tune in my ear that sounded a lot like, "Kill him!”
Red veins popped up on my skin, snaking up my neck and covering my face, and I leaped off the ground. My thoughts were fuzzy, but there was one thought that was crystal clear—I needed to find Rumir before he slipped too far away.
The green dragon was on a path towards Lucian, who was occupied with the red dragon. But I beat him there, slamming into the green dragon's body and sending him falling to the ground. He recovered quickly, his fierce roar earsplitting, and I teleported, my body vanishing in a burst of red smoke. I was so furious, I didn’t even care that it was the first time I’d teleported on my own, using my powers like the other gods.
This rage I was feeling was the blinding kind I'd had to become used to in the beginning. It was the corrupted kind of wrath that chaos fed on.
I reappeared on the dragon’s head and slammed my hand onto its scaly surface.
“Where is he?” I screamed, using my Enchanted skills to plunge into his mind. My voice was a contorted growl. “Where has Cedric taken my mate?”
Not waiting for a response, I searched his mind, not caring that I was tearing it apart. I saw the various meetings the dragon attended, meetings where unsuspecting souls had been tricked and blackmailed into taking needles containing the virus.
They had been promised that there was power in those needles, power that would help them survive this war and see Cedric’s new world. It was a lie, though. The virus would turn them into monsters.
I kept searching, but I could find no information about Cedric’s whereabouts.
"Tell me where he went!" I demanded, and the dragon laughed in my head.
“You can’t stop him,” he taunted. “No one can!”
I held my hand up, and chaos exploded from my palm, creating a long spear. The dragon finally managed to thrust me off him into the air above him, but as I fell, I sent the spear through his head, and was satisfied to see blood explode from under his chin.
