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Surely, the cosmos were laughing.
But I wasn’t. None of us were. Especially Saphira.
She had not stopped pacing since I told her I was calling the war off. One could imagine howthatconversation went. Whoever made up the old saying “if looks could kill” clearly had never met my sister, because the daggers that shot forth from her eyes were lethal. Her black heels struck the polished, obsidian floors of my sprawling throne room, beating like a drum, pounding with annoying consistency as she walked from one side of the room to the other. Repeatedly.
Clack-clack. Clack-clack. Clack-clack.
My grip tightened, the throne’s arms crumbling under my fingertips, tiny bits of igneous rock biting into my skin. My bloodless wounds quickly healed, but not before pushing the bits of stone out. From where I held, deep cracks formed like bolts of lightning, splintering their way through the rest of my massive throne—something I had carved by hand many years ago.
“Would you quit your incessant pacing?” I snarled.
The sound slowed, then stopped.
My fingers relaxed their crushing hold.
Saphira glared at me, one black-gloved hand moving to rest in the nook created by her cocked hip. “She will be your demise, Draevon.”
That, I had no doubt of. In many ways, she already was.
It had been six weeks since I left her standing there on that cliff, overlooking the destruction of the war I had started. Six weeks since I discovered she was my mate. Six weeks I had spent trying to decide what to do about it . . . about her.
Sixlongweeks.
Since then, I had released the New Gods from their chains and ended the war, just as I’d said I would do. The only god I had yet to release was Aurelius. I had thrown him in the belly of my dungeon in the same cell I kept one of my bloodthirsty beasts in—Marishka.
Marishka was a thirty-foot-tall immortal spider that would make even the bravest of men shit their breeches. In appearance, she looked like a giant tarantula, but her body was covered in metal-like scales rather than hair. From underneath her scales, she oozed a foul type of pus that smelled like a rotting corpse that had been left marinating in a tiny little room during the heat of summer. Apart from the putrid smell, the greenish-yellow ooze clung to everything, and once you got it on you, good luck getting it off.
I kept Marishka in the darkest depths of my dungeon because she detested daylight. She went mad with hysteria whenever she was exposed to it. Naturally, I thought she would make an exceptional cellmate for the Lord of Light.
I smirked to myself.
During the swell of the night, when the rest of the realm was mostly quiet, Aurelius’s disgruntled roaring peaked—the god had a set of pipes on him. He kept a good portion of the Spirit Realm awake and the people were starting to grow weary of it—and in all honesty, I was too. My nights were sleepless enough with her running through my mind at all hours.
Not that I needed sleep.
It was something other gods and goddesses did when they were bored and wanted to pass the time. They could sleep for centuries if they wished to, a luxury I had never been afforded as king because I didn’t trust anyone to run the realm as well as me.
Eventually, Aurelius would break free of his restraints—they could only imprison a god for so long. He was proving to be a problem and I wasn’t sure what to do with him.
In truth? I didn’t like the idea of his hands touching my mate—in any capacity, whether it be for pleasure or pain . . .
The memory of her delicate neck twisted unnaturally emerged on the forefront of my mind. An inferno of boiling anger crept along my skin, digging its poisonous claws in. My body had been doused in oil and lit aflame and the only thing that could put it out would be to take the life of the god that had caused her harm.
I growled—the damned bond was messing with my mind again, playing on my instincts to protect her, the very weaponsentto end my immortal life.
“Are you listening to me?” Saphira hissed like the venomous vipers we had created millennia ago. They may have gottentheir deadly nature from me, but their aggressive, bite-first instincts came solely from her.
A young viper looped around her neck, its head hovering between her not-so-ample cleavage, the tail coiling at her throat. The dress Saphira wore was made of dyed black leather. Knowing her, it was probably made from the hide of some poor mortal man that happened to look at her the wrong way.
“Not really,” I replied honestly.
“Folkoln, tell him that he is a fool for considering this bond at all,” she said to our brother, who was sitting haphazardly in a chair.
A cast of moonlight flowed in from the window, shining on his boot, while one long leg stretched out before him, the other one tucked underneath the chair. Luna’s glow caught on his facial piercings, reflecting bits of light. Like me, he was covered in inky markings from the deals he had made. Saphira possessed the ability, as well, but she sniffed at the idea of using it.
True to her warring nature, Saphira started up again. “The Creator wishes to destroy you. That can be the only explanation for this bond. Why would they choose the little bitch—”
I growled in warning, the veins in my neck threatening to break through my skin. Howdareshe call my mate—
