AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Clearing her throat, she lowered her head before speaking. “In the vision, they showed me how to combine two of the most powerful bloodlines into one powerful creature. A creature born of both dragon and phoenix blood.”
Esme elbowed me as if she too were remembering the room where we’d watched the 4D rendering unfolding before us. My mind swirled as curiosity blossomed. I hadn’t stopped wondering about the scene we’d been privy to in the library. Now, I’d get to learn of it firsthand.
“A child born of both creatures would be powerful and house the hottest flame we’d ever known. Using the cloak my mother left me, I shape-shifted into my mother, then forced two unmated individuals to come to me. A fierce dragon known as Dragharyn Dreki, the first dragon who roamed the lands, untethered by kingdom or throne. Princess Rhianna Fafnir, my own daughter, was the phoenix. She was pure of heart, but a fierce warrior.” The moment she’d spoken the name, I’d felt the thread connecting me to Zyion grow taut. Scylla spared a glance in his direction but continued without acknowledging the tension churning through him. “When I first approached them, neither would agree to what I asked of them. It forced my hand to do whatever was needed to ensure they created a child. Using the binding spell, I threaded their lives together. After I had, they did what was needed. The spell unraveled, though. Eventually, Dragharyn undid what I’d done to them. Two years after Rhianna gave birth to their child, he murdered her by ensuring her flame could never be lit by me, nor another living soul.”
Zyion’s teeth ground loud enough to be heard. The rage he felt was both terrifying and immense as it percolated inside the chamber. It felt like I was missing something huge. Something which left everyone else other than Zyion and Scylla, lost in the dark.
“I raised the babe myself, ensuring no one else knew of her true parentage. In doing so, I’d set forth the first thing demanded of me from the old gods. Ryna never took a feral form, though. The combination wasn’t compatible with dragon and phoenix. I followed the vision provided to me by seidr magic, and her fire burned hotter than anything we had seen before as promised.
Zyion’s face blurred in the tears stinging my eyes, and every fiber of my being snapped taut with denial. I had to have heard her wrong.
“That’s messed up,” Esme interjected, her face downtrodden, as if she’d been forced to breed with her enemy. “You took her free will and used her as a weapon?” Esme’s wide, horrified eyes snapped to me, widening even more if at all possible.
Zyion made a strangled sound in his throat. Long, powerful steps took him to the shelf, holding several green, glass bottles. His fingers flexed, then balled into fists before repeating the action. His shoulders rose and fell with slow, practiced breaths, as if he were counting inside his head, forcing his emotions to remain in check.
“If you had to choose between doing what was right and what would save the world, what would you have done in my place?” Esme noisily exhaled and then folded her arms across her chest, glaring. “I loved my daughter more than I loved myself, Esmeralda. If I could’ve traded places with her, I’d have done so without question.”
“You could’ve fucking tried to find someone else!” Zyion snarled, which had my heartbeat increasing and the hair on my nape standing on end. “You didn’t even think to warn me we would sacrifice the woman I loved? That my mate had to die in order to bring forthyourfucking savior?” My gaze darted between the two beings bleeding anger and hurt into the room. Scylla, looked wounded, and Zyion, looked utterly devoid of mercy. “Instead, you took her from me without allowing me to say goodbye. You fucking lied to me and told me she’d chosen him.” His fury forced something inside me to tighten. My breathing turned sharp and shallow, passing my lips as rapid puffs of air.
“You would have tried to alter the course of events had I told you the truth. Rhianna wasmydaughter and the only unmated phoenix. So, I did what I needed to do in order to ensure her sacrifice wouldn’t be in vain. I knew you’d fancied yourself in love with my daughter, but not that it went beyond that. How could younotlove her? Rhianna was so easy to love.” I wasn’t sure if they remembered the audience actively watching the exchange, but it was as if I were watching a show about their tragic history. “I couldn’t change the course without the old gods abandoning us. If I’d have tried, you’d have lost her anyway, Zyion. Of all my children or those I’d loved. Rhianna was special to me. The day she was born, it was like I’d finally found a purpose in life. She was the only child I’d ever thanked the gods for giving me. By doing so, I’d sealed her fate to mine, knowing the gods would come for her if I didn’t follow through on what the visions foretold.”
“It didn’t have to be her, Scylla. You willingly ledmylamb to her slaughter.”
“If I’d told you they’d tethered her fate to another, you’d have fought the Fates to prevent it.”
“You’re goddamn right. I’d have waged war for that girl. I’d have done whatever I needed to keep her from knowing the pain he forced her to feel beneath him. When you said I had to give up love, that wasn’t what I’d agreed to do. She’d still have been mine, and loved me. I’d asked Rhianna to keep the secret until I’d found time to tell you myself that we were mates. True mates, Scylla. Obviously, that was a mistake. By the time I returned from you forcibly sending me away, I was told she’d fallen in love with the dragon, who’d eventually become king to their kingdom.”
“If you were mates, I’d have known, Zyion. You’d have told me the truth, as you pledge to always do.” Zyion reached for the collar of his shirt and jerked it down to reveal a bite right above his heart. “How? Why didn’t you tell me? You were beholden to me. If you’d mated my daughter, I should’ve been the first one to know of it.”
“Before I could, you sent me away to scour the realms for the sickness you’d obsessed over. In the meantime, you fed my mate to a cruel, violent, heartless bastard who brutalized every woman he took to his bed.” Zyion fearlessly strode forward, his eyes burning with images playing inside his head. It wasn’t hard to imagine what those images might have been either. If he’d been able to, he’d probably have murdered her again.
“Do you know what Dragharyn did to her? I assure you he wasn’t gentle to the girl whose pretty, turquoise eyes held my future and my entire soul within them,” he rasped, shoving fingers through his hair. It laid his pain bare before us, raw and profoundly rooted in his soul. “I felt her pain when he ripped her cunt in his need to force his dragon knot in as deep as he could. He’d been spelled to think she was his fucking mate, which led his beast to demand he rut her becauseyoufed your daughter to a rabid dragon who’d spent more time in his beast than he’d ever spent in his human flesh.”
The rawness in his tone had tears burning my eyes, and my lips trembled. I didn’t need to hear him say he’d loved Rhianna. He revealed his vulnerability through the trembling in his voice, in the grief embedded in his every syllable. It was in the way his eyes turned glossy and moisture pooled too quickly to be blinked away. Zyion had loved her.
“The Fates showed me they’d be compatible. In the end, she bore him a daughter. Ryna was their child. Had she lived, she’d have adored the child they’d created.”
“She had promised to have my child, not his, Scylla. The gods blessedmewith a stunning, tender-hearted mate. And you? You’d promised her that only she could choose her mate. Rhianna chose me. I’d never had any of the women from the Vanir or anywhere else fucking choose me for anything other than my cock. They didn’t want your thrall staying for one second more than it took for them to get off on my dick. Rhianna, though, knew what I was, and she wanted me regardless of it. You took that away from me. You, who I served dutifully, stole all of it.” Rubbing his chest, he shook his head. “Instead, I returned the same night you wed my mate to another. That night, I found her walking around aimlessly, bathed in her own blood with another’s come dripping down her thighs. My mate bore the scent of another alpha, and she told me she loved him, that they were true mates. I can still hear the haunted way she declared it to me. It was how I knew something was horribly wrong.” Tears trickled down Zyion’s cheeks.
“I wish it hadn’t been her, too. If they’d given me a choice, I’d have chosen another. To achieve what was required, my blood was necessary. I only have one daughter, Zyion. In the end, he took her away from us both.”
“Dragharyn didn’t kill my mate. Your actions did. He couldn’t have murdered Rhianna.” Though I was glad he’d done what he had to the sadistic bastard, it was still shocking to hear it laid out like that. “When I found Rhianna again, I knelt before her and placed Dragharyn’s head at her feet. If she noticed the gesture, she failed to show it. I didn’t see her again until I collected her broken body from the bottom of the cliffs she’d jumped from. Had you not been so obsessed with creating your precious savior, you might have noticed how endless her pain had become.”
Never would I have thought he’d lost more than he’d already disclosed. Turquoise eyes clashed with mine and widened when he noted the agonizing pain exposed on my face. Squaring his shoulders, he exhaled before shaking his head. He wiped away the tears and then strolled back to the colored bottles, grabbing one before downing the entire bottle in deep swallows.
“I didn’t know,” Scylla whispered brokenly.
“No, you didn’t. But that wasn’t enough to steal hers and my future together for your own goals, was it? No, you also had her soul taken to where I could never go. In the library you created with Draghana Karnavious. Rhianna is within the Library of Knowledge, forced to remain among the same beings that stole her from me.” My eyes went round, and I knew my face had leached of color.
“You created the library?” I asked.
“Why don’t you tell her and Eira Karnavious’s sons about how the library came to be,My Queen,” he hissed in a tone that scraped against my flesh.
“Before the war between dragons and phoenix began, we were allies.” Scylla started. “Draghana was one of my closest friends. Before Hecate arrived, we’d created a place where the council could gather, where we could discuss things amicably. Dracarius, her husband, also used magic, though it differed from mine. We combined our power to forge the Library of Knowledge. It houses all knowledge of everything and everyone within the books inside the library.”
“Is that why some people cannot see it?” Basilius asked, and after Scylla nodded slowly. he continued. “The rumors of a Keeper of the Library, are they true?” His dark, smoky voice was close enough to Knox’s that I felt a tug on my heartstrings.
“Yes, very much so. We created the Keeper of Knowledge after issues began arising between monarchs. We sought a fair-minded and incorruptible being. The Keeper doesn’t take sides, per se. He had no need for titles, land, or riches, and he was fair to all. The library also became a safe place for our children to hide after war broke out between the dragons and phoenixes. Children were off-limits, as were all royals from being murdered in the endless battles occurring over land. But war brings out the worst in people.”
