They were hers. They were all hers, Bound willingly to destroy their mutual enemy. They were hers and Layla screamed beneath the pressure of a thousand souls inside her now, so many hearts burning bright inside her body. Her skin glowed with it, her veins burst with it, mottling her skin with bright lines of gold through the white. Screaming with a thousand Crystal Dragon voices, Layla could suddenly feel the resonance of Adrian’s heart, beating weaker as he struggled to hang on. Layla didn’t know how to heal him.
But all those dead Crystal Dragons within her did.
Heaving up the floor of the oubliette, the spirits sublimated it, lifting Layla in a wave straight to Adrian. He was deathly pale in his broken sarcophagus, but even as Layla set her hands to the shard of crystal thrust through his chest, she could feel the faint beat of his heart with her new resonant senses. The Crystal Dragons within her didn’t even bother trying to figure out Markus’ unique signature on the shard that prevented it from shattering. They simply shifted Layla’s hand into talons of diamond-light and seized the shard – ripping it from Adrian’s chest.
He screamed. He roared with the voice of his Dragon as it came out, but even as blood flew and Layla tossed the shard away, Adrian’s body was already drawing on the tremendous power of the dead flooding Layla – and him now – through the Bind. Layla had hardly set a hand to Adrian’s wound when she felt it roaring to a close as Adrian shifted beneath her, then again, and again – healing himself each time by the power of the Crystal dead.
It took moments. Only moments, before Adrian was himself again upon the bier, gasping hard and fully healed. Seizing Layla’s taloned hand and pressing it to his chest, Adrian roared with a vast shockwave of power. Like a star falling through the sky, Layla felt Adrian smelt his power into all those dead Royal Crystal Dragons, burning with an intensity like suns whirling through galaxies. A sea of diamond-bright fire exploded from Adrian, rushing through the catacombs and sublimating each and every last bone into glass, forming thousands of molten sigils simultaneously. His action hammered the combined power of the remaining Crystal Dragon dead straight into the Bind, and with a scream, Layla’s body arched like a bow as thousands upon thousands of souls rushed into her in an annihilating fire.
They came. They all came, and power flooded Layla unlike anything she had ever known, bright like a star going supernova. As the last of the dead Royal Crystal Dragons filled Layla’s veins, bound to her now and no one else, she suddenly felt King Markus’ vast sands within her become very small. He’d lost the magic of his dead, though he still mostly controlled the magic of his living Royals still inside the palace.
As Adrian surged up fast from his bier to catch Layla as she collapsed from all the power surging through her, that tremendous energy inside Layla suddenly spiraled out in all directions. Blistering through the broken walls of the oubliette that had kept it contained, it exploded outward, seeking the final ingredient needed to take Markus down. For though Layla and Adrian had talents that could be wielded through the Bind, only one living man had what it took to channel the entirety of this energy in a fight. Only one man had the real diamonds of compassion in his heart to do what needed to be done.
Dusk.
As Layla thought about him, it was as if the thousands of Crystal dead inside her suddenly entrained to Dusk’s resonance. Layla felt him then in the Thin Ways, battling for his life against Vampire Revenants. Hemmed in, she could feel his vast fatigue as they drained him over and over as he fought; dashing through underground hallways, opening nodes, searching in vain for any trace of Layla or Adrian’s resonances far beneath the earth. His anguish in his Trials had driven Vampire Revenants to him like sharks to a feeding frenzy, and now he was trapped in a blind-end hall of bloody ruby light – blasting Revenants back on all sides as their tentacles of leeching black smoke shot in.
There were too many. As Dusk weakened, Layla knew it was far too many for him to fight, upwards of a hundred Revenants now rushing around him. They shot their tentacles in when he wasn’t looking, draining him as he battled, slowly but surely making his power fail as he faced another and another and another on all sides now.
But Layla had power, and the Crystal dead did, too. Thrusting a hand in Dusk’s direction, Layla and the Crystal dead pummeled power through every wall and passage between them, through every portal and arrow-slit deep beneath the earth. The roar of a thousand Royal Crystal Dragons thrust up around Dusk in a solid shield, spikes thrusting from its surface with shockwaves of sound, hammering Vampire Revenants back.
Concussions smote the earth as Revenants shrieked in dismay, rushing back fast from that bright shield surrounding Dusk. But there was nowhere they could run from so many enraged Crystal Dragon souls all at once. Like the world’s nastiest bomb, Layla felt it as that crystal wall shattered, spearing thousands of shards through each Revenant. The sound the shards emitted up-tuned to a terrible, screeching energy like harpies. It was a sound unlike anything Layla had ever heard, but she suddenly knew that at least one or two of the dead Royals had once annihilated Vampire Revenants this way in the past. As that Royal taught all the others how to kill Revenants with its screeching, nails-on-a-blackboard vibration, Layla felt them all come into a massive concordance.
Driving that sound right through the Revenants and blasting them apart to nothing.
Heaving hard breaths on his knees at the center of the devastation, Dusk’s eyes were wide as the Crystal dead had their moment. But in the next moment, he roared as all their vibrations came flooding into his body through the Bind. Dusk was up fast, no trace of fatigue left in him as he came for Layla, knowing the way now from the Crystal dead inside him. She felt him blast through walls back along the wave of power she had thrust at him, ripping apart a few last Vampire Revenants with terrible sapphire-diamond lances of that same screeching energy he now knew how to wield from the Crystal dead within him.
Dusk was a falling star as he came for her. He was a comet in the darkness as he blasted through hall after hall, diamond-fire blazing in his eyes. As he crashed through the last wall, striding through the sublimated mass of bone-sigils, he pushed them all back with his power.
Rushing to her and Adrian, and seizing them fiercely in his arms.
Staring up at Dusk as tears poured from her eyes, Layla saw the same pouring from Dusk’s eyes also as he laughed and sobbed to have found her and Adrian. Adrian was the same, laughing his jubilant glory to the vaults above as he clasped Dusk fiercely in his arms, kissing him upon the brow with a swift growl.
And then Dusk was kissing Layla, and she forgot all else as she spiraled up, deep into the brightness of the cosmos. As Dusk rolled a tremendous rumble through her veins, he smoothed all that jangled, uncoordinated power in the Bind into one tremendous sapphire ocean. As he did, Layla felt her eyes burn. With a gasp, she suddenly stood strong on her feet. Turning in Dusk’s arms, Layla stared up at him as he gazed down at her with terrible all-diamond eyes, tinged with the barest ring of sapphire now. And Layla knew hers were the same as they held each other – a fierce power burning all through her now.
For retribution.
CHAPTER 30 – RETRIBUTION
Holding each other close, Layla could feel the strength of the Bind in all its diamond-fire glory as it rushed through her, Adrian, and Dusk. But they had no reprieve as Layla suddenly felt a roar blast straight through her from King Markus far above in his palace. He had felt her take the Crystal Dragon dead from him, and he was furious. He’d not expected Layla to understand how to wield Crystal power enough to even break her sarcophagus, much less figure out how to wrest all those dead Dragons from him by sublimating their bones.
And now, as a spike of fury shot straight through Layla from the King far above, she clutched her chest, gasping in pain. But it was a far-away sensation as the Crystal dead inside her buffered Markus’ fury. Even though he was still wound into her Bind, still using his magic to resonate and manipulate hers, it was a small thing now compared to the thousands of Royal Crystal Dragons currently affecting the Bind.
But it was enough for Layla to feel a sudden pang that she had let him down. That she had betrayed Markus, and was about to do more. There was just enough connection between them in the Bind for her to feel a sudden terrible sensation in her heart – a feeling of love for King Markus Ambrose.
“Christ!” Layla gasped as Adrian and Dusk held her close.
“What is it?” Dusk growled possessively as Layla looked up.
“King Markus. He’s still trying to control the Bind with his resonance. Since I have so many Crystal Dragons in here now, it’s not much. But I still feel…”
“Love.” Adrian spoke with a dark growl. “Like you do for us.”
“Fuck!” Dusk growled with a thundering shudder through the floor. “I’m going to tear him apart from asshole to elbows!”
But Dusk had no more time to say anything else as a tremendous tone rang down from the palace far above, straight to their oubliette. It was so loud, Layla and the others clapped hands to their ears, but it was a pure sound that couldn’t be shut out. Layla could feel King Markus’ vast pleasure as he conjured that sound, driving it down by the force of all his living Royals and channeling it through the crystal palace straight to their location.
But as the tone passed away and nothing happened, Layla removed her hands from her ears, glancing at Dusk and Adrian with a confused look similar to theirs. “What the fuck was that?”
