Everythingstopped.
Noise.
Wind.
Breath.
His heart.
Sand hit his knees as a dense ringing filled his ears.
The Venari King was gone.
Dorian’s body and core paralyzed. He stared at nothing and yet saw everything all at once. Nyssa’s scream echoed as a distant sound—a shrill noise that made every hair on his body stand on end and his skin crawl.
He held her head to his chest on instinct, unable to tear his own widened eyes away from the horror.
Nausea.
His chest heaved with bile at the back of his throat, a reflex that he couldn’t stop. He released Nyssa and scrambled away. Vomit spewed onto the ground.
The angst of what he’d just witnessed tore through him. The anxiety that had been that entire day. That entire month. His coming back from the mountains only to find one sister on lockdown, the other burned by his brother. The fight he’d had with Rhaif. How he’d been pulled back by his own stupid subconscious and his Second.
He should have killed Rhaif that night.
A hand came to rest on his shoulder. Lex, he realized. But he shrugged her off with more force than he intended.
“I need a minute,” he said, body jolting with every lurch of his stomach as he stumbled out of her grasp.
“Dor—”
“No,” Dorian said firmly. “No. Do not follow me. I just… I need a minute.”
He knew if he didn’t remove himself, he would pull them into his abyss.
So he held it in.
He held it in as his fingers stretched and curled at his sides. Held it in as every muscle in his body reached their edge. Held it in as he launched into that surf.
The smoke of the burning kingdom filled his nostrils.
He ran into the ocean until it crashed so violently against his thighs that his balance wavered.
He let his body go with a scream so long and painful, he could no longer feel his throat. His hands turned black. Lightning streaks of his form wrapped up his arms. The world vibrated in his blackening gaze, and his muscles overextended with rage.
Navy fire engulfed his body.
The Fire Prince’s form surfaced.
Dorian released his fire as he’d never done before. Allowing his form and core to protect him, he let it consume and debilitate him to the point it actually burned his own skin.
The ocean and sand caught fire, but he didn’t squash the flames. His shoulders ached with the weight of their reality atop them. He knew it would be a battle with himself. He would struggle with it every time he swore to protect his people from the strangers coming ashore—to protect those same people who had stoned his sister and condemned the true King and Queen to death. To protect his family and this land—even when it felt as though Haerland had betrayed them.
Dorian broke.
He fell to his knees in the water, hands pushing over his face as his fire continued to blaze. He stayed there for hours and didn’t realize until the tide went out, and it left him sitting on the wet sand.
Continuing to shake, his fingers absentmindedly curled into the coarse grit. He watched as the fire and black streaks finally receded into his skin once more. Soaking wet and numb. Black tears from his crying while in his form smeared on his cheeks and hands.
