I slammed my talons into Alaric’s stomach and shoved. His roar pierced the night. I tore free, twisted my spine, and flared my wings with a thundering crack.
My mate plunged toward the rooftops. I dove after her, wings tight, darting like a comet. Wind shrieked past my ears. The buildings drew closer. Closer. Closer. Sera’s terror-stricken face peered up at me. Crimson curls clawed at her cheeks, arms flailing. I stretched out my claws, reaching with my talons.
Beneath me, a dark shadow rocketed. Turbulence slung me from my dive. Alaric’s tail exploded against my skull.
Pain shattered my brain.“Sera! No!”I roared, the cry wrenched from my very soul.
My shoulder slammed against the side of a building, and the wall exploded. I wrapped my wings around my body. Scales scraped from my flesh, stones battering my bones, until at last I came to a stop.
While the landing failed to crush my body, panic threatened to break me. I sucked air into my deflated lungs and scrambled to push free of the rubble.
“Sera!”Her name erupted as a bellow of anguish.
“Thorne!” Sera’s answering shout brought tears to my eyes. That sweet sound had come from overhead.
I twisted my neck, spotting her precious form clasped in Alaric’s claw.
“Let me go, you overgrown lizard.” Colorful curses echoed through the streets.
“As you wish.”Alaric’s deep grumble shuddered in my mind, and every part of me tensed.
He circled the bell tower while I held my breath. “Damn you, Alaric. Harm her, and I pry off your scales one by one.”
Sera’s screech of fury rang out as he tossed her onto the roof.She skidded down the tiles, fingernails clawing at the shingles until she caught the edge. “Alaric, you turd-sucking twat!”
One slip, and she was done for.
I launched into the sky, pumping great gusts of wind that leveled the buildings I’d damaged. As I banked to circle the tower, daggered talons raked down my back, filleting my flesh. I roared my fury, forced to dart in the opposite direction, away from Sera.
“Too late. Too late. You’re always too late,”Alaric taunted.
“Sera, are you okay?”
“Fine. Just focus on Alaric,”she ordered.
“Don’t worry, Little Brother,”Alaric said.“I won’t let her fall. The Dark One has plans for her.”
Once I leveled out again, I threw out my senses.“Where are you?”
“Find me if you can. Remember when we used to play hide and seek as youths? You were always too quick to tire to best me—smaller, weaker.”
“Because even then you cheated, you bloody traitor.”
“Traitor?”Alaric’s voice rumbled through our connection.“That’s rich coming from the dragon who abandoned his kingdom in its darkest hour, leaving all within to die.”
I scoured the rooftops, every shadow mocking me.“Never again will you hold that over me. Not after you betrayed us all, allowing The Dark One to infiltrate Pyrrhus.”
“Ah. She told you, did she?”
“Why, Alaric? Why did you do it?”
“The sacred arbors are a plague to this land. Once I became king, I was a slave to its power, to the voices within. Father’s voice, the loudest. Even with his death, I couldn’t escape his judgment. The Dark One offered me a way out.”
Alaric’s voice wasn’t strained, as if he rested somewhere. But where?“That’s why the goddess cursed you. She knew what you had done. All this time, you let me believe it was my fault.”
“Because it was!”
Alaric’s roar boomed from the west, and I wheeled in that direction, flame seething behind my sternum.
