“Mhorn!” Azriel screamed aloud, echoing the shouts from the other dragons in his mind.
Madan’s consciousness slammed into his. “What the fuck just happened?”
“Is Mhorn dead?” Lhuka’s distant voice told him how far away he was, yet still capable of feeling the wake of the death that was entirely too short for them all.
As soldiers rushed by, Azriel attempted to weave his way across the flow to reach the dragons. It was no use. Try as he might to push through the horde of dhemons, the force of them rushing through the gates shoved him right along with them.
“Razer!” It was all he could do as he struggled against those who sought blood and violence inside the walls of the Hub.
At first, Razer didn’t say anything. His consciousness flickered in and out as he grappled to stay awake after slamming his head into the ground. “I’m alive.”
“How?” Jakhov demanded. “That ballista was aimed straight for you.”
The flash of memory came and went all too quickly. Razer poised before the gates, exhaling his dragonfire in as concentrated a force as he could muster. He looked up at the sound of the ballista releasing—the next thing he saw was a flash of dark red, then he woke up beneath the huge dragon.
“Kill them,” Razer snarled with the same fiery hate that usually plagued Azriel. He stretched his wings and launched back into the sky with his newly-tattered wing, putting distance between himself and the ballistae that still fired at him. “Fucking kill them all.”
Azriel hefted the sword still in his hand and gripped the bolt in his shoulder with the other. He snapped off the fletched end, rolled his injured shoulder, and followed the flow of his army into the Hub.
Oh, he would do as Razer asked. He would kill them all for taking Mhorn from him.
The gates of the Hub rumbled to a close behind a groggy Ariadne. The soldiers’ grips on her arms tightened, and she winced in response. Images of snow and faces, weapons and vampires, she did not know flickered in and out of her sight. How far had they gotten? No more than a handful of steps, certainly, before the ground shuddered beneath their feet, making them all stumble forward. Shouts from the wall had her head swimming. She peeled her eyes open just in time to see Razer whipping out of the way of a ballista.
Ariadne’s weakened mental fingers dug for her vinculum and once again, found only the meager thread keeping her and Almandine connected. Where her bondheart had gone, she could not fathom. Why had she left without saying anything?
“Where is the King?” The soldier who carried her over his shoulder directed the question to a figure in a crimson cape.
“He just went inside with Miss Dodd,” the man said, then flickered out of sight amongst the chaos while her eyes shuttered again.
Gods. Loren was sick. There was no reason to have brought Camilla into a battle unless he had a use for her, and even through the haze of a concussion, Ariadne knew precisely what Loren planned to do. It was the same as he always did: leverage her loved ones against her.
When she spoke, her words were broken and raspy as she grappled for any control possible. “Camilla? Camilla is here?”
To their credit, neither soldier replied. Since they likely had had no idea her friend was in residence at the Hub, they could neither confirm nor deny without lying. Instead, the one carrying her merely took her words for consciousness and set her on her feet before hauling her forward.
Ariadne did not need to feign the trip that followed. The world spun around her, destroying any hope of grasping anything she could remember from training. The soldiers grunted as they caught her before she landed in the muddy snow, though she let her weight drop a little more than was necessary to slow their pace.
Light flared from the battlements at their backs, casting their long shadows well ahead of them. Screams followed. Shouts to bring down the dragon were thrown about from all angles, every officer in charge wanting to be the one who ordered Razer’s death.
Panic gripped Ariadne’s throat. She twisted in the soldiers’ holds to look back at the wall where bodies flailed, alight with dragonfire. A shame for them—the flames would not burn out until everything it touched was consumed. They were already dead, even as they tried to strip off their burning clothes.
The snow stopped suddenly, dragging Ariadne’s wavering attention forward. They had entered the tower without her even realizing how close they were. Snow on her loose curls began to melt against her hot cheeks, and she swiveled her unfocused gaze to the familiar room ahead of her as the doors to the tower closed.
“The King,” the soldier on her right demanded of another at the base of the stairs where a half-dozen stood on guard.
One of the Caersan men pointed up the steps. “Dressing for battle.” His brows lowered as he stared at Ariadne. “Is that—”
“The Queen,” the soldier on her left confirmed. “We must bring her to him immediately.”
But the soldier at the stairs shook his head. “Check her for weapons. She could still be under the dhemon’s enchantment.”
Even in her dimming haze, Ariadne could not help herself. She scoffed at the very idea that dhemons were capable of enchantments. They were not mages, after all. Fae did not cast such magic—at least not to her knowledge. What they did have, however, was the new powers allotted to the dhemons from Keon.
The new power that Ariadne called on at the same moment a loud crash sounded in the distance. Fresh screams and shouted orders, muffled by the walls of the tower, told her precisely what she needed to know: the gates were breached. Perhaps she would not need to face Loren alone after all.
“I do not think it is necessary to take my weapons,” Ariadne said with as much strength as she could muster, harnessingAzriel’s dhemonic power of desire and pushing it out to the soldiers.
Almost immediately, the grips on her arms loosened. Excitement spiking, the magic slipped out of her grasp, and she fumbled to grab hold once more before it was too late. The Caersans before her gaped as though coming out of a brief trance, then their faces relaxed again as she shoved the lust out again.
