A guard grabbed Finn, yanking him back, dragging him away.
“No!” Finn struggled, but he couldn’t break free. All he could do was watch.
And what he saw would never leave him. Cedric convulsed again, his body betraying him. Something inhuman clawed through his form, warping muscle, tearing through skin.
His breath hitched in broken gasps, his cries strangled between the horrific cracks of bone and sinew. Cedric’s spine lengthened, spikes rising like the crash of a wave. His fingers flexed, claws bursting through flesh.
Fabric ripped, clothing shredded as scales rippled over skin. A ragged, animalistic scream tore from his throat as his jaw extended, jutting forward into a dragon’s maw.
Finn had seen Cedric as a dragon before. He had even seen him directly after a transformation. But this…this was different.
Those intelligent, fiercely human eyes were clouded now, hazy with suffering. His massive frame trembled, struggling against the aftermath of a transformation forced upon him. Cedric made an agonized, keening sound, slumping onto his side.
Finn trembled in outrage. He knew pain, knew exhaustion, knew what it meant to have his body pushed beyond its limits. But this? This was something worse.
Darius lowered his hand, and the ring’s glow dimmed like a dying ember. The air still crackled with residual energy, the taste of magic sharp on Finn’s tongue.
A slow, satisfied smile spread across the royal asshat’s face. He looked up at Cedric—at the dragon—as if admiring his latest acquisition. “Perfect,” he whispered.
Finn’s hands clenched into furious fists. “What have you done?” he demanded, wishing that he could do something more than stand there, weak and useless. What was he going to do, glare Darius into submission? Threaten to fall over if the king didn’t leave them alone? Hopeless.
But still, Finn lifted his chin.
Darius turned his smug gaze on him. “I’ve solidified my reign,” he said smoothly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “With a dragon at my command and my wife at my side, no one will dare deny me.”
His attention flicked to Gwenna, lingering there, before sliding back to Finn.
The king’s gaze made Finn’s blood run cold.
“But don’t think I’ve forgotten about you, Sir Finnian,” Darius added, almost fondly. “It’s an important day for you, after all.”
Finn’s gut twisted. He knew exactly what that meant. And he was powerless to stop it.
“No!” Gwenna snarled. “He did what you wanted! Leave him alone!”
Darius sighed as if she were a child throwing a tantrum. “I hope you don’t intend to be this demanding once we’re wed, Gwenna. It would be tiresome.” He gestured lazily toward his assembled King’s Guard, lined up in perfect formation, eyes blank and obedient as hounds awaiting their master’s command. “And while I will agree that Sir Finnian’s resilience is commendable, I doubt his ethics will allow me to bribe him like this lot.”
His gaze flicked to Cedric, still trembling from the forced transformation. Darius smiled. “Beheadings,” he said, almost wistfully, “are so last year. I think this calls for something more...sporting.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Pain splintered Cedric’s world into shards.
Sunrise was still hours away. He should have been safe. Human.
But this transformation had been ripped from him, a violation so profound it left his body twitching—a puppet with its strings half-severed, limbs jerking, refusing to obey. Every breath scorched his lungs, as if Darius’s curse had filled them with smoke and ash.
Move.
He tried. Tried to lift his head, tried to push up from the dirt. But agony shot through his spine. Through blurred vision, he glimpsed…
Finn.
The King’s Guard dragged him away. His head lolled, eyes rolling like he might pass out, his body too broken to fight anymore. His legs refused to hold him, and so the guards hauled him like a discarded thing, like something no longer human.
Blood pooled, then smeared, trailing behind him. Their careless treatment had torn open his wounds.
Cedric’s claws dug deep into the earth. Move, he begged himself, his mind screaming. MOVE.
