“Lemuria’s crown will be mine,” Malcarion hissed. “When you’re ready to yield the god’s gift, I will release you from Tartarus, your new home?—”
A snarl tore free as more of his shattered memories surfaced.
Decades. This bastard had kept him chained beneath these mountains, trying to harvest his power—and when that failed, he’d thrown Race into Tartarus like refuse.
Rage surged in a tidal wave. Race pushed through Malcarion’s power storm, his gaze unflinching. “No, asshole, you are the rot that ruined it!”
He lunged, his dragonfire roaring down his Gaian blade, and with everything in him, he drove his sword through Malcarion’s shield, dissolving it, then clean through his chest, pinning him back to the gridiron he favored so fucking much. A burst of blinding light broke free?—
The forge stones screamed.
Cracks spiderwebbed through them. The lattice convulsed, green fire bursting outward as the stolen power ripped itself loose, howling as it backlashed into its thief. Rubble rained down.
Breathing hard, Race drove the sword deeper. Dark magic writhed around the blade, clawing at him, leeching at hisstrength through the connection, but he held on. “You tried to steal my legacy,” he ground out, “and it didn’t work. It never will?—”
“No, you don’t understand!” Malcarion shrieked, thrashing against the flaming blade. “Without me, all collapses?—”
“Without you,” Race said coldly, even as tremors ran through him, “everyone lives.”
Malcarion convulsed, his scream fracturing what remained of the lattice, the sound tearing through stone and spell alike. The framework collapsed inward, disintegrating into rubble as fire consumed him from the inside out.
Flesh, false crown, and madness burned away together—until nothing remained but drifting ash and dust.
Endless silence echoed.
The forge lay shattered, the remaining stolen powers seeping into the earth.
Race stood over the slag and ruin, his sword hot in his grip, his chest heaving. The bastard was finally gone. Centuries of venom, torment, and loss—ended.
But victory tasted like ash. His dragon still roared for blood, his body trembling with fury that had nowhere left to go.
Fragmented memories of his torture under Malcarion churned in the cracks of his mind. Had the bastard wiped them out? Or had Tartarus hidden them so deeply he couldn’t claw them back?
His hands shook. He wanted to kill Malcarion all over again.
“It’s over,” Koal’s voice came from a distance.
Race turned to find Skaldr behind him, his face a hollow mask of agony, as if struck repeatedly by a hammer. “You…” His throat worked as if he couldn’t swallow. “You never ran.”
Race said nothing.
Horror, guilt, millennia of misjudgment twisted across Skaldr’s features. “Eracier…”
Race shook his head, didn’t want to talk about it. But at the pain in his old friend’s eyes, he briefly gripped Skaldr’s biceps?—
A groan echoed from above.
The ceiling spider-webbed. Cracks raced across the stone.
Fuck.
“Move!” Race roared?—
The ceiling crashed down over them, and everything went dark.
Chapter
Thirty-Nine
