Heat blasts across me, stripping the skin from my chest and punching me into the rocks.
Chapter Twenty-One
Maxim
My mortal enemy is within my sight.
Fire bursts from my outstretched hand as I launch myself up from beneath the low-hanging outcrop where I was concealed, swinging myself in an arc onto the mountaintop.
A stream of flame pours from my palm, cutting a circular path through the air, burning the nearby rocks on its way to my target.
Antony crashes back across the rocks, every exposed inch of his skin splitting and peeling in the scorching heat.
His eagle tumbles alongside him, the billowing air catching its wings before the bird snaps them shut and digs its talons into the ground.
I land on the stone at a crouch, the rock I burned melting to lava that pours down the side of the mountain behind me.
Antony regains his balance quickly, twisting midair, dropping his weight and scraping his fingernails along the heat-softened stone, slowing his slide and finally halting his backwardspiral.
In that split second of stillness, his head is directly in the path of my fire.
I could kill him.
I snap my right arm in the other direction, casting my fire away from him and his bird before I close my fist. Flames simmer around my right hand, pushing also at my left hand, barely constrained as I rise to my feet and give the Iron King a solemn nod. “Antony.”
Now at a stop, hunched to the ground, Antony glares up at me across the ten paces between us.
“Maxim,” he snarls, his teeth sharp in the light.
Fangs. Fucking fangs.
“Vampyr,” I reply.
Well, that’s a surprise.But I won’t allow it to throw me off-balance.
“I didn’t have to stop,” I say. “I could have burned you to ash already.”
“Then why the fuck haven’t you?”
“Because I always look my enemy in the eye when I kill them.” Withering heat waves beat the air around me. “I’m not my father.”
My father was a coward who sent an Ember Fae assassin to burn the young Iron Prince to death. Except the assassin got it wrong. He mistook his target and badly injured Antony’s younger brother Victor instead.
Lips drawn back from his teeth and muscles tense, Antony rises back to his feet. “I swore to my brother I’d kill you, Maxim. As payment for your father’s crime.”
“As you should.” I incline my head. “Now is your chance to try.”
Without taking his eyes off me, Antony casts a command at his eagle. “Azul, leave us.”
The bird’s feathers are already smoldering in the heat,threatening to catch alight, much like the ragged remains of my pants. Antony’s black pants aren’t faring much better.
For the last three hours, I scaled these dark mountains, climbing sharp cliffs and racing down into valleys flowing with black blood. At the first opportunity, I coated my body in the foul, black liquid to ensure I was camouflaged. Even so, I kept to the shadows as I pushed myself to move faster and faster, determined to reach Thyra as quickly as I could.
Then Antony came into view, exposed where he crouched at the edge of this mountain ridge on the bloodlands’ eastern side. This ridge appears to be one side of a deep ravine. The side I was already traveling on. Without his armor, I wouldn’t have been certain to recognize Antony except that I’ve seen his uncovered face before.
I stashed the dragon’s hide and its contents in a small alcove within this cliff to free up my hands and quietly renewed my vow to kill Antony if I could.
Now fate is finally on my side.
