A chill ran up my spine.
“My brother, the former Ambush Master. His tyger, who was Mated to the only adult tygress at the time.” His fingers tightened. “The king of the Dominion of the Onyx Tortoise. The bride, the crown princess of the Red Phoenix Dominion.”
His voice was growing darker, less restrained and more fueled by anger with every word.
“Do you know who we never found? Any member of the Azure Dragon royal family.”
“That’s not possible,” I snapped. I knew what had happened. Edith, Quinn, the others—we had all mourned our royal family’s deaths. “You just said the prince battled the Starved. They perished. Everyone knows that. The groom and his entire family, even his sister, the crown princess of the Azure Dominion. Demons overran our lands.”
Icy fury punctuated every word. “He disappeared during the fight. Azure shapeshifters are notoriously difficult to kill. They heal completely every time they shift forms. Did they die, or was this all a part of some bigger plan to decimate the rulers of the other dominions? Were they somehow working together with the demons? Are they building up an army even as we speak? We don’t know what is happening within the boundaries of your dominion now because no one dares enter.”
I didn’t say anything, letting his words roll through me.
“The Annihilation cost us our only adult tygress as well,” Blake said. “That might have been the end of the Tyger Warriors if Flame hadn’t already been born.”
I hesitated. “Was the adult tygress there, too?”
“No.” He paused, his breath heaving again against my back. As if he was struggling with something, holding it back, and didn’t want me to notice. “She was Mated to my brother’s tyger. They die with their Mates.”
A cold knot twisted in my stomach. “I thought tygers could re-Bond.”
“They can. To a new human rider.” His tone was clipped, final. “But they can’t live if their tyger Mate perishes.”
A pang hit my chest, a strange grief I didn’t understand. Flame seemed to miss a step.
“So,” Blake said, clearing his throat and resuming that cold, sharp tone, “you’ll excuse me if I’m not so sympathetic to the plights of Azures.”
A bitter laugh climbed my throat. “You believe that our royal family is thriving behind the guise of demons breaking through our Anchor seal? If we’re such a threat, why did your dominion allow us in at all? You could have sent us all back across the Celestine Ocean.”
He exhaled through his nose. “Because we were starving.”
The words landed like a slap.
“The Annihilation didn’t just take down the Azure Dragon Dominion,” he continued, voice like steel. “Harvests had been poor for years due to floods and storms, and then the Annihilation disrupted trade routes, threw everything into chaos. Then your people showed up, desperate, half dead, but with enough green magic to make crops grow where the soil had become barren.”
I swallowed hard, feeling the cold settle deeper in my bones.
“The Silver Tyger Dominion needed to eat,” he said simply. “And you were convenient.”
I looked down, my fingers curling against the rough rope at my wrists. “So that’s all we’ve ever been? A necessary evil?”
He didn’t answer right away. Flame’s steady gait rocked us forward in silence. Finally, he said, “Azures are a problem we can’t afford to get rid of.”
7
The palace loomed in pieces through the dark. So this was the heart of their capital, Steel Haven. Jagged towers, walkways, black tiled roofs that curled like wings, heavy with metal and shadow, as if ready to crush us.
Blake was silent behind me, his arm locked around my waist like a living chain.
We passed under a huge iron archway with curved eaves. The groan of the gates and the stomp of several boots greeted us.
Flame slowed, claws scraping against the slick ground. A colossal silver tyger riddled with battle scars shook his powerful jowls, then padded up to us.
Even I knew Blake Axefire’s legendary silver tyger’s name: Kingsolver.
His fur shifted like liquid metal under the torchlight, a living current of silver streaked with jagged black markings. Every scar etched into his massive hide was a testament to battles fought and won. People whispered that he was a near perfect resemblance toByako, the original Silver Tyger, this dominion’s Celestial Guardian. Kingsolver moved with an unspoken promise of power and violence.
Six men rushed toward us. Clad in protective armor from head to toe, they were gesturing and pointing at us, their faces filled with awe.
