Page 116 of The Serpent Prince

CHAPTER 42

Covering herself in a dome of shadow and using the blackness to blast everything off her body, she remained conscious. But covered in dust, she still struggled to breathe, almost choking trying to get air into her lungs. Even moving was painful. Her whole side was wet, and so much dirt filled her eyes that she felt they were bleeding.

Sitting up, she barely grasped her wand. But once she did, her magic shot up, shadows blasting a hole through the mess crushing her.

A nightmare had unfolded. Ash fell like rain. When she lifted her chin to the sky, she coughed until she felt her lungs splintering. Half the castle had been blown out, engulfed in flames, with grim, black smoke pouring out of it.

Another blast of flames exploded from the north tower, and in a rumble, it collapsed onto itself. Floor, after floor, after floor tumbling into ruins, pancaking so fast she didn’t have time to react with her shadow protection. All she could do was scream and cover her head against the cloud of debris.

The whole realm would be grappling with this insanity. With the violence against ordinary citizens by one man, there would be a response from the Essenheim Kingdom. This was a declaration of war against the entire realm. Their whole way of life was at risk with Kiran wielding so much power. Of that, she had no doubt.

While she could understand Kiran’s rage, this was something that wouldn’t go unchecked.

She gripped her wand as she started digging herself out of the rubble. She gritted her teeth and tried to focus on one step at a time. It didn’t feel right to blast these human remains with her shadows, so she moved painstakingly slow, taking her time. Move this piece of wood. A shoe with a foot still inside. A deck of playing cards with blood. Singed books and paper. Human bone fragments and splinters from wands. Move it all, one step at a time.

She gagged as she pushed aside a bloody hand missing half its fingers. Something about the way the muscles and ligaments feathered into a small, delicate hand reminded her of her sister. Who did it belong to?

No one. It belonged to no one now.

There was hardly anything to bury. Kiran had completely obliterated these people from existence, without mercy.

The more ubiquitous objects she moved and the more remains she encountered, the angrier she became that he hadn’t let her in on his plans. She could have helped him do this with less violence. Her darkness would have been more merciful—a faster death for all.

Unyielding power and flames, gruesome and unmerciful, he was just pure strength. Saevel and the king hadn’t stood a chance.

Soaring above the carnage, Kiran was an unstoppable weapon in animal form, his flames everywhere.

She would have stood at his side—maybe not endorsed such ultimate destruction, but she would have helped him take down his father in a better way.

The smell of burning flesh hit her in waves. After gagging two or three times, she grabbed another piece of debris to find a shard of glass impaled through a man’s torso, his guts spilling out. She promptly vomited. The way his dead eyes bulged from his skull would haunt her nightmares.

Finally, she was able to stand. She walked haphazardly up the stairs to the main courtyard.

Slinking alongside the piles of rubble and bushes that remained, she stayed out of sight from the guards and legions that had gathered for the end of the battle.

Magnus stood tall, tossing his wand to the ground and striding confidently forward to look up at the beast that was his son.

After a whoosh of air, the prone bodies of two dead dragons smashed into the earth. An ear-piercing roar boomed over the valley and mountainside, rattling her bones. The black dragon tucked its wings in and fell downward. When the creature dipped low to the ground, rapidly beating his wings until a swirl of magic from the Fabric surrounded him, it was not the beast that landed—it was the man.

Hands on his knees, his cloak whipping behind him, Kiran was panting but looked dead inside, and focused.

Dread kicked her in the gut at that vacant look on his face. She beat it away, however, forcing herself to pay attention.

Magnus roared as he shifted into his beast, a wyvern. He looked like Kiran’s dragon but not quite as large or imposing. And without fire.

Imani watched Kiran, who glanced at the dead dragons, deadly furious. Smoke poured from his lips, and his eyes shifted to dragon slits, while his muscles trembled with rage. He was a dangerous creature. Violent. Strong. Ferocious. His father’s son. A monster just like she’d always known he was from the first moment she had laid eyes on him at the palace in Stralas. If Imani was a smarter girl, maybe she should have been more afraid than she’d been all these months with him.

Kiran started to shift back into dragon form. It started in the middle of his chest, where his heart lay. Black scales then appeared and started to spread like an ink stain. It permeated his skin as it moved, changing the smooth, pale texture to something rough and scaly, dark as onyx as it moved out to his shoulders, while more blackness spread up his arm from his hands, encasing his whole body. One moment, he was still something she recognized, still a man, still an elf. And the next, he was more than twice in size, in every single way.

She was lost to the horror as the beast took shape.

Kiran’s face was no longer his, but another creature’s entirely, something from a nightmare. The creature she had always seen peeking out from behind his eyes, finally in corporeal form.

Now seeing his sheer size compared to the wyvern, Imani knew Magnus didn’t stand a chance against his son.

Kiran jerked back, his attention snapping to Imani. He canted his head to the side in recognition, a slow smile spreading across his dragon’s face, dousing the flicker of rage that had been there, as if he was pleased to see her close by, watching.

He moved gracefully, effortlessly, unworried by the impending encounter.