Page 7

One word. One fucking word.

Both broadswords slipped from my hands. They hit the ground with a clang I barely heard. The voice didn't echo across the barren wasteland around me. It came from inside my soul.

Deep. Resonant. Ancient. Mine.

My knees damn near gave out.

“Sully?”

Silence. One terrible, long heartbeat of silence.

Then metaphysical wings I had not felt in a century unfurled inside my consciousness with enough force to make me stagger. Emerald eyes blazed to life in my Mind's Eye. The Dragon King I'd mourned for a hundred fucking years threw back his massive head and ROARED.

The sound ripped through my soul. Dragon Fire exploded from my body.

Golden flames spiraled around me, shooting high into the night as Sullevan's Magic crashed into mine, two halves violently snapping back together after a century apart.

For one blinding second, I couldn't tell where I ended and he began. Just like it had always been. Just like it was supposed to be.

“WE ARE WHOLE!” He roared.

I laughed… And sobbed. Hell, I did both.

My right hand trembled as my left palm slammed against my breastplate, right over my heart.

There it was. That powerful, reassuring thrum.

Sully.

Alive.

Inside me.

Home.

For a century, I'd existed as a hollowed-out shell, fighting with nothing but raw grit, rage, and the lingering echoes of centuries of Dragon Guardsman training.

Mammon had ripped Sullevan from my soul the moment I was dragged into the Pit. And I'd known– just known– that the sadistic bastard had killed him.

It would've been exactly the kind of shit Mammon enjoyed.

Don't just torture the Guardsman. Kill his Dragon King. Leave the man alive long enough to understand that half his soul was gone forever.

For a hundred years, I'd hated Mammon for murdering my oldest friend. A vital piece of me. The King who had shared my soul for centuries.

And the asshole hadn't killed him at all.

“Sully?” I mentally whispered his name this time because it was all I could manage around the fucking boulder lodged in my throat.

His enormous head lowered in my Mind's Eye. For once in his immortal existence, the smartass Dragon King had nothing clever to say. His emerald eyes simply held mine.

“Aye, Lad.”

I closed my eyes. “Thank the Heavens.”

A beat passed. Then Sully's familiar voice rumbled through my mind, “Took ye long enough.”

My eyes flew open. A laugh burst out of me. A real, honest-to-the-Goddess belly laugh.