Page 106 of Entwined

I’m not an untrained idiot, though. I know how to take a blow, even if it’s a million times stronger than the others I’ve endured. I duck and roll, losing the blade that’s now lodged in his chest, but I’m not significantly injured, at least. When I hit the far wall, I flip and stand, waving my remaining sword. “How’s it feel?” I ask. “Being the one getting stabbed for once?”

If I didn’t need you, I’d melt you into goo.

“But you do need me,” I say. “Did you really think I’d make it easy for you?”

His lip curls and he rushes toward me, but his left side, where the blade’s still lodged, moves slower. Markedly slower. It allows me to duck under a ledge and roll across to the other side. The horrible monster can’t roast me, not if he wants to serve me up as a snack to the bubbling lava.

I manage to evade him twice, rolling toward the ledge, in a calculated ploy. If he comes at me, hoping to bump me in, I could feint and shove him toward the lava instead. I’m not sure what it would do to a fire dragon, but I bet it’s not lovely being burned, even for them.

Only, he realizes what I’m doing and his brain cells finally engage. He has something that will push me the way he wants immediately. Something that doesn’t fight back.

He saunters backward.

My heart sinks, knowing I’m about to be forced to walk in the lava on my own after all.

He may not be willing to promise me he’ll spare my siblings, but the chance that they’ll be spared when my death frees the heart is better than watching him kill them in front of me.

How about I throw them in first? He’s smiling at me while he reaches for the cage. After all, I’m not out anything by doing that. If they don’t free the heart, they don’t free it.

No! Gordon yanks his chain out of the ground and slithers at mach speed toward Hyperion, sinking his teeth into the massive fire dragon’s leg. As if he’s stuck on the top of a steep precipice, Rufus looks stricken, the blood draining from his face, but he straightens.

Before Hyperion can incinerate Gordon, Rufus yanks his chain free and races toward Hyperion’s other side. He’s opening his mouth to strike when the fire dragon backhands him, sending Rufus careening toward the lava.

Axel bursts around the corner at the top of the path into the cavern, his sides heaving, and blocks Rufus’s body just before it slides over the edge. You’re angry with my blessed for defending my bonded? Your anger is misplaced. Release them and attack me.

I’m helping the blessed, Hyperion bellows. How are all of you too stupid to see it? If we can recover the heart at the loss of just one irritating, unfaithful human, why would you fight me over that?

You laughed before, but it wasn’t a joke. Axel stands upright again. Since my hatching, I’ve hidden the truth—I have two affinities. I’ve been flame and earth blessed from the start, and only Euphrasia knew my secret. He pauses. Until I inadvertently bonded Liz. Why do you think an earth blessed was able to do the impossible?

Hyperion pauses. Then he blinks.

I kept the secret because I was afraid to expose the truth. The blessed don’t welcome weakness at any level, but to be a prince of flame who was also a prince of earth? Father would have put me down.

You were always weaker, Hyperion says. I defended you in spite of that.

So that you could be free from the curse of destroying us, Axel says. Not for any other reason.

At first. Hyperion nods slowly. That was my reason at first, but in time, I became fond of you. You were weak, but you thought differently than the rest of us. Now I understand why. You were both strong and weak. You were bright and dark. You could fly the heights and burrow into the depths. You truly belonged to no place at all.

Axel doesn’t argue. He simply begs. Don’t do it.

It could be my eyes—they could be failing me. The waves of terrible heat from the lava at our backs wash over me constantly now, and I can hear them calling to me.

The demons have seen me, and they’re chanting.

Not hjartanu, not anymore. No, ever since seeing me, they’re chanting Gullveig again. For whatever distorted reason, they think I’m somehow connected to the Norse goddess who was burned thrice and rose again.

But whether I’m imagining things from distress, or whether I’m losing focus because of the tremendous heat, I could swear that I see a tear roll down Hyperion’s massive face. It drops and disappears into the dusty floor. Maybe it is my doom, to destroy all of us. Hyperion’s voice is broken. But I can’t spare her, not even for you. We’re dying off slowly, and she’s our only hope.

We have no idea whether that’s true, Axel says. We don’t know what we’re doing.

I went back to see Father after you died. Hyperion’s head bobs, and his body slumps. He told me that he had left the heart as part of a barrier. He told me—His head snaps up. I wish I could spare her. I wish I could hope for another way, but this is the only way.

His massive, powerful arms grab Gordon and unfurl him, and then he aims him at us and chucks him with all his strength.

Axel tries to duck, throwing one of his strong, golden limbs around me, but it’s no use. The force behind Hyperion’s throw is too great. Gordon plows into us, knocking me, Axel, and Rufus over the edge at the same time. My hands pinwheel, and my eyes meet Axel’s, just as we slam into the lava.

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