Page 69 of Two Thousand Blades

“I will return with Rei and Kai. I swear to you,” Xiang replied in a rough voice.

“And you,” Yichen grumbled. Xiang glanced over his shoulder to see Yichen pull Rei into his arms. The elf’s smirk fell away as he pressed his forehead to Yichen’s. “Just fucking come back to me.”

“We’re all coming back in one piece,” Rei agreed, and Xiang was going to make sure it happened.

Chapter 23

Kai

Kai closed his eyes as pain radiated throughout his entire body, but it paled in comparison to the shame trying to choke him.

The queen’s guards shackled him to the ground.

A metal ring surrounded his throat, and a short chain ran from it to several spikes driven deep into the earth. The collar was so tight, he couldn’t swallow. He could barely draw in a breath.

A spike pierced his long tail, spearing him to the ground so he couldn’t fly off or use it as a weapon to beat the elves away from him, as they now drew close.

He was a dragon—near godlike in his powers—and they’d trapped him like a rodent. The heart of his hoard she possessed blocked his magic. There wasn’t a single spell he could cast against her or the fae gathered near him. He’d been limited to physical attacks, and those had done as much damage to his body as they’d done to the elves.

When he’d arrived at the castle, he’d attacked any living creature he could find. He’d worn himself out in his ferocious moves, ready to counter anything Queen Belladonna threw at him. He’d burst through the main wall surrounding their fortress, knocking it down. With a swing of his tail, a tower had toppled into a heap of stones. Thunder and lightning had raged overhead, while the ensuing downpour had turned the ground into a muddy swamp, soaking the bodies of the dead and creating rivers of blood. His mane had stuck to his scales that shifted from shimmering gold to pale blue, and he’d roared with everything he had.

Except the queen hadn’t stopped him.

At least, not until he was exhausted from his tantrum. With a smug smirk, she’d lifted one hand and the wall he’d destroyed rebuilt itself brick by brick. The toppled tower flew back into place. In a matter of minutes, she’d erased all the damage he’d created. The only thing she couldn’t undo was the dead. Those lifeless bodies remained scattered on the grounds. Sacrifices she was more than happy to make in the name of breaking him.

After she was finished fixing the castle, she’d ordered him again and again to kill Xiang. He’d roared and fought the urge to follow the command until he could no longer make a sound. Until he’d collapsed onto the ground, unable to lift his head.

That was the moment her soldiers had moved. It had all been part of her plan to capture him, and he’d stupidly stumbled right into it.

Now he couldn’t move. Agony and exhaustion saturated his every thought. If she released him and commanded that he harm any of the Zhang clan, he was afraid he would no longer have the strength to fight her. If he broke loose now, he would create a new cave to hide in. Away from the Zhang clan where he could die curled up with his happy memories of Xiang.

The one good thing about all this was that he wasn’t alone in his suffering. The queen stepped from the shadows of her castle, now scarred by his claws, to reveal she had aged tremendously in the past weeks. Her blond hair was now streaked with white and bits of gray. Flawless skin was now stretched with lines reaching out from her eyes while more dug deep furrows along her mouth that was now just a pair thin lips pressed into a permanent frown. Her long, graceful body had thinned, so that she was barely more than skin and bones, while her back had taken on a hunched quality, as if the weight of the power she was trying to pull in now kept her permanently bowed.

Gone was the majestic young woman in the spring of life, and before him stood winter’s crone desperate to drag him into death with her. There was no question that she was powerful and could crush any of the fae who might dare to stand against her. It was that the wear of that magic on her had taken a visible physical effect.

“Bloody beast!” Belladonna snarled as she walked closer. He opened his eyes to see several soldiers surrounding her, their swords drawn and bows knocked with arrows. They were ready to kill him if he so much as bared a fang at her. “You think you can disobey me? I own you. If you don’t learn to follow my commands, I will have you cut down for parts and stewed up for potions. There will be nothing left of you. Not even bones. I’ll throw out the Twilight Throne and have a new throne made of your bones. That is all that will be left of you.”

Kai closed his eyes, content to ignore her ravings. Let her kill him and use his bones for a throne. At least in his death, he’d make sure she was never comfortable sitting on that throne. All that mattered was that he never harmed Xiang, or those he counted as his family.

It was a shame he was going to die here in this foreign forest without getting to look at Xiang’s smiling face one last time. They’d had so few weeks together. So many games they never got to play. So many snuggles he never got to enjoy. There was nothing like the feeling of having Xiang wrapped in his arms. The feel of his body pressed to every inch of his own, the smell of him mixing with his own scent to make something new and theirs.

“Cut off the dragon’s horns!” Belladonna ordered, breaking through Kai’s melancholy thoughts.

His eyes snapped open, and he tried to lift his head, but the chain stopped him after less than a meter. Fresh stabs of pain answered any attempts to thrash. Even so, there was no way in hell he was going to lie still while the fae cut pieces off him. He was going to fight until his very last breath.

The soldiers darted in front of Belladonna and coerced her to move a safe distance away, while more elves and other creatures with bulbous noses and spindly limbs crawled closer. He fought as hard as he could, but fatigue and pain drained away what little strength he had. Too soon, he couldn’t even lift his head.

Overhead, lightning flashed across the sky, followed by a boom of thunder. The rain that had slowed now pummeled the ground in fat drops. He wished he could wash them all away, but he didn’t even have the strength to summon up a good storm.

Another boom tore through the sky and shook the ground, but this one wasn’t thunder. Panicked screams followed the explosion and Kai opened his eyes to see one of the castle’s walls on his right had been reduced to smoldering rubble. A fire devoured the remains of furniture and bits of blasted timber. The army that had surrounded him had scattered in every direction. Some of them were working to put out the fire, while others were trying to locate the perpetrators.

Chaos still gripped the square where he was being held when a second explosion took out another part of the wall, but this time, it was on his left. Whoever was attacking the fae stronghold had them surrounded.

Could this be Xiang?

But the sun was still up. The rest of his clan couldn’t accompany him. He would be here alone. No! Xiang couldn’t come for him. As much as he wanted to get back to his vampire, he couldn’t allow him to risk his life like this. He had to get away.

Something touched him!

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