Page 80 of Dragon Awakened

Rook shakes his head. "Erembour will find Ember, regardless of what I do."

"What does he want with her?" Jianyu asks.

"To destroy her," Rook says levelly.

At that, the room explodes--although to be fair, it's mostly me and Ember's other mates. My dragon, subdued until now, throws itself against the cage of my ribs. I can't keep the growl from my throat or the smoke from my breath.

"Over my dead body," Malik seethes, punching his fist into his opposing palm, his tattoos rippling with bright blue magic and his eyes ablaze with an aquamarine glow.

Scoffing, Rook shakes his head. "The Shadow King will step over your corpse with relish."

Jianyu's voice is steel. "We have to get out of here. Far from you--"

"You need to listen to me," Rook intones, and there are shadows dancing at the edges of the room.

Everyone goes quiet. My dragon is still breathing clouds of acrid smoke into my lungs, but even he is given pause.

Rook looks injured and weakened, but his old dragon magic burns in the dark pits of his eyes.

"Ember. My niece." He addresses her directly. "You will never be safe. Not until you find the Crown of Cinders, unite the elements, and take your place on the Grand Throne."

Ember sputters, her confusion rippling in radiating waves through our bond. "But-- How-- The Crown Of Cinders?"

"The legends are terribly vague, but on that they are all agreed," Rook says.

"The remnants of the crown worn by the mother of dragons herself." Rhiannon's face goes pale. "The god who created our kind and sent us out into the world."

"Only for our kind to betray her." Rook rubs his bearded jaw. "We splintered into our kingdoms and our factions."

"And she tossed her crown into the heat of the battle," Malik says quietly. "It was consumed by flame."

Rafe's eyes gleam. "But not destroyed."

And these are all fairy tales--the kinds of stories my father decried as blasphemy. They challenged his claim to absolute rule over our kingdom. They labeled his antagonism against the other dragon nations as wrong.

But he was the one who was wrong.

And he knew it.

"Where do we find it?" Ember asks, too focused to notice the small mental breakdown I'm having over here.

"It hasn't been seen in millennia," Rook pronounces.

"But he's looking for it," I hear myself say.

Rook's gaze snaps to mine, and in an instant, I know I'm correct.

"With every fiber of his being," Rook says gravely. "All he's been able to determine is that it can only be accessed by wielding all five of the elemental magics. But he thinks he has a strategy to draw it out. If you wish to have any hope of saving the dragon world as we know it, you must stop him."

"How?" Ember says again, her anxiety rising to the point where I can taste it on the back of my throat.

"I don't know. But you don't have much time. Mark my words." Rook levels her with a piercing stare. "You must find it yourself before the Dragon Moon."

"Why?" Ember asks. "What happens then?"

But I already know.

A thousand puzzle pieces suddenly assemble themselves in my mind's eye, forming a picture so terrifying that even my dragon recoils.

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