Page 34 of A Book of Royals and Deities

He grits his teeth. “I made him swear not to tell you.”

If my heart wasn’t broken already, he makes sure to stomp on it. I can’t even barely believe it as he starts telling me a truth I should have guessed. “The vampyre prince has your mother. He turned to Kyrell to send him to come and find you. To tell you that he has your mother and that he’ll turn her into a vampyre too if you don’t come back to him.”

“No.” I whisper the word. My mother is with Emyr? No. No. No. I scream at him, again and again until I can’t feel anything but rage. “How could you not tell me? I would have gone to find her!”

He waves his hands out. “That’s exactly why. You would have taken the bait and ended up back in the prince’s hands, where I couldn’t get to you. Fuck no. Kyrell did everything to make sure that you had a chance to escape, and even he agreed that telling you meant all of it was for nothing. You’d never be free again. Everything would be lost, because you’d go after your mother. But would she want that?” He stares right at me. “Would the mother you told me about want you to become a blood slave to the prince again for her?”

No.

She wouldn’t, but it doesn’t matter. I laugh, but it’s hollow. “You don’t get to make that decision for me, Ziven. That’s the point. You didn’t trust me to make the choice. You made the decision for me and lied.” The ground shakes. “I came back to find you, to make sure that you got out of that mansion. To make sure that you were okay, because I felt like something was wrong. I camefor you.” I scream at him. “I came for the man I loved when I found him killing my best friend and betraying me.” The rage I feel. I can’t explain it, the pure feminine rage that screams down my throat. “Stay away from me.”

“Never,” he snarls.

Coldness spreads across my body. “Then you’re as bad as Emyr.”

I know I took it too far from the moment I say it, and Ziven flinches in pain. Shock. I want to take it back, but a sound makes me clamp my hands over my ears. Ziven glares up at the skies as Maeve’s warning shouts in my head, “They are here. Get to me!”

A yellow dragon darts across the sky, blood pouring off its side, and right behind him is a Silkvir. Horror vibrates through me as I see the beasts Luna warned us about. Their bones rattle as they fly, and they make an awful noise that makes me want to clamp down on my ears forever. They glow an eerie blue, and sickness threatens to rise up my throat as I watch the Silkvir slam into the dragon and rip it apart in a blast of red and blue fire that spreads across the sky.

Ziven grabs my waist, turning me and kissing me before I push him away. “I will always love you, Story Dehana.” He pushes me away to run into the forest, back towards the mansion and to where the Silkvir must be. Maeve snarl echoes in my mind. “To the skies, rider.”

I wipe my wet cheeks as I turn and rush towards Maeve, who isn’t too far away. I can’t grieve for Kyrell or even think about Ziven right now. I have to get Hettie away and make sure the fae flooding to this side of the forest have a chance to escape the vampyres. They are like me and they deserve a chance of freedom. Catherine and her dragon take off as I come out ofthe forest into the clearing, and I throw myself onto Maeve. She stands as I climb, and I’m glad I don’t slip just this once. The minute I’ve settled in, I wrap my arms tight around Hettie, who is shaking. “Just stay down, okay?”

“Did you find my uncle?”

Pain slams into my chest from the sheer thought of him. Yes, and he was killing my best friend. Yes, and I don’t know how I can still love him. “Yes, and he’s fine.”

Maeve needs no instruction to take herself straight up into the skies, knocking over trees with her giant wings. The higher and higher she gets, the more the horror unfolds, and I hope Hettie has her eyes closed. The sky looks like a thousand bugs flying around all at once, slamming and ripping into each other in blasts of red and blue fire. But it’s dragons and Silkvir. They’re tearing into each other in the clouds, and rain pours down on me as I watch, my mouth parting. I’m so busy looking at the war, seeing my first glimpse of this beast that the vampyres ride, that I ignore the feeling someone is watching me. I turn around too late and see one of them flying right towards us.

With a vampyre rider I know very well. Prince Emyr. Even with the miles between us, fear slams into me as our eyes meet. I was wrong. Ziven isn’t anything like Emyr, and now that I’m faced with Emyr, I know deep down that I have to get away. The Silkvir he rides is gigantic and bigger than Maeve, with huge wings of spikes and a rotting body of bones. It roars, snapping its teeth as Maeve turns to face him. She opens her mouth, pure red fire plummeting out of her and shooting across the sky like a star. Hettie screams as I push her down, covering her body, and the heat of the fire washes over me, making me feel like I’m burning.

The Silkvir flies right through the fire like it’s not there and slams straight into Maeve.

I scream at the same time she cries out. They both spin round in the sky as the wind moves so fast past us, and I scream, holding onto Hettie and Maeve’s scales. One spin, and I’m thrown right off her back with Hettie in my arms. The treeline comes up too fast, too quick, and all I can do is turn my body to hit it first and try to save Hettie.

Chapter Twenty

Page Twenty—If you have read this far, all the way to the end, know you are from the Twilight Dynasty and a royal of the oldest blood. Your red and black hair is a promise from the only deity left free in the sky…

The Silkvir are brutal, disgusting creatures, and they swarm my dragon the moment we take off. I don’t know how the king made these things, but they are nothing compared to the beauty of a dragon. They are made of mostly bones and rotting flesh, and they stink too. I almost gag on the smell as one of their bodies slams into Brythan’s wing and leaves a line of blood that is as black as the night sky. The Silkvir don’t fly in groups or formations, they just attack like wild, desperate animals. It might give us the upper hand if we can take them out one by one instead of a controlled group.

There are so fucking many of them. I can’t see through them to see where Maeve is with Story and Hettie. I fucked up and Story hates me. I did the right thing, but I should have told Story. I shouldn’t have let my fear of losing her cloud my judgment. Because the way she looked at me…fuck, I was crushed.

Brythan snaps his teeth around the bony neck of a Silkvir, the vampyre rider falling off the saddle on its back and into the forest. For every one my dragon tears into, five more appear. I sent my riders to protect the fae escaping, and I don’t regret my choice now as I watch the chaos at the front lines of the war. The barrier is gone completely, and the beasts have just torn through it.

My dragon is fast enough to get out of the crowds of Silkvir and into the sky, gliding into a clearing. My eyes are drawn to a row of Sun dragons fighting the Silkvir at the front line, and Daegan’s dragon is easy to spot in the middle. Ten Silkvir dive on us from above, and I’m fucking done. I pull moonlight from the ground, from the sky, and send them into the Silkvir’s disgusting bodies of rot, tearing them apart. Their bones fall and shatter in the sky, and their vampyre riders scream as they fall or burn. Breathless, I nearly fall forward on my dragon.

Story. I need to find her and make sure she is safe. As long as she gets away, nothing else matters to me. We search the skies from above, but I can’t see her. Maeve is big enough that even with the hundreds of dragons flying around, I should see her. Where the hell are they?

I check the forest, looking round the forest floor by the entrance to the dragons’ home, but it’s empty. I see Catherine’s dragon being chased by dozens of Silkvir, and she dives to the sea to escape them. Maeve isn’t there. A shiver goes down my neck, and I look around.

An old enemy flies on his Silkvir towards me. A face I haven’t seen in hundreds of years, and time hasn’t been good to this ugly fucker. The Dawn king used to be a young king with the world at his fingertips, but he chose to change himself into this vampyre for more power and time. It is going to cost him everything. I’m not locked in that mansion anymore.

His Silkvir is much bigger than my dragon. The king’s Silkvir is as big as a fucking mansion, and it flies as fast as a shooting star. Brythan doesn’t blink and charges to meet this new enemy head-on, fire breathing out of his mouth. The king’s Silkvir moves fast, diving to the side and its claws sinking into Brythan. The sickening crunch of bone and cutting skin will stay with me as time freezes for me. I see the death hit, the way the Silkvir claws are so deep, and he flings Brythan away into the skies. Time speeds up as fast as the wind around me as I shout, clenching my legs and holding onto Brythan with everything I have.

We both smack straight into the forest, with Brythan on his stomach, knocking over a line of trees until enough of them stop our descent. My ears ring as dust, dirt and leaves blow around me like a storm, and I slide from his back.

When everything settles, I get a good look at my dragon. The dragon I’ve been bound to for hundreds of years, who knows me better than anyone, is dying. “No!” I half scream, half shout. The maddening scream that echoes out of me reminds me of the same feeling I had when I held my sister as she died. I can’t lose him too. I fall to my knees with a thump. There’s a massive gaping hole in his chest, blood pouring out into the dirt. I can actually see his heart beating in his chest.

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