Page 45 of Echoes of Fire

SIXTEEN

RATH

Orla’s fear lingered in the market’s choked air like smoke. Vendors scattered as I stormed through the lower districts, my scales burning so violently they cast crimson shadows across the stalls.

“Where is she?” I snarled, slamming a merchant against his own spice cart. Cinnamon pods rained down around us, their sweetness clashing with the ozone stink pouring from my overheating glands. The Drakarn’s yellowish scales grayed at the edges, fear souring his scent.

“I-I swear, my lord, I saw nothing?—”

My claws dug into his tunic, singeing the fabric. “Liar.” The word came out a growl, my fangs inches from his throat. “Her trail ends here. Who took her?Krazath’s rats? Karyseth’s zealots?”

A child’s whimper cut through the tension. I released the merchant, his wares scattering as he fled. The market’s usual riot of noise had died to a hush, stall owners barricading themselves behind crates, mothers yanking fledglings into alleyways. Even the river algae’s faint glow seemed dimmer, like the city itself feared my wrath.

I followed the fractured traces of Orla’s scent—honeyed panic undercut by an acid tang. My wings twitched, half-unfurled, as I stalked past a butcher’s stall. The proprietor froze, cleaver hovering above a lava eel’s thrashing body.

“You.” I gripped his arm, ignoring the eel’s blood dripping down my wrist. “A human. Dragged through here.Where?”

The Drakarn’s throat worked soundlessly before he managed, “I don’t know! They went east.”

I was already moving, boots crushing discarded fruit as I sprinted toward the district’s eastern edge. The tunnels loomed ahead, their jagged mouths spewing geothermal steam. Orla’s scent spiked here—sharp, human sweat cutting through Volcaryth’s mineral reek.

Too clean.

I skidded to a halt, nostrils flaring. The trail vanished at a rusted grate, its bars smeared with fresh blood.Humanblood. My vision hazed red.

My claws found purchase in the grate’s hinges, muscles straining as I wrenched it open. Metal screamed, the sound swallowed by the chasm below.

Empty.

No body. No scent. Just a scrap of fabric caught on a rust spike—purple, like the strands she dyed in her hair. I crushed it in my fist, the growl building in my chest shaking the walls.

They’d scrubbed her. Stolen her.Dared.

A guard approached, spear trembling in his grip. “Blade Councilor, the protocols demand?—”

I backhanded the weapon into the abyss, my claws leaving gashes in his shoulder plates. “Demandthis,” I spat, storming past him. “Find her. Or burn.”

I couldn’t blindly follow her trail, not when it disappeared. I picked up my pace, heading for a place that might have answers.

The council chambers’ doors loomed ahead whenhisstench hit me—rotten sulfur and ambition. Krazath stepped from a side passage, wings tucked in a mockery of deference, his scales dulled by ash.

“Looking for something, my lord?” His tongue flicked over the fresh scar on his throat—the oneI’dgiven him days prior.

I didn’t slow. “Move.”

He sidestepped, tail lashing. “Or what? You’ll burn another market down?” His laughter echoed off the corridor’s crystalline veins. “Pathetic. The great Rath brought low by?—”

My claws sank into his throat before he finished. I slammed him against the wall, fissures spiderwebbing through volcanic stone. His pupils blew wide, but the smirk stayed.

“Where. Is. She.” Spittle hissed against his scales.

Krazath’s gills flared, struggling to draw air. “Already in the Pit,” he choked. “By dawn, the shadows will peel her soft human flesh while she screams your name. A fitting end for a false mate.”

The wall cracked deeper under his skull. Krazath’s bravado wavered as heat warped the air between us.

“Kill me,” he rasped, “and your human dies slower. The challenge demandsbothparticipants.”

My grip loosened.

---