Page 46 of Echoes of Fire

He wheezed a laugh, blood flecking his teeth. “The priestess invoked the ancient rites—no bond, no trial. If you’re not in the arena at sunrise, they’ll feed her to the beasts piece by piece.”

I dropped him. He crumpled, gasping, but still sneering.

Krazath’s taunts chased me down the corridor—a jagged sound cut short by the click of claws on stone. Zarvash emerged from the council chamber’s shadowed archway, flanked by two scribes clutching slates.

“Rash actions won’t reclaim your mate,” he said. One scribe stepped forward, offering a slate displaying legal script. Ismashed it against the wall, shattering the screen into glittering shards.

Zarvash didn’t flinch. “The challenge is a mercy. Would you prefer Karyseth’s alternative? A public execution by molten immersion?”

One of the scribes shifted, revealing Orla’s journal clutched in his claws. My vision tunneled.

“Give. That. To me.”

I lunged.

Mektar seemed to materialize from nothingness—a midnight-blue blur—his tail snapping around my throat. Scales bit into my windpipe as he wrenched me backward. My claws scraped stone, leaving furrows in the floor.

“Cease,” Mektar hissed, the first word I’d heard him speak in weeks. His spiked tail tightened, forcing me to my knees.

Zarvash plucked the journal from the scribe’s grip, flipping through pages filled with Orla’s cramped sketches and notes. “Fascinating. She documented our geothermal vents’ resonance frequencies. Clever for a primitive.”

“Primitive?” I choked out. “She survived all this world has thrown at her.”

“Barely.”

“She never agreed to this challenge, nor did I,” I snarled.

Zarvash shrugged. “Irrelevant. It proceeds at dawn. Fight beside her, and you might both survive. Fight me now,” he leaned down, copper eyes reflecting my twisted expression, “and she dies screaming, alone.”

Mektar’s tail loosened just enough to let me breathe.

“Choose, Flame Heart,” Zarvash murmured. “Warrior or fool.”

Darrokar appeared in the archway, Nyx at his flank like a steel-scaled shadow. The Warrior Lord’s obsidian scales pulsedwith restrained energy, his gaze sweeping over my battered state. “Stand down, Rath.”

Mektar let me go. He and Zarvash made their escape.

I whirled. “You knew.”

Darrokar sidestepped, blocking the entrance with his bulk. “I didn’t sanction this.”

“Liar!” The word erupted in a shower of sparks from my overheating glands. “Someone on the council had to. You let them drag her into their sick ritual!”

Nyx shifted, his steel-gray scales rasping like drawn blades. “You don’t think that councilor just ran out of this room like his scales were on fire? Zarvash is a snake. But the challenge is older than the city; it can’t be avoided now that it’s begun. You know this.”

I rounded on Darrokar, my wings flaring wide enough to brush the corridor’s crystal veins. “I don’t see you volunteering to prove your bond with a human.”

Darrokar’s claws flexed, the only betrayal of his anger. “Terra earned her place through combat. You have done nothing to win over the doubters but hide away with your mate as if she’s a shameful secret.”

The accusation struck like a lava whip. My fist connected with his jaw before I’d fully decided to swing. The crack echoed through the cavern—bone meeting scale, blood meeting fire.

Darrokar staggered, blood welling from a split lip. Nyx moved between us in a blur, his tail slamming into my chest hard enough to bruise. Breath exploded from my lungs as I skidded backward, claws screeching against stone.

“Enough!” Nyx roared, planting himself between us. “Kill each other after the human’s safe.”

Darrokar wiped his mouth, staring at the blood on his claws in disbelief. “You think Iwantthis?” he snarled, advancing onme. “If Orla dies in that pit,youunravel. And Scalvaris needs you whole.”

I spat at his feet. “Scalvaris can burn.”

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