Page 118 of A Chill in the Flame
Terror greeted her with open arms as the face of chaos screamed back.
Tyr had barely spit out the final word before everyone in the audience flinched, bending in half as they clutched their hands to their knees. Zita’s shield wavered and dropped as both the queen and the imposter clutched at their skulls, protecting their eardrums from a sound so deafening, it may as well have been a jagged needle shoved into Ophir’s ear canal. The sound was like bloodied glass, like rusted metal,like carpenter’s nails dragged across porcelain, like the wailing of banshees all at once.
It was the sound of hate, death, and defeat.
Ophir yanked her palms from her head. She tore her eyes from Dwyn to the sky to see a black cloud encroaching. No, it was a bird. A storm?
The bloodcurdling cry tore through peace and sanity once more.
It was the sound of a dragon.
The gargantuan, winged demon was upon them before they’d even looked up. An enormous, quadrupedal black serpent with a wormlike neck and razor-sharp talons descended. Membranous wings like bats, nightmares, and cobwebs rolled into two enormous expanses flapped as the creature aimed to land in the middle of the crowd.
“Firi…” The sound was less than a whisper. Dwyn spoke her name, scarcely clinging to consciousness. She was trying to say something, to communicate, to help, to plead. Ophir didn’t know.
Another gruff, desperate sound came at her side. Tyr was speaking to her.
“Command it!” he demanded, horrified. “It’s yours, Ophir! Command it!”
He’d said it already, hadn’t he? Tyr began yelling. No, begging. Goddess, when would it stop? When would this be a memory? She struggled to see the wings and fangs and claws. The sulphuric smell may as well have been roses. The screams of the audience may as well have been Caris’s guard—the noble August—tragic, final, dying.
This wasn’t Berinth’s party. She wasn’t holding Caris.
For fuck’s sake, hold on, she begged herself.Dwyn can’t die because you’re a coward. This is your fault.
Ophir couldn’t breathe. She was going to pass out. The smell of roses was too strong. She couldn’t think. The screaming was too loud. The blood. The smell. Goddess. Mother. Fucking. Cursed. Shit. Roses. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
The dragon’s mouth shot down into the crowd, plucking a terrified audience member. The wet, horrible crunch and slurp of the slain man was a music she hadn’t expected. The dragon swiped, biting, crushing dozens of bystanders as it thundered to a landing. Their broken bodies were toppled by the weight of its legs, its tail, its knife-sharp talons. The too-long neck of the snake snatched a second unlucky, screaming civilian in its rows of hundreds of needle-like teeth, tossing the man into the air as he kicked, thrashed, and cried out in horror and pain. The snake caught the man in its mouth, crunching down with a wet, bloodied sound as bones shattered and his screaming stopped. The man went limp as the serpent lifted its wormlike head to the sky, allowing gravity to help it pull its victim down into its belly.
“Ophir, command it!” Tyr tried again, shaking her shoulders.
Ophir looked between the twin queens, her rapidly poisoned friend, the sprinting, crying civilians, and the enormous demon she’d created. It was then that she realized why it was there.
“I did,” Ophir said, too stunned to explain.
Tyr said something unimportant. He didn’t understand what she meant. Of course he didn’t. He hadn’t been there in the desert when she’d given the very instructions that had brought them here. She’d told them to destroy her sister’s murderer.
She’d done this.
Smoke poured from the humanoid abomination’s mouth as it flamed its wings, descending into the crowd toward the middle of the platform. Paralyzed with fear, the queens, their guards, Harland, Samael, Tyr, Ophir, and Dwyn were unable to move. It landed on the lip of the platform, near Berinth.
The winged, faelike monstrosity opened its mouth and spoke.
“Murdererrrrrr,” the abomination hissed, waves of carrion and rotten eggs overpowering the scent of roses. “You wear the blood of Carissssss on your handssss.”
“Ophir!”
Tyr pulled at her. Tugged. Shook her. He’d crossed the bridge from desperation to madness.
“I did command it.” She looked helplessly at the thing she’d made, knowing precisely why it had come. She’d stood on the sands outside of the city and told the demon to do exactly whatever it had to do in order to terrify the ones responsible for Caris’s death. She’d first told it to stay out of the city and keep the serpent out of sight, but her second command was obviously the one it had followed. She never made anything right. Nothing ever turned out the way she wanted. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Her mouth was so dry. Her heart murmured arrhythmically. “That’s why it’s here. It’s here because of me. It’s here on my command.”
The serpent beat its mighty wings, knocking a number of civilians to the ground as they attempted to run for their lives. Its black wings blotted out much of the early morning light, casting a deep and bottomless shadow over them.
“Call a door,” came Dwyn’s garbled, drug-addled words. She wasn’t looking or seeing or hearing. This was the only sentence she’d managed. For all Ophir knew, it would be her last.
A request. A lifeline. Hope.
The dragon swatted at the audience, its nails biting into the flesh of all who ran, its foot crushing more. Its mouth still dripped with the blood from its first meal, but now it bit for sport, continuing to pick at things that drew its attention. Blood. So much blood. The cacophony of screams would never end.
