Page 63 of A Frozen Pyre
The woman beside him shot him terrified glances. “Your Majesty, I don’t know—”
She had no time for their squabbles. Their arguments were noise as she focused on her father.
“I know nothing of who you are?” Eero asked incredulously, voice mocking. Flecks of spit hit the table as he yelled, voice red with anger. “Tell me, Ophir. Tell me what you are. Tell me something your mother and I haven’t known since the day you were born. Caris was meant to usher in an age of peace! What can you do except burn things to the ground?”
The world around her froze with a high, sharp ring.
Anger engulfed her, hotter than any flame. She guessedfrom the flash of muscle and flesh that her friends saw their fates before she grasped what she was doing.
Dwyn and Tyr were on their feet in an instant. From across the room, Harland leaped up as if to cross the table. She beheld them all as if they swam to her through the deepest trenches of the ocean, every labored movement happening bit by bit. All three lunged for her as if to soothe her, but it was too late.
With a banshee scream of decades of betrayal, of pain and hatred, Ophir thrust her hands to the side. She shrieked her bloodcurdling rage, ears ringing with anguish. The high-pitched humming of agony and fury drowned out the shouting of Dwyn, Tyr, and Harland as time slowed, the clock ticking so that every second became a minute. She saw their faces. She saw their fear. She saw the disappointment that soaked her father like a child’s soiled pants. She saw the confusion on Ceneth’s face. She even caught something akin to pride on Zita’s bemused expression as her fingers, bent into claws, rose at her sides.
Perhaps they knew her better than she knew herself.
Ophir hadn’t gone in with intent. She hadn’t thrown out her hands with a plan. She knew only two things. The first was that rage was the only emotion that mattered. The second was that King Eero of Farehold would live to rue the day he’d spoken so glibly of her.
The spray of debris and pebbles hit her before she was conscious of the noise.
Decay hit her in conjunction with the arctic wind that poured in from all sides. Light, dust, screaming, and horror erupted through the cocoon of her violence. Feathers and flesh, the whites of eyes, the cries of panic and pain flooded her.
The room exploded around her, each stone bursting into ten thousand smaller stones. A shriek like rust, nails, and ice joined the raw, aching scream that tore from her throat. She didn’t have to turn to see the enormous shadow that toweredover the wreckage of the room. Membranous wings attached to a monster the size of the mountain ripped through the very stitches that held the castle together. She was spared from the rubble by the same wingspan that tore everything around it to the ground. The outermost wall to the castle crumbled, more early-winter chill spilling in like cold cream filling a teacup. The cold joined the dust, the rocks, the sound of coughing, the limbs that lifted to shield themselves from the pain.
“Firi!” Dwyn cried from her side. The siren’s high, panicked voice was coming from the blackened bottom of the sea, shouting at her from deep underwater. Her sounds barely reached Ophir’s ears.
Ophir didn’t bother to look at her. Wrath was the only thing she knew as she cried out again. The spray of pebbles and chalk dusted her as the shape planted its mighty feet on either side. With two thunderous steps, the quadrupedal creature’s front legs framed her silhouette. Her winged serpent arched its neck into the sky, bellowing the sounds of glass shards and hellfire.
The night-dark dragon drank in the sky as it shook off the remnants of the destroyed room around it. She looked up at her beast with fury and pride as it screeched once more.
Coated in a thick white powder of dust and debris, her father scrambled backward on bloodied palms. He tried to cry out against the dragon that had enveloped the wing of the castle but choked on the cloud of wreckage.
“Kill him,” Ophir said with cool command. The winged beast poised to strike. Her lip twitched with the ghost of a smirk. In the midst of its arc, she shouted a single word. “Halt.”
The corner of her mouth flickered up while her eyes remained cool.
The ag’drurath paused inches from Eero’s whimpering form. Thick, iridescent fluid dripped from its thousands of needlelike teeth. It twitched anxiously as it stared at the king. Hunger reflected in its eyes, mirroring the bloodlust she wascertain shone in hers.
She maintained a vague awareness of yelling from all sides. Someone was shouting for a healer. The wailing of the wounded rose from across the table. Tyr tugged at her arm, but she didn’t bother to look his way as she commanded her dragon.
“Pick him up by his collar,” she said. She flicked a finger lazily from her creation to her father, though she was quite certain the gesture was unnecessary.
The ag’drurath leaned forward, sulfur and carrion filling the space as the stench of its rotten meat suffocated the piles of powder and stones. Icy, whipping wind joined the blood and cries of the wounded, but Ophir heard none of it. Her eyes remained focused on the careful way the ag’drurath’s teeth snagged on Eero’s collar, lifting him off his feet until he sputtered, purple with his need for air.
“Now set him down,” she said.
The dragon complied. It opened its maw and released its royal prey. Eero crumpled to the ground with a fleshy thump as his shoulder took the brunt of his fall. Her gaze remained on her beast.
“Now go,” she said, voice cold. Each word was laced with bitter intentionality as she added, “And please, don’t hunt within the city. Fly to Farehold. Torment the citizens of Aubade for all I care.”
Her hair kicked up against the force of the dragon’s mighty wings as it beat once, twice, then again and again as it battled the pull of the earth to take flight. She closed her eyes against the fine mist of grit and sand from the stones and mortar of its destruction. The distant screams of the citizens beyond mingled with the pained cries in the room, soaking her with an unpleasant white noise. The shrieks of civilians tumbled over one another like a babbling brook as the world saw her dragon. She was unwilling to feel so much as a breeze until her eyes reopened to see its reptilian shape dotting the horizon. Her father gaped at her, as speechless and bug-eyedas a trout left on shore to die.
She barely had time to admire her demon child as it cast a spectacular shape in the sky before someone was grabbing for her attention.
Ophir swatted away the hand. “You think you’re powerful, Father? You pass laws? You steal land? This—this is power. I hold life and death in my palm at a whim. Do you understand?”
“Firi,” Dwyn begged, tugging at her sweater. Ophir blinked at the siren, surprised at the panic in Dwyn’s voice. “Your father is not the only one present! You have to do something! You can help them.”
“Help who?” Ophir said, still watching the dragon as it took to the south. “It won’t hunt here.”
