Page 81 of Empire of Wrath and Ruin
Her eyes found mine, and I saw a kinship there that went deeper than politics or strategy. This was a woman who understood what it meant to lose everything, to have your choices stripped away by forces beyond your control.
"The council wants to die with honour," she said. "I want to live with purpose. If you're willing to take the fight to the Empire's heart, then I'll help you do it."
"The council will consider this treason," Tarshi warned.
"Let them." Mira's smile was fierce and unrepentant. "History will judge who made the right choice. When Imperial dragons are burning our cities and our people are being marched to the slave markets, they'll remember who tried to prevent it and who chose the comfort of familiar failure."
I reached across the table and grasped her hand, feeling the calluses that marked her as a warrior, the strength that had carried her through decades of resistance fighting.
"Thank you," I said, meaning it with every fibre of my being. "For believing in us when no one else would."
"Don't thank me yet," she replied. "Thank me when you're standing over the Emperor's corpse."
The meeting that followed was intense and practical, focused on the thousand details that would mean the difference between success and catastrophe. Routes to the capital, contact protocols, contingency plans for when things went wrong.Because they would go wrong—missions like this always did. The key was being prepared for as many variables as possible.
By the time Mira slipped away into the pre-dawn darkness, we had the skeleton of a real plan. Dangerous, desperate, probably suicidal, but real. We would leave the city in secret, make our way to the capital through a network of safe houses and sympathetic contacts, and strike at the heart of the Empire during its moment of greatest arrogance.
As I lay in the darkness afterward, surrounded by the steady breathing of my sleeping mates, I felt something I hadn't experienced in weeks: genuine hope. Not the desperate fantasy of impossible dreams, but the concrete possibility of meaningful action.
The council had chosen to cling to tradition, to fight the same failed battles their ancestors had fought and lost. But we were going to try something different. Something that might actually work.
We were going to cut the head from the serpent and watch the Empire bleed.
26
The sky above us was the colour of old ash, heavy with clouds that seemed to press down on the world like a suffocating blanket. Tarshi's dragon form cut through the air with powerful wingbeats, carrying me, Marcus, and Septimus toward what might be our salvation or our doom. The weight of our supplies and weapons slowed our progress, but not as much as the weight of what I carried in my mind.
The shadows whispered constantly now.
They painted vivid pictures behind my eyes—how easy it would be to slip a tendril of darkness around Marcus's throat while he dozed, how satisfying it would be to hear his bones crack. How Septimus's blood would look splattered across Tarshi's scales. How simple it would be to reach across the gap between our mounts and drag Livia from Sirrax's back, watch her fall screaming toward the earth below.
I pressed my palms against my temples, trying to silence the voices, but they only grew louder. The crystal in Antonius's pack called to me like a beacon, its alien song harmonizing with the darkness in my soul. It was so close—mere yards away onSirrax's back. All I had to do was command the shadows to reach across the gap, tear it from his grasp, make it mine...
No. The word came out as a strangled whisper, earning concerned glances from my companions. I couldn't let them see how close I was to losing control completely. Couldn't let them know that every moment of this journey was an exercise in not murdering the people I loved most.
Below us, the landscape told a story of systematic destruction that made the shadows dance with approval. Burned villages dotted the countryside like infected wounds, their blackened timbers reaching toward the sky like skeletal fingers. The Empire's advance had been methodical, thorough—not just conquest, but annihilation.
"Gods," Marcus muttered, pointing toward a cluster of buildings that had been reduced to ash and rubble. "There's nothing left. They didn't even spare the wells."
I could smell the death rising from the ruins, could taste the lingering terror in the air. The shadows fed on it, growing stronger with each atrocity we witnessed. They showed me how beautiful it was, this artistry of destruction. How perfect the symmetry of total devastation could be.
A river wound through the valley below us, its waters dark with more than mud. Bodies floated in the current like grotesque debris—men, women, children, livestock all mixed together in a soup of decay. The stench reached us even at this altitude, making Septimus gag and Marcus curse under his breath.
Through the bond I shared with Livia, I felt her horror and rage at the sight. But underneath her disgust was something else—a cold fury that resonated with the darkness in my mind. She wanted revenge as much as I did. The shadows whispered that I could give it to her, could rain death on the Empire until nothing remained but beautiful, perfect silence.
"The dragons," I said suddenly, my voice cracking with strain. "I can feel them."
Marcus leaned forward. "What do you mean?"
"The collared ones. They're screaming." I pressed my hands harder against my skull, but it did nothing to muffle the psychic agony bleeding through whatever connection existed between shadow magic and the Empire's enslaved beasts. "They don't want to kill. The collars are forcing them, and they're screaming inside their own minds."
The pain of it was exquisite, a symphony of suffering that the shadows found intoxicating. They showed me how I could reach out, follow those connections, add my own darkness to the collared dragons' torment. Turn their anguish into rage, their despair into violence directed at their own handlers.
Marcus's hand landed on my shoulder, warm and grounding. "It must be the proximity of the crystal. It’s increasing your abilities. Focus on us," he said firmly. "Focus on right here, right now. Don't let it pull you under."
But 'here' and 'now' were becoming increasingly difficult concepts to grasp. Time moved strangely when the shadows were ascendant—minutes stretching into hours, hours compressing into heartbeats. The crystal's call grew stronger with each passing moment, its alien hunger matching the void that was slowly consuming my soul.
We made camp that first night in what had once been a prosperous farming village. The buildings still stood, but the people were gone—fled or taken, impossible to tell which. Mira's letter of introduction sat useless in Antonius's pack; there was no one left to show it to.
