Page 66 of The Sacrifice

Thrashing my way through the carnage of rot and ruin, of this dragon cadaver, until the last molecules of air surge from my lungs, I follow that heat, stretch out my fingers, and close my palms around one solid object. It doesn’t burn my fingers. Just the opposite, it’s cold as death and shadows and a loveless heart. But it’s mine.

I break bones, tear flesh and skin, and muscles with my teeth. Roaring and screaming my last breath like a trumpeting anthem, I force my body to rise, to push through the bloody swamp. Clutching the object, this dragon egg, to my chest hard enough to wreck my ribs, I shatter through that veil that separates the world of core and light from the one of womb and death.

I take my deepest of breaths. As what little remains of my strength retreats from my body, I crawl out of the water, stumble on trembling legs, and lurch for Drago. I slip on the pool of simmering blood that wells below his body. Chest slit and peeled away to show that vital vessel barely beating beyond that feeble rib cage protecting it.

He’s not breathing.

And with the Hag screeching from my sudden arrival and raising those claws for their final time to claim that vessel, I claim him instead!

I don’t care how many bones I break when I slam that egg down on his open chest. The Hag breaks bones in her struggle to claw at his heart. My heart. My soul. My dragon. My god. My monster. My king.

“Mine,” I whisper as loud as a cannonade to drown out the Hag’s scream. “My Dragomir. My Thayne. My Thiago: the God of Fire!”

It cracks. My heart surges from the slit of firelight splintering through.

The Hag pauses. Hisses. Lashes out, “You are nothing! A gray nothing whore!” She claws at the heart, bleeding it, screeching her thrill. I strike harder, careless of how my nails splinter and the knuckle bones break in my hand. The Hag claws my hair, at my back, tearing my wet shift, but I embrace her assault, this pain, and whatever new scars she gives me. Whatever happens, I do not stop breaking the egg housing Drago’s soul. It shivers beneath my palm.

This will not be my suicide.

I feel the vym leaving my body, my real vym. Not gray, not gray at all. The scars on my skin awaken. I scream through the pain. All the scars upon my skin pulse and scintillate, transforming from darkness to the light of a blistering dawn.

Core and light. Womb and death. Fire and earth and blood and air. Breath and bones. Breath!

More blood spills down my back. More thin fissures form like veins in the egg. It trembles again. As the Hag claws through me, determined that if she cannot have Drago’s heart, no one will, I look up at my God of Fire, smile, and bring that goddamn, fucking egg down.

It shatters!

Fire explodes. Flames detonate. An inferno erupts. The volcanic force is enough to vault me into the air until the hard ground slams against me. It breaks me, but it doesn’t matter. The Hag’s ear-bleeding screams do nothing to disguise the small, soft, still sound that deafens the air.

Thiago takes a breath!

I lose all of mine. And fall.

49

She is everything.

DRAGO

I wonder if this is what it felt like when her soul untethered from her body.

The souls within the Veil consume me, devour me. They crush in on me, smother me, denying me any peace, denying me any union with Thayne. Nor can I blame them. Not when my brothers and I are the reason for Kronos reaping their souls before their time and condemning them to this eternal purgatory. The least I may do is join them and allow them their vengeance. Still, I have no regrets because the Hag’s torture would be far worse.

I smile to myself, remembering the sight of her plunging into the swamp. How she had no reservations about diving headfirst into the dragon carcass. If only I’d seen what she looked like upon surfacing. Even covered in blood, flesh, intestines, mud, algae, and bits of bones, my little Tessie would still be the most beautiful Queen. Half-soul, fuck, my soul rages at the notion, and I close my eyes, surrendering myself to the darkness engulfing my vision as the other spirits press in, strangling my consciousness.

Quintessa is worth ten thousand souls. Ten thousand souls for ten thousand years. I’d repeat that time, ten thousand years of a cursed existence, if I could hold her one last time.

When a slit of light pierces the gloom of souls eclipsing me, I don’t open my eyes. I don’t dare to hope. Instead, I wait in this moment as we taught her, waiting as a ghost would for her first touch. At first, it’s no more than a brush of fingers, kindling a spark. Her familiar hand closes around mine, gripping tight to my wrist and rousing embers. A smirk finds my mouth as she proves her strength, igniting an inferno as her soul breaks through the tide of dead ones. They part before her, understanding this is her claim.

Her vym awakens and forms hooks and tethers, and my smirk grows to a grin when I recognize how she’s modeled those hooks after my cock. Clever, wondrous, fucking adorable little pet. If I live through this, I’ll punish her later for that small act of defiance, of daring to believe she could mirror my penetration. But not too much.

At that moment, something familiar ruptures my eardrums, and I recognize the familiar beat thundering through my being. The more she pulls on my soul, the more she ignites an inferno, a fiery whirlwind to engulf me. A kaleidoscope of flaming shards devours my being to restore my flesh, my blood, my bones. Not my breath…not yet.

Suspended in a moment of eternity, I rise to face her. Cradle one side of her face. No gray girl. Her hair has transformed to pure silver flames. Her eyes are the gaze of ice and incandescence. Her skin shines like frost and moonlight. And her tears would make a saint beg for forgiveness. She is ethereal as a thousand dreams and prayers spoken in the dead of night.

Just as I lean in to kiss her, to share the purgatory of our spirits, my soul begins to fade even as hers grows clearer, and I understand why.

“No!” I growl, roaring my fire. Fuck, I was wrong. This is the worst torture. She’s bringing me back. With all the strength of her soul, she’s broken the prison of my soul, but goddammit, she is losing hers to the Veil. Violent tremors ravage my being even as I struggle to hold onto her. Through those tears, she smiles.

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