Page 50 of Beast of Blood and Ash
Kinsley’s scream rose again, a thin, terrified thread. One of the Drakarn seized her by the arm, wrenching her bodily over the barricade as she kicked and thrashed. Eden tried to help. She lunged, only to be disarmed and thrown to the ground, a massive foot pinning her.
Kira appeared at my elbow, wide-eyed, clutching a broken chair leg. When had she shown up?
“Do something!” she panted, but the words barely registered. The world was sound and motion, a mess of blows and snarls.
Vega fought with desperation, a wild animal hissing, driving her blade into the side of the Drakarn’s thigh. He howled but didn’t fall. Blood streaked the wall as he yanked her aside and flung her into the far wall. She slumped, dazed but alive.
I locked eyes with her across the chaos, my voice catching against the words I couldn’t shout. My mouth formed the words: get help.
She hesitated, the need to fight burning in her eyes, but she nodded. She faded into shadow, sliding away as silent as breath.
I had seconds left.
Draskeer surged forward, batting my staff aside like a twig, his strength overwhelming. His claws wrapped around my arm, the grip a brand of iron I remembered all too well.
“You’ve learned some new tricks,” he sneered, his breath hot and foul against my face. “It won’t be enough.”
He dragged me backward, my heels scraping uselessly against the stone.
A last glance over my shoulder—Eden cowered on the floor and met my gaze, eyes wide and wild, a storm of terror and grief. She was shaking with a hopelessness I knew intimately.
I wouldn’t let her break. I wouldn’t let myself break.
Stone bit at my back as Draskeer hauled me into a dark service tunnel. The world shrank to the scrape of claws, the copper stench of defeat, Eden’s silent scream echoing behind me. But inside, something fierce held on—a refusal, a ragged promise.
Not this time. Never again.
21
OMVAR
The city was a screaming wound,and I was the blade defending it.
Drums hammered the air, sounding off slick, black stone. The rhythm was relentless, a battlefield heartbeat, a fever running beneath my scales. My own pulse fought to break free, kicked and battered at my ribs, so loud I could barely hear the world.
Down there, beneath all those tons of volcanic rock, shadows and sickly yellow light flickered and brawled against the walls, making the tunnels churn and shift in the corners of my eye.
Scalvaris was chaos.
Stone corridors flashed past, the world reduced to blurred motion, Nyx a silent streak of storm-dark scales on my right, Khorlar on my left, his jaw clenched, eyes narrowed into slits. The stench of air was thick: Ignarath filth, scorched metal, the sharp tang of spilled Drakarn blood.
How many? Where? How?
The questions spun, merciless as windblown grit. My mind latched onto them, a predator refusing to let go. This city was supposed to be guarded, its veins patrolled by blades, itsentrances a promise that violence couldn’t slip inside. So how had they gotten in? Who opened the wound?
Rage was a cleansing fire. It blazed through my veins, devouring caution, scouring away the endless calculations and regrets simmering in the back of my mind. I let it burn down the politics, the careful dance around status and suspicion, the ancient weight of blood debts and shame. There was only the hunt.
We moved as one, locked in step by shared purpose and the pure, ugly music of fury. We were a beast with three heads, tearing through the city’s heart. Our claws dug channels in the stone, tails lashing, each stride fueled by memory and dread.
“We found two dead guards by the eastern sky shafts,” Khorlar roared over the din. “That will take them near the human quarters.”
I didn’t need him to tell me. The scent was thick on the air, an acrid trail of blood, terror, and weaker prey. Human sweat was different—sweet, alien, coppery, rising above the tangle of Drakarn fear and the greasy stench of Ignarath. The path burned in my nose; I could almost see it, a red thread winding through the labyrinth.
We sprinted, every footstep a promise I could not afford to break.
The tunnel bent, and the world exploded into violence.
The human quarters were chaos incarnate. The stone floor was slick, a crust of half-dried blood, footprints glimmering beneath scattered globs of heat crystal wax. Two Drakarn guards lay crumpled near the threshold, their scales shredded, throats vented to the bone.
