Page 149 of Enchanted Crown
I considered her words a moment. John, ever the sage, would likely see logic in her words. Yet I knew some things were best left unlearned. An evil this ensnaring was better off where it belonged. In ashes.
“Even if someone else learned how to recreate how he made it,” I began. “I know how to undo it. And the undoing of it is what matters now.”
She beamed at me. “I knew you’d make the right choice.”
“Because you saw it?”
She cocked her head. “That and because you are the brother kings.”
I wasn’t sure I was ever going to get used to that phrase. And I knew by this point that telling her I wasn’t truly a king was futile.
“May I ask you about Agria?” I asked a moment later while Zaire and the hostages spoke about Esta’s lair and how I wrapped them all in my power to protect them from the flames. Relia and I now had to speak at a normal volume around the noise of the crowd.
We were planning to finish healing up Dra Skor by the royalwedding. Then Emric and half of his men would go home to Wylan while I would train and lead the team which would stay in Dra Skor and work on going back and forth to heal the Agrian Enchanted.
“Tomorrow,” Relia told me. “Tonight, we party.”
As the crowd grew louder and louder as the story ended, I took the cart from the guard and rolled it between the crowd to the front where Esta was wrapping things up.
“No darkness will ever defeat us. Even limited to one form, the reaches of our strength were too great for the evil within. But let us learn from this. The real enemy is not from across the seas, it is not a country or a single nemesis we need to keep an eye on.” She paused. “It is within us. Each of us. We need to keep an eye onourselves. May we all have the courage to battle the darkness within. May we all have the courage to never give up. Until not even a semblance of that darkness remains.”
The crowd went loud, roars and whinnies and human voices alike.
“Now. Prince Keiran has a gift for us. And you all know how the dragons like our gifts.”
I heard the laughter from every direction around the fire.
I placed my hands in my pockets, my wings out behind me. All of Dra Skor knew Esta and I were soul bound. And though I was certain I still had some who doubted me, I was hoping what I was about to do would significantly help matters. “My gift is not one that can be held anywhere but here.” I pounded my chest over my heart twice intentionally, the Dra Skor sign for respect. “In these barrels lie what remains of my father’s poison, which was intercepted as he attempted to poison the people of Corsha. Though none of us will ever forget the events of the past decade, I believe we need to do what should have always been done with this poison.” I swallowed down my emotions. “Watch it burn.”
I had to pause for the crowd’s reaction. “When we firstsuspected in Wylan that my father was responsible for this atrocity’s creation, we tried to figure out how it came to be, the formula by which it was made. Due to my father disposing of the scientists involved in its creation as a way to keep Wylan from suspicion, we were never able to find anything. We do not knowhowthis was made. What we do know is how to undo it, and how todestroy it.”
I again had to pause for the crowd.
“So let’s do exactly that. He created it. We will end it. This evil has no place in this country, or the entire realm for that matter. It should have been lit on my father’s pyre, but I think this fire is plenty big enough, don’t you?”
While the crowd cheered their approval, Esta asked me,How do you want to go about this?
I’ll drop it, you and Jagen help burn it.
She immediately leaned over to her brother to inform him of the plan.
I moved to lift a barrel. Emric handed the second to me as it was damn heavy, and I shot into the sky, barrels in tow.
Your wings,Esta told me.
Will be fine,I repeated. The healers had told me as much this morning.
I flew high, Jagen and Esta shifting and taking to the sky with me. The crowd beneath us circled around the bonfire was still cheering.
I let out my magic to carry my voice to all of them. “You may want to back up a bit. I have no idea how explosive this will be.”
Yielding to caution, they all began scooting back.
I looked to the Corsha queen at the last moment. She’d seen all of this, so surely it would be fine. It wasn’t like I was holding two heavy as hell barrels of poison with no knowledge of their chemical makeup or anything.
She seemed to give me a nod, so I took that as good enough.
When I used my magic to pull the lid off one of the heavybarrels, all I could see within the barrel was an oozing, thick, black mass. I released my magic to wrap around it, willing it to stay in place, preventing it from going airborne or splashing anyone, particularly my wife who was flying in place beneath me. I made sure to will it to stay together. While the barrier I’d made in Esta’s lair had been made to keep everything out, this one was more about containment. I took care to be sure the fire would be able to blast right through my barrier.
