Page 55 of Kingdom of Darkness and Dragons
“Marcus.”
His face was a canvas of dawning horror. The shock of the revelation gave way to a cold, brutal understanding that settled in his eyes like a death sentence. In that single, terrible moment, I saw him connect every dot: my inexplicable promotion, my tortured conflict, my presence at the head of this army. He wasn't seeing a prince; he was seeing the son of the monster who had enslaved his family, the heir to the very system that hadcondemned them all. The trust I had so carefully, so foolishly, tried to earn from him curdled into pure, undiluted hatred.
He took a half-step forward, his hand tightening on the hilt of a fallen legionary’s sword. The shadows, which had spared him until now, seemed to recoil from the sheer force of his hatred. In his eyes, I was no longer a rival or a conflicted commander. I was the embodiment of the system that had enslaved him, tortured him, and was now trying to kill the woman he loved.
There were no words that could bridge the chasm that had just opened between us. My title, my blood, it was a brand that marked me as his enemy.
"It's not what you think," I said desperately. "I'm not here as some kind of spy or political agent. I'm here because—" I stopped, unable to find words that would make him understand without revealing more than I dared. "Marcus, please. Livia fell. Valeria attacked Sirrax, damaged his wing. They went down somewhere in this mess, and I can't find them. I need your help."
Marcus’s face remained a mask of stone, but his knuckles were white where he gripped the sword. The plea died on my lips, useless against the wall of hatred in his eyes. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to. His silence was a judgment, colder and sharper than any blade.
He turned his back on me, a dismissal more profound than any blow, and raised his voice in a roar that cut through the battle. "ANTONIUS!"
Antonius appeared at Marcus's side, a giant wreathed in the firelight of the battle. His gaze fell on me, then shifted to Marcus’s rigid back, and the same cold comprehension dawned on his face. He didn't need an explanation. He saw the ring still clutched in my hand, saw the authority I now wore like a death shroud, and drew his own conclusions. Together, they turned, a solid wall of condemnation, and moved into the fray, theirpurpose singular and clear: find Livia. They would do it without me. They would do it in spite of me.
The rejection was a physical blow, stealing the air from my lungs. I had revealed my deepest secret to save an army, and in doing so, had damned myself in the eyes of the only people whose judgment mattered. I was alone.
"Up!" I commanded Imperia, and we surged back into the churning, smoke-filled sky. Below, the retreat had begun to take shape, a chaotic but directed flow of men and dragons moving toward the valley mouth. Cassius, for all his bluster, was a competent soldier. He was saving what he could of his army.
I had their obedience. I had command. And it was all worthless.
We rose above the slaughter, a single point of focused will in a sea of terror. I scanned the churning hellscape, my eyes straining through the smoke. Every shadow looked like her fallen form, every distant scream sounded like her voice. I was the son of the Emperor, a prince with the power to command armies, and I had never felt so utterly powerless.
We flew in frantic, swooping passes, my eyes scanning the carnage until they burned from the smoke and strain. I saw the glint of downed Imperial dragons, the darker shapes of fallen Talfen mounts, but not the one I sought.
Then, through a sudden tear in the smoke, I saw it. A patch of ground lit by an errant blast of dragon fire, and on it, a sprawling shape of ebony scales, half-concealed by a rocky outcrop. Sirrax.
We landed with a ground-shaking thud that sent Talfen and Imperial soldiers alike scrambling for distance. I was off Imperia’s back before she’d fully settled, sword in hand, my royal authority forgotten, replaced by the primal terror of a man about to lose his world.
The dragon’s magnificent obsidian form lay in a broken heap. His great wing was twisted at an impossible angle, and a deepgash ran the length of his flank, oozing dark blood onto the trampled earth. His golden eyes, clouded with pain, found mine. Within moments, Marcus and Antonius were at my side. They must have been watching me from below and saw me land.
"He's alive," Antonius said, kneeling beside the great black head and checking for breathing. His voice was tight with barely controlled panic. "Hurt bad, though. Wing's definitely broken, maybe some ribs too. But he's breathing steady."
"Where is she?" I demanded, my voice cracking as I searched frantically around the crash site. "She has to be here somewhere. They fell together!" I kicked at debris, lifted broken pieces of armour, my movements becoming increasingly frantic. "LIVIA!"
My voice was a raw, useless thing against the symphony of slaughter. Marcus shoved past me, his shoulder hitting mine with deliberate force, his eyes scanning the ground with a hunter's intensity. Antonius was already moving in the opposite direction, his massive frame a shield against the stray arrows that hissed through the air.
"She's not here," I said, the words feeling like glass in my throat. My hands were shaking as I knelt beside Sirrax's head next to Antonius. "Gods, she's not here. What if she's..." I couldn't finish the thought.
Sirrax's great eye opened slowly, focusing on me with obvious pain and confusion—and something that looked like grief.
“We need to help Sirrax,” said Antonius. “She’d never forgive us if we just left him here to die.”
"How are we supposed to move something that size?" Marcus asked, but his usual pragmatic tone was strained with desperation. He kept looking around as if Livia might materialize from the smoke. "He's got to weigh more than a dozen horses, and we need to find her. We need to—"
“He can shift,” I said. I laid my hand on his great neck and leaned in closer so he could hear me over the din. "Sirrax, please.I know what you are. I know your secret, and you're safe with us, but we need you to shift. We can't carry you as you are, but if you take your other form, we can get you out of here and you can tell us what happened. Please. She could be dying out there."
Marcus grabbed my shoulder. "Jalend, what in Inferi are you doing?”
“Just wait, give him a minute,” I said, desperately. “Come on Sirrax.”
For a moment, nothing happened. Then the massive dragon form began to contract and change, scales flowing like liquid into dark skin, wings folding into his back, the great head reshaping itself into something recognizably human.
When the transformation was complete, a naked Talfen man lay where the dragon had been—tall and lean, with long white hair as his dragon form and skin marked with intricate tattoos that seemed to shift and move in the firelight. He was still badly injured, but he was undeniably, impossibly human.
Marcus and Antonius stared in complete shock, their faces cycling through disbelief, wonder, and finally a kind of horrified understanding as they processed the implications of what they were seeing.
"Well," Marcus said after a long moment, his voice hollow, "that's not something you see every day."
