Page 68 of Kiss of Death
I finally got to my feet, tears soaking my face, and climbed into the saddle at his back.
He gently grabbed Lily with one of his big claws, and we left the island and jumped into the sky. Flew high over the ocean but beneath the cloud bank. It was the first time I’d been on the back of a dragon, and I felt the wind against my face at this speed, felt the beat of my heart in my chest as a mortal.
But there was nothing to savor about it.
I didn’t have to wipe away my own tears, not when the wind in my face did it for me. It was the first time I’d been alive in four hundred years, but I was so devastated that I felt more dead thanI ever had. Sometimes I would hear Zehemoth give out a strange choke or a cough, as if he was still crying on and off.
Why did she do this?
How could she do this to me?
I knew what horrors awaited her down there. I knew what they would do to her. I knew they would harvest her soul because of the potency in its power. And I was supposed to live a mortal life without her?
I’d rather be dead without her.
What was the point of this?
Her sacrifice wasn’t romantic. I would much rather suffer endlessly than let her shed a single tear. I would much rather she find someone else and settle down with a couple of kids while I faded into nothingness.
This is the very last thing I would ever want.
We traveled all day and eventually approached the Southern Isles at dusk. If an entire day passed for me, then several had passed for her. I was tortured by the possibilities. The fact that she needed help and I couldn’t do a damn thing. I protected her as a mortal, gifted her my strength, but now I was a helpless human who could do nothing for her.
Zehemoth approached the cliffs and came in for a landing.
The guards along the courtyard must have noticed Lily hanging dead in his claw because a loud horn sounded, long and low in its baritone, projecting a warning through the entire kingdom.
I gripped the horn as the despair hit me.
The queen was dead.
Zehemoth landed in the courtyard gently, careful not to use the claw that held Lily. He gently placed her down on the stone where she lay still.
I jumped down and landed harder than I meant to, not used to the heft of my body as a man, not used to the effects of gravity against stone. “Lily…” I moved to her, wrapped her in my arms, and held her as I grieved all over again, refusing to believe this was real.
The first person to appear was her brother Hawk, dressed in his general’s uniform and armor like he’d just returned from the soldiers’ barracks. The torches at the castle were already lit to greet the darkness, and he stopped twenty feet away, eyes wide in horror at the sight before him.
He was shocked, just as shocked as I’d been.
“Lily.” When his brain processed what his eyes desperately tried to share, he ran over and skidded to his knees at her side. “What the hell happened?” Both of his hands went to her neck to check for a pulse, and when he found none, his eyes watered in despair. He didn’t look at me, but up at Zehemoth, like the two of them were having a conversation.
It took all my strength to let her go, but I knew her brother had the right to hold her.
He held her in his arms as he looked down at her, his tears splashing on her face. He gave a loud sniff, looked at Zehemoth, and then looked at me.
His eyes recognized me immediately, contracting as they swept across my face. I wasn’t in my uniform and armor the way he’dseen me in the past, instead in the attire I’d worn when I’d made the deal with Bahamut centuries ago, but he still knew it was me.
“I don’t know why she did this.” It was all I could say. “I didn’t want this.”
He looked down at her again before he gently laid her back down on the stone, her eyes closed and peaceful, like she could be asleep. “She asked our father to get you back from the underworld. He said no. She went to Riviana, who declined to help. She ran out of options, so?—”
“She knew I didn’t want this.” My chest cracked when another wave of tears filled my eyes.
He continued. “But she knew if it were her down there…Dad would never stop until he got her back.”
My eyes turned to the dragon, knowing he was the one who knew about the plan because he’d taken her there and returned her body.
“She said it was the only way you two could be together.”
