Chapter 224
Vaelrix Drakenholt POV
“Sound the fucking horns,” I growled, stomping into the sky chamber, the glass shaking in its frame. “Send the call. Every fire breather, every winged bastard hiding in the mountain halls, now.”
Messengers scattered like terrified birds. I didn’t stop moving. I couldn’t. If I did, I’d feel it again, the weight of her absence. The burning imprint of the mate bond cut short like a blade to the chest.
Elowen. My goddess. My queen. And I hadn’t been able to stop them.
“We will tear the stars from the sky for her,” Rhygar growled in my head, his voice a molten rumble. My inner dragon stirred, pacing inside my mind, claws dragging against the edges of my sanity.
“I’m not waiting for permission,” I snapped under my breath. “We go to war.”
“Good. Let them burn.”
I stalked down the corridor toward the West Wing, where the younglings were housed, the dragonborn, the fae marked, and the shifter blooded innocents she’d sworn to protect. She would’ve come here first. She always did.
The doors flew open under my boot. The room went silent. Dozens of young faces stared up at me, eyes wide but unafraid.
“Elowen’s alive,” I told them, my voice cracking like a storm across stone. “She’s hurting, but she’s fighting. We all are. And we’re going to bring her home.”
No one spoke. One little girl stepped forward, a fox shifter with wide eyes and a trembling lower lip.
“She said I was brave,” she whispered.
I knelt and pulled her into my arms. “You still are.”
When I left, I barely made it two halls before the storm inside me finally snapped its leash. I hit my chambers and destroyed everything. My claws tore through marble. Fire licked up the drapes and blackened the tapestries. My bed was shredded, my armor shattered against the wall.
I roared until my voice broke. Until I dropped to my knees in the ash and ruin, gasping like a dying animal.
“She needs you strong, not broken,” Rhygar rumbled. “Do you think she’d weep if it were you in chains?”
“She’d tear the fucking world apart,” I choked out, my eyes burning.
Chapter 224
“Then rise. Be her fury. Be the wrath you were born to wield. You are the sky’s vengeance, Vaelrix. And she is waiting for the storm.”
I closed my eyes and felt him rise within me, ancient, deadly, ours. I was not alone. Not now. Not ever again.
“Get ready,” I whispered to the realm itself. “Because the fucking dragons are coming.”
Lucien Virell POV
The walls whispered to me again. No, not walls. Her. The Blood Goddess.
She curled like smoke in the corners of my mind, purring with delight as I stepped into the cell where the Chosen hung in chains. She
was limp now, with blood dripping from her split lip, her skin a tapestry of bruises and defiance.
But her fucking eyes still glowed. Still fought. And that… that was unacceptable.
“Break her,” she hissed in my skull, her voice dripping honey and rot. “Rip out her pride, Lucien. Leave her no flame. She is mine to
mold.”
I chuckled, brushing a strand of her silver streaked hair back from her bloodied face. “You’re awfully mouthy for a martyr, mutt.”
She spat at me. Good. Rage was easier to mutilate. Vaela strutted in behind me, sheers gleaming in her fist, her eyes burning with
jealousy and spite.
“She thinks she’s beautiful,” she cooed with mock sweetness. “Let’s fix that.”
I stepped aside and watched as Vaela grabbed a fistful of Elowen’s absurdly long hair, silver, blue, green, all shimmering with power, and
hacked through it like she was butchering a beast.
Chunks of it hit the floor. Uneven. Jagged. Ugly. Elowen didn’t scream. Didn’t cry. She just stared at Vaela like she was already dead.
“Burn it,” the Goddess whispered. “Burn her vanity. Break her reflection.”
Vaela laughed as she let the final clump fall, then smeared blood across Elowen’s cheek with a slow, loving stroke. “Look at you now.
Little goddess in rags.”
I motioned to the guards. “Strap her down.” Chains rattled. Iron groaned. We slammed her to the table and locked her wrists and ankles in place. Her breathing hitched as I pulled out the obsidian needles and the vials lined with infernal runes.
“Let’s see what divinity tastes like,” I said smoothly, driving the needle into her vein.
Her blood shimmered. It glowed faintly with magic. She hissed in pain, but didn’t beg. Not once.
Chapter 224
“Take it all,” Vaela urged, running a blade down Elowen’s leg just deep enough to bleed. “Goddess blood makes excellent weapons, right? Isn’t that what your ‘friends’ are so desperate to stop?”
