The Blood King

by Abigail Owen

  On a long breath, she opened her eyes to find Airk watching her. She shook her head. His jaw clenched, but he said nothing, intent on the next steps.

  “When we stop, either we get lucky or we do not,” he said. “I have picked a floor that I understand to be uninhabited.”

  “So, let’s hope we get lucky.” She flicked a glance upward but found no lighted indicator. “How long does it take to get down there?”

  “We are stopping at 18,000 feet, roughly 11,000 feet below our dungeons.”

  “Any idea how fast this thing moves?”

  Airk grinned at that. “Pytheios ensures every technology in this place is state-of-the-art. This one is high-speed and travels approximately seventy-two kilometers per hour.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  He shrugged. “I have my sources.”

  In other words, Nathair.

  Skylar did a quick translation of speed and distance and time. “Three minutes?”

  He nodded.

  “Handy,” she mumbled.

  “I am in agreement.”

  “We really need to work on your contractions, buddy.”

  He didn’t pull his gaze from the door, but his eyebrows did go up.

  “Instead of I am, it’s ‘I’m’. Or you could just say ‘yeah’.”

  “Yeah?” He tested out the word and gave a funny frown.

  “It’s a casual form of yes.”

  “I understand.”

  Oh, my gods, I’m giving grammar lessons to a dragon shifter in a high-speed elevator in Mt. Everest while trying to escape.

  Anything to take her focus off the nerves fluttering through her. She could do this. Handle this. She’d prepared all her life for this.

  Gravity pushed down on her body as the elevator car slowed, though it still took several more seconds before it came to a stop. She and Airk both tensed, half crouching into defensive positions as the doors whooshed silently open. Immediately the air here felt thicker, though still dry and cold and pretty damn thin, regardless of the pressurization they did. Or whatever.

  When no one jumped them, Airk slowly stuck his head out, then waved her to follow. The mountain down here was like a gilded imitation of Ladon’s mountain home, the decor decidedly…fancy. Not in a good way, either, more in an obnoxious way. The hollowed-out stone corridors, human-sized in this part, had the same thick doors, but newer, nicer, with access panels at each door. No hopping into a room to hide should someone else happen across them.

  Could no one get to the dungeon tower in dragon form?

  Made sense once she thought about it. No one in that way, and no one out that way. Dungeons were meant to be difficult to access.

  Airk paused, waving her back, and both of them flattened against the walls as he listened for whatever he’d heard. As her mother had taught her to do, Skylar controlled her breathing, her heart rate, focusing her mind on images that calmed her, because dragons could hear fear.

  Airk started forward. She reached out to put a hand on his back, to remain close. Except Airk rounded on her, his face a fearsome mask, lips pulled back over bared teeth, though he remained silent. Had not releasing his dragon all this time made him this way? Or lack of physical interaction?

  Airk blinked and stepped back, still in total silence. “I am not accustomed to being touched,” he whispered.

  She could see the true contrition in those pale blue eyes. “I understand.”

  He gave a jerky nod and they resumed their halting progress down the tunnel, Skylar careful not to touch him again. With Airk focused ahead of them, she made sure to watch their backsides.

  The exact moment her powers returned to her she knew it.

  The process wasn’t gradual, not a little at a time. Instead, everything came back more like a rubber band stretched far away then released, snapping into place.

  Airk must’ve heard her small gasp, because he turned, a question in his eyes. In answer she called up a small amount of the fire from within her, manifesting it at the tip of one finger with a grin.

  “Do not,” Airk warned. “Not yet.”

  She’d explained how her power worked, and the man was damn smart. No surprise he guessed that she’d been about to happily apply it to him, sending him to Ben Nevis, and hopefully to Ladon.

  “Why?” she whispered.

  “I am not leaving you. Let us attempt to get out of here together first.”

  Made sense. She nodded, and they continued on.

  …

  Ladon jerked to a stop in the middle of the training floor. He’d told his men he’d give Skylar till morning to get her ass here. She hadn’t. He was going to find her now.

  Asher stumbled behind him at the abrupt halt. “My king?”

  Ladon waved him off.

  Skylar.

  He could feel her. Almost as though a switch had been flipped inside him, connecting the circuits and allowing the current to flow unimpeded.

  If he could feel her, could she feel him? Hear him? “Skylar.”

  No response. He focused, the same way he did when in dragon form and communicating with his people.

  “Skylar.”

  Still nothing.

  He kept his eyes closed and concentrated. When he focused, he could feel the members of his clan. Not individuals per se, but their attachment to him through the mark each carried on their hands. He turned that awareness on his mate, picturing a string connecting her to him, much like the game of telephone human children used to play. Distance, or the fact that their mating was so new, and other obstacles, might be causing a hiccup in the sound, but the connection was there, nonetheless.

  After a few deep breaths, sensation flowed through him. Emotions. Not his, but Skylar’s. She was…trapped, terrified, and…

  “Hopeful,” he murmured, frowning.

  Why hopeful?

  Holding on to that sensation flowing through him, Ladon tried to send her something back. He sifted through his own roiling emotions, an act totally against his nature. He’d never spent much time or care with emotions, finding them to be more hindrance than help.

  But if this was the only way to get through to his mate, he would. The only emotions she needed from him right now were ones that could keep her safe.

  Ladon called upon memories. The day he’d taken the throne—resolute, determined. The way he’d dealt with his position every day since—still resolute, still determined, but also focused on the endgame. The day he’d first laid eyes on his mate—complete.

  Only he’d been so focused on her as a phoenix that day, he hadn’t realized it until later. Come back to me.

  If he could find her, get her out of there, he would leave his throne in an instant to do so. He’d give it all to Asher. He wasn’t whole without her.

  …

  Ladon.

  Skylar paused in the process of placing her feet quietly, slowly as they moved through the mountain step by step.

  She had no damn clue where she was oriented in relation to the mountain and getting outside now. It seemed to her Airk was moving them farther to the interior, but knowing for sure was impossible. The same lighting that mimicked sunlight inside Ben Nevis worked here. All she knew was that dawn had broken over the mountains, as the lighting grew brighter with each passing second.

  Airk turned when she still didn’t move. “What?” he mouthed.

  How could she explain to him in a few words that she could feel her mate. She couldn’t hear him, couldn’t reach him tangibly, but Ladon was with her regardless. His steady presence, that ruthless determination, and something else. A quality she couldn’t put her finger on.

  “Ladon.” She deliberately thought his name this time, sending it to him down the connection binding them together regardless of distance.

  He didn’t answer. She couldn’t
even tell if he’d heard.

  However, that connection, the person he was, served only to bolster her determination to get her ass out of here. She could do this.

  Skylar went to wave Airk to continue but froze midwave when the unmistakable howl of a creature in pain split the air.

  “What was that?” she whispered. It had sounded like a dog.

  Airk didn’t answer, instead moving forward faster, not bothering to see if she followed. She did. Another howl reached them just as Airk paused at a door.

  He took out another slip of paper.

  Realization trickled through her as though ice water had been injected into her veins. No fucking way. He wouldn’t have this code unless he’d planned to come here well in advance.

  Airk wasn’t getting them out of the mountain… He was here for a purpose.

  He glanced over at her as he got to the last part of the code. He couldn’t speak, because whatever, or whoever, was on the other side of that door would hear, but he seemed to be trying to communicate something with his eyes.

  Skylar tipped her head. “Don’t do it,” she mouthed.

  “I must.”

  He pushed the last button, and the panel glowed green, the bolt sliding to with a soft snick. In a burst of might, Airk slammed into the room, throwing the door back into the stone wall so hard it stuck there.

  Both of them ran inside, and Skylar knew immediately they were up shit creek.

  She took in the scene with a lightning quick glance. The incongruent scents of cinnamon and rotting filled the room as Pytheios lay prone on a rock slab, his white witch standing over him. Rhiamon’s eyes were black, like a void had consumed the sockets and sent tendrils of poison through to the pale skin below, while silver irises like moons floated in the darkness.

  A creature was chained to the wall, howling its pain. Whatever Rhiamon was doing—visible, see-through lines of black extended from the creature to the king, as if Rhiamon was magically pulling the soul out of the thing and forcing it into her master.

  She also knew they couldn’t run.

  “They’re weakened when they do this,” Airk snarled before he sprinted at them.

  So enmeshed in the spell were the two, or perhaps so dazed by the power if it, both responded slowly at the interruption. Rhiamon turned to look over her shoulder at the intruders, giving Skylar an unimpeded view of the pathetic thing they had chained to the wall.

  No! The word screamed in her mind, and her heart shattered as her gaze landed on the creature they tortured. “Maul!”

  Airk sprinted at the king, but Skylar knew, after how they’d knocked her out in the ravine in Norway, that if they were going to make it through this, she needed to take out the witch.

  She’d better damn well be weakened.

  “Do not harm him,” Pytheios rasped. An order to his witch? Skylar blinked. Right. The prophecy.

  Skylar reached Rhiamon just as the woman turned to face Airk, hands raised to protect her king. She opened her mouth, probably to utter another spell, but Skylar had been faster, acting on decades of training.

  Using the martial arts skills her mother had insisted all her daughters master, she vaulted over her, grasping the woman’s head in her hands and twisting as she cartwheeled her legs in the air. The snap of Rhiamon’s neck caused her nothing but satisfaction. So did watching the woman’s body drop to the floor in a contorted heap of limbs, her eyes still open, staring, unseeing.

  “No one was holding me down this time, bitch,” Skylar spat at her.

  The roar that pierced the air wasn’t one of heartbreak, but rage. She whipped her head around to connect with glowing red, flames consuming the sockets of Pytheios’s eyes, even as his entire body went up in crimson flames.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Run.

  Except Pytheios moved oddly. Like a decrepit old man who had to concentrate to take each step. Skylar didn’t give herself time to think. Airk already lay beside him. Skylar lunged at Airk’s form on the ground even as she called for the fire inside her. She hoped to hell this worked. Thinking of the only place she could send him, she shoved Airk’s limp body.

  The white dragon shifter disappeared in an instant.

  She didn’t have time to appreciate that or worry. Getting to him brought her too close to Pytheios.

  He backhanded her so hard the hit echoed in her head and pain exploded in her cheekbone. Ugh. If he’d done that while at full strength, he would’ve snapped her neck or broken her face.

  He lunged for her, and she tried to move, get out of his path, but he managed to clamp a hand over her wrist, his grip shaky. Weak.

  Skylar bit down a scream as his fire burned her skin. He was trying to kill her now, no doubt in her mind.

  Panic filled her body, a sound like white noise a cacophony in her ears. But the fighter in her raged against the end. Raw heat built inside her, an inferno of fire stoking hotter, her skin starting to glow, the feather marks taking on a white-hot shine.

  On the edge of out-of-control, Skylar used his grip as leverage, jumping up to get her legs between them, then let the inferno escape, blasting out of her in an explosion of rage and terror. The force slammed them apart, but she managed to send her power into the hit.

  The blast sent her flying backward to slam against the stone wall before crumpling to the ground. At the same instant, Pytheios disappeared. She smacked the back of her head with enough force to make her vision go black for a long beat. Heart throbbing, arm in agony, and head pounding, she still managed to scramble up off the floor.

  Holy shit. What was that?

  She’d never come apart at the seams that way.

  Then logic intruded, and she called herself all kinds of stupid. She should’ve sent him to Ladon. Let her mate kill that fucker and end this.

  You still have to get out of this mountain.

  With a gasp she ran to Maul, who stood on all fours, though he trembled with the effort, still attached to the wall by the dragonsteel collar around his neck. Head hanging, he watched her with eyes dimmed by exhaustion and pain and whatever they’d been doing to him, his gaze begging her for help.

  An image flashed in her head: her getting out of here without him.

  “No way. I need you as much as you need me.”

  Lighting her fire, which had doused the second she hit the ground, she gently touched the hound. In a blink he left and returned outside the chains. He managed to keep his feet, thank the gods. Because if he hadn’t, she had no hope of moving a mountain of fur and bones.

  A quick visual assessment turned up nothing that she could see as an immediate cause of his weakness. Across one shoulder a white slash of already healed flesh told her he’d recently been wounded. Was that how they’d caught him? The yelp she’d heard in the ravine? But they’d allowed him to heal first, brought him back to full strength. Why? So they could do whatever they were doing?

  Skylar aimed a glare at the dead witch still staring at her from glassed-over eyes. “What did they do to you?”

  The images he sent her made no sense. Something to do with sucking and teleporting and strength.

  They didn’t have time to dissect it now. Skylar had to think. She could send him to Ladon, just as she’d done with Airk, but the likelihood of escaping this labyrinth on her own, even with her skills, before being caught were low. Especially now that Pytheios knew she was out.

  No way could she hide here with Maul. His unique stench alone would bring the red dragons down on them. And, while she’d sent Pytheios far from civilization, and he was weakened, he’d still call upon his army and return. Plus, the girl who served her and Airk in the tower would discover their absence by tonight.

  Oh fuck. I should’ve sent Pytheios to the bottom of the ocean, the center of the earth. Killed him. Even the in-between. Except she hadn’t been thinking.

  Too late now. Worry abo
ut that later.

  They needed to get out. Fast.

  “I need your help, boy.”

  Not to get to Ladon. They were definitely too far away, and Maul was too weak to combine their powers, like she’d done with Kasia, to get them home to Scotland. Still, maybe they could get out of this mountain.

  “Have you been here before?” Please. Please. Please.

  Flashes of the inside of the red mountain came to her, but jerky, with time between each one, like he was reaching for the ability to communicate.

  “What about outside?”

  Images of rock and ice and snow. Everest in oncoming winter. Terrific. At least they were at an altitude, which meant she could breathe outside, though she might freeze to death in the process.

  Better than burning or whatever Pytheios had planned. She sank her hand into Maul’s spiky fur, her heart constricting as she could feel the effort behind every breath, the tension trembling in his big body. “Let’s go.”

  Maul’s teleporting was faster. A blink and then they were outside, Skylar’s stomach protesting the transition. Immediately, she was blasted with icy wind, the snow stinging her exposed skin. Her body clenched in immediate, terrible cold, shivers racking her, shaking her until her teeth rattled in her head. They couldn’t stay here or she’d die of exposure.

  A roar trumpeted through the blast of the storm. No mistaking that sound. A dragon. “Please tell me you have a few more hops in you?” she asked through teeth clenched painfully together to stave off chattering. She needed to get to civilization and then she could send Maul to Ladon.

  “Do you know this area? Is there a city close enough that you can get me to the outskirts? If I can get to humans, I can get myself home.”

  The words were hardly past her lips before they hopped again, three times in quick succession. The first several jumps took them farther and farther down the mountain. Each jump took longer, not instantaneous like it usually was with the hellhound. The nothing reached for them, grasping at them like the bony hands of death. In between, Maul had to rest, his sides heaving as he sucked in air.

  The last time, they ended up on a ledge where she could see the glitter of lights through the snow. Maul could barely keep his eyes open by this point. Gods, she was killing her hellhound.