I spotted Sven at the head table, which was where I would have looked first had I not been so pumped up on adrenaline. My heart skipped a beat as I drank him in.
I wasn't too late.
The table he was seated at was on a raised platform, centered and nearest to the palace. From this far away, I couldn't quite see the expression on his face, but I could tell by his body language, the way he was sitting, that he wasn't enjoying himself. He tended to like small groups better than crowds. On that we could agree.
My eyes were locked on him, but movement caught my eye a few seconds later. When I looked, I saw two men rise from one of the tables farther away from the head table platform. They turned towards it and started walking, purpose in their steps.
There was no way I could know if they were the ones who were plotting to carry out the assassination. But I didn't like how focused they were on that table, how they didn't look around or dawdle when there was so much going on that should have caught their attention.
The closer they got to Sven, the more certain I became of their intentions. And the method they were going to use. They weren't going to bother trying to do this quietly.
They were going to brazenly attempt this in front of everyone. And that plan might actually work.
Just like coming up to someone and shooting them in the head with a gun would most likely work. Part of what protected all of us was a killer’s desire to stay hidden. But that desire didn't seem to plague either of these men.
The slight calm that had come over me after spotting Sven alive dissolved.
I squeezed out another bit of energy from my tired body, powered completely by adrenaline at this point, hoping I was wrong. Hoping that I'd read these two people wrong. Hoping that Geo had gotten everything wrong and there wasn't going to be an attempt at all.
But then I saw them stop in the open space in front of the head table.
Sven was still talking to whoever was next to him and only half paying attention to what was going on in front of him, though I could see he was aware of the two men. As of yet, he wasn't worried.
The two men didn't broadcast their intentions by taking off their clothes. That would have given everyone too much warning.
Instead, they simply changed, their human-sized bodies quickly replaced with their much larger phoenix forms, suddenly diminishing much of the space that had been surrounding them.
I watched it happen, fear coursing through me in an ugly wave.
No.
No, I wasn't letting this happen. I refused to let it.
Tucking my wings close to my body, I shot down towards the ground, aiming for the space directly in front of Sven. I didn't moderate my speed even as the ground rushed up at me. I didn't have time for safety.
Come on.
I watch the two phoenixes burst into flame.
Come on.
And then the ground was suddenly there, right under my feet.
I landed hard, the impact jarring my entire body.
I was going way too fast to make a proper landing.
I felt one of my legs buckle under the impact and a sharp pain shoot up into my body.
But I made it, which was all that mattered.
Just as they deliberately flared their flames to an intensity level reserved only for combat, sometimes not even then, the light blue color indicating the heat level before the wall of hot air hit anyone around them.
They aimed the flare directly at Sven, the combination of the fire they both created together enough to incinerate anything within a certain radius of their burning bodies.
Only, Sven wasn't there.
I was.
I met Sven's horrified eyes just as the tendrils of flame hit me.
We were built to resist heat.
But even we weren't immune to it.
I knew as I looked into his eyes that this was it.
This was the end for me.
My only regret was not telling Sven how I felt.
Not being able to live my life with him. Laugh and cry with him. I mourned that life.
But I didn't regret saving his.
"Adara!" Sven yelled as he jumped over the table.
Or at least that was what it looked like he yelled. I couldn't really hear anything anymore.
Everything seemed to be moving at a snail's pace. Sven's leap appeared to last forever.
He couldn't do anything now. It was already too late.
Between one heartbeat and the next, I just...
Wasn't.
Chapter Twenty
I held onto Adara's eyes as I jumped over the table, as if I could keep her safe through will alone.
"Hold on!" I yelled to her, my heart lurching in my chest.
But it was already too late.
The blue flame engulfed her, a pretty, wavering halo of it surrounding her body, rippling and mesmerizing.
Blue.
The flame was blue. I knew what that meant.
No.
Within the span of a split second, the combination of the two phoenixes' flames reduced her to a pile of ash. It was an odd quirk of ours that we were able to resist heat and fire but were also the most susceptible to a hot flame after a certain temperature, as if the fire inside us helped us burn from the inside out.
I knew that. Intellectually, I knew what would happen as soon as I saw that blue halo around her. But that didn't prepare me for seeing it. Between one breath and the next, she was just...gone.
Her laugh.
The way she rolled her eyes.
Her sometimes sly asides that always made me laugh, even in the middle of a meeting.
Gone.
I watched her body freeze into a gray shell, a shell that formed cracks almost instantly, and then fall in pieces, disintegrate into a pile of fine gray ash directly in front of me.
I saw it happen.
I knew she was gone.
But my brain refused to absorb it.
No.
I took a beat just to stare at it, stare at what was left.
I couldn't... She was just...gone.
I didn't let out a sound, though I could feel myself screaming in rage on the inside.
They would pay. There was no other option. I turned to the phoenixes who had done the deed, feeling as if I was moving through quicksand, moving too slowly to be effective. But I knew I wasn't moving as slowly as I felt I was. The two phoenixes hadn't even reacted to me yet.
They needed to die. I saw Igna already closing in, already shouting orders as he made to change into his phoenix form, his guards also closing in.
But I didn't need to wait for them. That initial burst of the hottest flame was already fading. They weren't protected by it anymore.
I burst into my phoenix form as I attacked, feeling the well of rage and despair propelling me forward in a desperate lunge. There was nothing else in my mind in that moment as I felt my emotions fill me.
Just their death.
Easily avoiding their sputtering flames, I attacked, using my claws to clench down on one of their heads, feeling them crunch through his skull as I threw him into his partner. The other one did my work for me and burned him, his fire flaring in an unconscious reaction.
Leaving the burned phoenix to thrash along the floor in his death throes, I launched myself into the other one, and used my own fire to burn him to crisp, calling forth a rush of fire, hotter and more intense than I'd ever used previously.
Overkill.
But necessary overkill.
When I looked up, the two attackers dead at my feet, I saw Igna sliding to a stop, his eyes almost...fearful.
All around me, there was only silence. I saw the same expression when I glanced at the crowd around us. Perhaps that should have bothered me. I didn't want my people to look at me with that suppressed fear I'd often seen in their eyes when Emberich was around.
But I simply couldn't care right then. Perhaps some fear was necessary.
When I looked down from them, it w
as to see two neat piles of ash. There was an odd symmetry to it that gave me a sense of empty satisfaction. They died in the same manner Adara did.
I changed into my human form to give myself a voice.
"Gather their ashes and scatter them to the wind," I told Igna. "No ceremony. They do not deserve any more respect than that."
Burial would have been harsher. Placing them under the earth, where the sun would not shine upon them, where they could not be freed to the winds. But I would not waste anyone's time and energy on these people. Nor did I want there to be a physical place they could be visited. Such places could attract the wrong kind of people, give them a symbolic place to gather. Igna nodded once, stone faced, and gestured towards his guards.
The immediate taken care of, I turned and crouched down next to Adara.
What was left of her.
I reached out to touch the pile of ash, but pulled my hand back, bowing my head. I felt... I didn't know how I felt. It was like everything inside me had simply shut down. Leaving a hollow space in my chest.
Just like that...
She was gone.
It wasn't right.
None of this was right.
I heard Igna and the guards moving quickly, giving orders to the people to disperse. Good. There was no reason to continue this travesty of a feast.
Igna crouched down next to me.
"I want you to find everybody involved and bring them to me," I said softly.
"Of course," Igna agreed, his voice soft. "I am...sorry. I should have had a tighter perimeter—"
"I need something to gather her ashes," I interrupted, uninterested in his excuses. They didn't matter, not now. My voice sounded strange, even to my own ears.
"Yes, my king," Igna agreed, rising from his crouch.
I heard him moving off, talking softly to another guard, but I didn't look up. I trusted him to fulfill his duties. In short order, they brought me a clear box, built specifically for the ashes of the dead.
I carefully gathered what was left of Adara into it, not missing even a speck of the ash. She deserved full honors. No matter what she had to say about how important I was to the phoenixes, I firmly believed she was even more so. She managed to help people even under Emberich.
She should have let me burn. She was worth so much more than I.
I heard footsteps nearing.
"My king?" Igna broached softly.
"Yes?" I asked.
"I do not know if we have everybody, but these five were attempting to escape the city," he explained.
I finally looked up to see three men and two women standing in front of me. Nothing connected the five, not physically. They all looked frightened as they watched me, though two of them attempted to hide it, standing tall, looking down their noses at me.
I stood up and approached, taking them in.
"Were you involved in this plan?" I asked.
"The attackers took the place of these two palace staff members," Igna reported, pointing at a slender woman and an even more slender man. "And those other three were putting plans into place for after you were...gone."
A raised a brow, looking at each person's face.
"Is this true?" I asked. "Where you all involved?"
None of them responded. That was their prerogative. Though it would not save them.
"If you have something to say, now is the time to say it," I said in a grim tone. "I will not ask again."
"You should never have been king in the first place," one of the men finally broke, his voice defiant and loud as he looked around at the crowd gathered. "Because of you, too many died."
He quieted, with an air of expectation. Silence. Did he expect the crowd to applaud his impassioned speech? Stupid on top of selfish.
I nodded thoughtfully.
"Anyone else?" I asked.
Nobody else opened his or her mouth. Their silence was a clear admission of guilt. I didn't waste any time. Bursting into my phoenix form, I burned all of them between one moment and the next. Our human forms were not as resistant as our phoenix bodies. It did not take as much effort to take care of all five as it had to kill the original two. Their screams of shock and pain cut off abruptly. They died quickly, which was all the mercy I was willing to grant them.
Even if they hadn't been involved in a plot that ended with Adara's death, I could not allow an attack of this nature to stand. The decision to execute them quickly and in public was a strategic one, though some bystanders might have misconstrued it for an emotional one. It didn't matter. It would serve as a deterrent either way.
Stepping back from the smoldering corpses, I turned back to the box I had left behind myself. I picked it up carefully and turned to the palace. My people could deal with the rest of this. I had nothing else to give.
I walked inside and went straight to my bedroom. Somewhere I could ensure privacy. Closing myself inside, I went to the bed, gently placing the box next to me as I lay down.
I still felt...empty. The rage and despair drained out of me as if it never was, though I knew it lurked in dark corners, waiting to strike again. I placed my hand on the cool, impersonal glass of the box next to me. I didn't how I would recover. It felt as if my heart had been seared along with Adara.
I closed my eyes.
But then opened them again when images of Adara in her final moments appeared in the darkness behind my lids. My hand clenched on the box.
I kept my eyes open, staring at nothing in the near-black gray of the room.
Chapter Twenty-One
I didn't sleep that night.
When the sun rose, my eyes were still open, staring at the ceiling as it slowly got light enough for me to see. My mind was running over all of the things I could have done differently. Things I should have done differently.
I should have resolved everything else with Adara before we got physical.
I should have made sure that she was okay inside rather than just falling asleep.
I should have ordered her to stay.
Although that last would have likely fallen on deaf ears. I smiled slightly as I considered what her response would have been had I told her she needed to stay grounded here.
The smile slowly faded.
I wasn't getting any sleep anyway. Maybe it was time to get up. I had a lot to do. The never-ending load of work that I had inherited always waited for me.
There would be no more Adara to bounce ideas off of. No more acerbic tone of voice when she thought people were being idiots. Nobody to keep me in check in quite the way that she could.
I closed my eyes.
No more shared smiles during meetings.
No more surreptitiously staring at her pretty face, marveling at the diligence behind those stunning gray eyes. No more fantasizing about touching that golden skin, running my fingers through that shiny, flame red hair. No more flying by her side. No more looking forward to meetings simply because it meant I would able to spend more time with her.
But the cruel reality of life was that it didn't stop just because it had dealt you an unrecoverable blow. I'd learned that many times over the years. Expecting it didn't make it any easier.
I thought about what I had to do today and felt...apathetic. I did not want to see anybody. I didn't want to take part in the political machinations and constant power struggles I had to contend with just to keep things moving along in the right direction. I didn't want to present a brave face when I was ruined inside.
But today was just a drop in the bucket, wasn't it? I thought about all days stretching in front of me past this one. All of the meetings I would have to attend without her, all of the work I would have to do without her needed influence by my side.
The years seemingly lengthened in front of me, empty, lacking any kind of color. Maybe time would help. Though I didn't think it would heal. I'd never met anyone like Adara. Nobody who called to all parts of me like she did. Nobody I missed whenever she wasn't around. Nobody I respected and admired quite like
her.
And the fact that she had died protecting me? Saving me? That was just like her, wasn't it? Selfless to the last breath. She made me want to be a better version of myself.
But now she left me broken. All I wanted to do was stay in bed, but that would be self-indulgent in a way I couldn't afford to be. I had responsibilities. No matter what happened, I had responsibilities that I needed to take care of.
I knew that Adara would have been the first one to kick my butt out of this bed and tell me to stop wallowing. To pick up the pieces and get to work. Focus on what needed to be done. Tell me that my position was more important than she was. She would have been wrong. On that, she would have been very wrong.
It was the thought of what she would have said about my responsibilities that finally pushed me up off that soft mattress. The thought of Adara, working tirelessly to improve the lives of everyone around her no matter what obstacle stood in her way. She was my example. The memory of her was my drive.
A joyless one right now, with the wound on my heart still fresh, but it was enough to at least get me out of bed. I turned to the other side of the bed and picked up the box containing her ashes.
That was when there was a tentative knock on my door. Frowning, I set the box back down.
Who would bother me this early?
I went to the door and found Igna there, an apologetic look on his face.
"I am sorry to disturb you, my king," he said, bowing deeply. "But there are some chieftains here to meet with you."
"No. Cancel the meeting," I said. I was already closing the door as I uttered the words.
"They have rounded up other conspirators, or at least those sympathetic with them."
I paused.
"Sympathizers or actual conspirators?" I asked. "Those are two very different categories.”
He paused, tilting his head in consideration.
"If I were to guess, I would say they were sympathizers," he admitted. "I believe we have the names of everyone involved in the actual coup attempt after going through all of the messages of those involved last night, tracking their movements in the days leading up to the feast."
From the Ashes_A Dragons & Phoenixes Novel Page 12
