But it was lost.
No.
She heard someone, a girl, tell the others to fight the skeletons. The Harbinger would not come closer. With a blink of her round eyes, a cloud of aether appeared between them. It would do no harm to anyone, but it should give anyone with a bit of brains a pause, especially one who’d suffered from the aether before.
Someone shouted, “Aether! Stay out of it!”
Yesmyr turned her head slightly, meeting the eyes of the Harbinger through the purple smoke. Those eyes were not ones who thought of consequences. Without so much as a hint of hesitation, the Human leaped forward, through the cloud, despite the callings of her friends.
The hill shook again, rumbling emanating from the altar. Yesmyr backed up as the Harbinger landed before her, a dagger in each hand. Her eyes were the brightest green, and if she hadn’t been so Human-like in her other features, Yesmyr would’ve sworn they were the eyes of one of her kind, the eyes of a Fae. She wore pants like the rest of her men, a short cloak that looked like some kind of animal leather. Metal earrings sat on her ears beneath her fiery auburn hair, another dot of metal in her nose. Fierce and furious, the Harbinger lunged for her, daggers ready.
Her decision took a split-second. It was all she needed. Perhaps this was good enough, perhaps Dracyrus would rise and end her right here. Either way, Yesmyr would not linger and lose her life. Luckily the portals she could command were not as unwilling as the threads of time. Just before the Harbinger’s left blade would slash across her, she stepped backwards, into a portal. She continued to step back through the portal’s other side, which emerged in the space around the Springstone, on its outer, lower level. From where she stood, she could see the burial clearing far above her. Her illusions would wear off—though, perhaps she should continue them, distract her team while Dracyrus rose and dealt with her.
Yes, that seemed like a good idea, didn’t it?
She sat as she closed her eyes and concentrated. Time itself seemed to blur around her as she kept funneling her magic into the skeletons and aether cloud. The hill ceased its rumbling. Something shifted; Yesmyr felt it tugging at her magic.
There. A thread.
Eyes still closed, she went for it.
Dracyrus was on his knees before her lover, but his eyes were defiant. He would not go down without a fight. And she was there—the Harbinger. The look they shared across the throne room said more than words could. Which meant that Yesmyr failed after all.
An unspecified amount of time later, Yesmyr opened her eyes, no longer in the vision. Her illusionwork faded on the hill. There was no point, now. Now she had to think of something else, come up with another plan. The world would not bow to him unless he proved he was worth bowing to. There had to be another way besides besting the Dread King.
A shimmery figure appeared before her, small and lithe, glowing a bright gold. It was a Fae woman; utterly out of place amongst the rocks and boulders. Her dress was in tatters but still pretty.
Before Yesmyr could open her mouth to demand to know who she was, the other Fae rushed her, delving inside of her with such old and powerful magic that Yesmyr was powerless to stop her. Consuming, devouring, she lost herself to the other spirit. It took her over utterly and completely. There was not a single shred left of Yesmyr, other than her memories and her body.
And then…rage.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Faith was ready to take on the Fae, to fight through the nausea that the aether would bring her. With her Victi daggers in her hands, after she leaped through the cloud, she landed hard on her feet. Her arms were lifted, her gaze intense on the bright eyes of the Fae woman. She had no idea whether she was the reason all of this was happening, but the Fae woman would talk once Faith had her roughed up a bit.
The Fae woman had her back to the altar, the bones of the Dread King splayed out. All he was missing was his flesh and muscle and all the organs that went inside. But right now, they were only bones. And they would remain that way, if Faith had anything to say about it.
She went to swipe a dagger across her chest, seeking to cut only a little, but the Fae woman had other things up her sleeves. A portal opened behind her, in the tiny space between her and the altar, and she fell back into it. The portal immediately slammed shut, causing Faith to stumble to the altar now that her target was nowhere in sight.
It hit her.
Things started to click into place in her mind, her dagger Victi fading back into her flesh. Her hands gripped the wide edge of the stone altar. The sounds of her men fighting the skeletons were miles away as she stood there, as it all came together.
A Fae portaler. Of course. That was why the Elves could not trace the tracks of the other Academy students. There were no tracks. There were only portals. Those students could literally be anywhere in the Second. It did not narrow anything down; it only made everything worse, larger. Whatever hope Faith still had that she would somehow find them alive and safe dwindled.
She was so stunned at the revelation that she didn’t even stop to wonder why she didn’t feel like passing out after leaping through the cloud of purple aether. Faith was about to glance at her group, to offer some help with the skeletons, but the hill shook again. This time, the quake caused her to lose her balance completely. She tumbled back, landing hard on her ass.
A blinding, white light erupted on the altar. The bones seemed to fade in the illumination, and Faith had to cover her eyes to not go blind. Brighter than the sun, all white and pure and luminous.
Inside the light, the bones lifted, shifting and twirling as a being took form. An old being who had grudges against everything and everyone. A Dracon with whom Faith had a shared destiny with. A creature that dwarfed any man with his size, any other Dracon with the thickness of his horns. A being with muscles on top of muscles and hair so colorless it was an untarnished white, eyes that held an infinity of colors, settling on blackness.
The Dread King Dracyrus.
It was too late. They were too late. The Fae woman had gotten here before them and was able to kickstart his release. Nothing Faith and her group did mattered. Dracyrus was here, and Faith knew she couldn’t beat him. Not like this, not without an army at her back.
“No,” Faith whispered as the light died down and a large figure thumped on the rocky ground. She watched him slowly stand tall, stretching himself out, cracking his neck each way, the sound like bones breaking.
What an impressive sight he was. If anyone had the right to be a king, it was him. Faith could instantly understand why others continuously fell to their feet before him, why he could so easily command armies even though his track record was the opposite of stellar. There was something so commanding and intimidating about him.
Faith was frozen on the ground beneath him. If her grandma was here, she would’ve made a comment about him being hung like a horse. But Christine wasn’t here. It was just Faith, and she was too busy thinking oh shit, oh shit on repeat to think anything else.
She heard someone shout, “Get away from him!” But she didn’t know who. She couldn’t recognize the voice. She was a deer in headlights then, totally frozen and strangely in awe.
This was the man she was supposed to defeat? This was her enemy? Somehow he seemed bigger here than he did in the waterworld and in her fragmented memories. Was that even possible? Of course, she wanted to beat him. Whatever being the Harbinger meant, she wanted nothing more than to stand above him in victory.
And then, still, there was that weird part of her that was perfectly fine with being the one under him. But that was not something she should be thinking now, or ever.
His black eyes landed on her, starting at her feet, slowly traveling up until his stare locked with hers. The scales around his horns glittered a sheer pearlescent hue in the sunlight, matching his long, white hair and contrasting with his almost pupil-less eyes. “Harbinger,” his voice was strong yet low, deep and scratchy in all the ways that made Faith shudder. He practically breat
hed hatred, fire and anger into each syllable.
Oh, shit. She was in so much trouble.
His tall form took a single step towards her. In one fell swoop, his hand grabbed her neck, lifting her off the ground, raising her high and dangling her legs three feet in the air as if she weighed nothing. She did weigh nothing in comparison to him. He was probably over three hundred pounds of muscle, definitely taller than any Elf, which put him at seven feet. Like a basketball player, only with an equal amount of girth with the height.
She brought her hands to the one that gripped her neck, struggling to breathe. He could, in all odds, choke her right here and now and end this. Dracyrus could kill her so easily; she was all too aware. But…he wasn’t. Why?
“Drac—” Faith sputtered out his name. “—yrus.”
His eyes narrowed and his hold around her neck tightened. “You have no right to speak my name.” With that, he threw her to the altar. Her back collided with the stone hard. It would definitely bruise, but at least it wasn’t broken.
Faith struggled to stand, shaking off whatever peculiar feelings she felt, taking hold of the anger inside of her as she activated her left Victus with a flourish, throwing the dagger at his chest. The dagger landed in his upper right pectoral, looking rather small and pathetic compared to him. He didn’t even flinch as the magical metal impaled him.
Dracyrus went to pull it out, but the dagger had already faded, and the Victus on her left wrist was a dark black once more. He glared at her, his horned head tilting as he whispered, “You will pay for that, Harbinger.” The wound bled only a little; thin silver streaks trailing down his chest.
The Dread King was on her swiftly, slamming her onto the altar, leaning over her with fury in his heart. No matter how she struggled, she could not get out of his grip; he was far too strong. She went to activate her Victi, but he used his other hand to hold her arm down, too far from her other hand. He was a quick study, wasn’t he? And she wasn’t skilled enough to activate her Victi without touching them. That took years and years of practice.
“Such a weak body. I am always amazed at how your kind can survive,” he muttered, bringing his face to hers. Faith’s legs hung over the edge of the altar between his. She couldn’t even knee him in the groin. Then again, he went on and on about how soft and fleshy she was; maybe a knee to his groin wouldn’t hurt him at all.
He was…an insane specimen of a man.
“Why don’t you let me go,” Faith spoke, inhaling as much as she could given the fact that his fingers were again around her neck, “and I’ll show you how well I can survive—” He clearly did not find that amusing, for his grip strengthened.
“Ah, yes. Your need to speak incessantly, I’d almost forgotten,” Dracyrus whispered, baring his teeth. “I will break you of that habit before ending you.”
Right. That’s why he wasn’t killing her right away. He wanted to toy with her, torture her first. There was no other reason for it. He obviously wasn’t feeling so…conflicted about his fate, was he? No, that was Faith’s feeling alone. Her weird desire to touch him, to know him. God, when did things get so messed up?
An arrow landed on the altar beside them, and both Faith and Dracyrus paused to glance through the purple cloud at her group of guys, still fighting the skeletons. Light was on the floor, tackled by one after he shot the arrow.
“Your friends cannot help you now, Harbinger,” Dracyrus spoke, gaze returning to her.
“My name is Faith,” she spat out, using her free hand to touch the only thing she could—the one thing that gave him pause in the waterworld: his horns. One of them, at least. She wished she was strong enough to snap it off, but she wasn’t. All she could do was grip it as tightly as she could, nowhere near as tight as his hand was around her neck, but it did its job.
It startled him enough that his grip loosened around her throat, and she did something that was always in movies and TV shows, something the Academy always taught their students to avoid doing because it was dangerous.
And it hurt a hell of a lot.
Faith rammed her head against his, her vision turning white, stars exploding in her mind. Dracyrus barely moved, but he was stunned enough that she was able to escape from his grip and stumble away. An immediate headache pounded in her skull, and she held a hand to it.
The purple cloud of aether was no more, just like the skeletons were suddenly no more. Nothing but burial mounds.
What the hell was going on here?
Chapter Twenty-Five
It was always strange, the first few moments, becoming readjusted to this world. He was nothing until his consciousness grew in the waterworld, until the Fae bitch demanded things of him, and then he was reborn. Again and again, it never changed. Not until now.
Dracyrus said no. The Harbinger was with him in the waterworld. The Harbinger was a Human female.
Things were different this time, and Dracyrus had been confident that he would handle it fine. He thought, perhaps naively, that this would mean that he would, for the first time, win. That he would triumph where he had failed so many times before.
But of course things were not so easy. It would not happen so effortlessly for him, even though things were different. Dracyrus would have to fight for what he wanted, for what he deserved. He would make them all pay for what they had done. His race was a proud one, one that never admitted their mistakes, because they never made them. The Humans knew nothing. They deserved to be warred upon, deserved to be fought against and slaughtered like animals. The Elves were no better. Their kingdom would follow the same fate as the Fae’s.
When he was reborn, as he landed on the rocky ground and looked down at the Harbinger, he was reminded just how hard it would be, and also how easy it could be.
She was so small, so frightened. How could something so pathetic be the Harbinger? At least the males were stronger and more of an opponent, probably smarter, too. Men commanded armies, not women. Not this puny thing before him on the ground, recoiling from his sight as if his mere image scared her.
He breathed in the air, relishing its taste as he studied her. She wore trousers like her men, leather like a hunter. The very opposite of a Dracon female.
Dracyrus was unimpressed. “Harbinger,” he growled out, taking a step toward her and grabbing her. Hoisting her into the air was easier than he thought it would be. Her short legs dangled as she brought her hands to his. Her skin was soft. How could something like that function? He did not like the feeling of her flesh on his.
Not at all.
“Dracyrus,” she breathed out, gasping for air.
He did not like his name on her tongue.
“You have no right to speak my name,” he whispered, tossing her aside.
She slammed against the altar. He was too busy trying to convince himself that he did not like how his name came out of her mouth when she did something that surprised him. She traced her wrist, a dagger forming from magic in her hand. She only held it for a moment before she threw it.
Truthfully, he hardly felt it. Like a prick of his finger, nothing more, even though the dagger landed in his chest. Dracyrus went to yank it out but it had faded away before he got the chance. A Human with magic? That was new.
He could not keep the eagerness from his voice as he said, “You will pay for that, Harbinger.” He began dreaming up all the ways he could make her pay as his hand gripped her neck once more. She hung off the altar, and she tried to use her magic again, but he stopped her by holding her other hand back, never once losing grip on her neck.
She squirmed underneath him, and Dracyrus would never admit aloud that he took pleasure in it, in dominating her in a way he had never dominated previous Harbingers. She was so small, so soft. What would it feel like to take her?
“Such a weak body. I am always amazed at how your kind can survive,” he mused.
“Why don’t you let me go, and I’ll show you how well I can survive?”
He found himself smirking somewhat. “A
h, yes. Your need to speak incessantly, I’d almost forgotten. I will break you of that habit before ending you.” The mere notion of doing so gave him a thrill of sorts.
A misguided arrow landed beside them, and he held back a laugh. What a pathetic attempt at aiming.
“Your friends cannot help you now, Harbinger.”
“My name is Faith,” she said, gaining an air of defiantness that made him smile. He would break her and he would enjoy it. Before he had the time to reply, she did yet another thing that startled him, something she had done before. She grabbed his horn.
His blasted horn.
His grip loosened around her neck. A wave surged through him, a wave of…of what? Of pleasure, of surprise? Some mixture of both? Whatever it was, it was enough for her to bring her head to his, whamming their foreheads together.
Dracyrus froze, allowing her to slip away. A bold move. One that he didn’t expect her to try. He turned his head, watching her run. Watching as she shouted for her friends, holding her head. Faith. Faith had no idea of the extent of things. She had no idea how his people used their horns. If she were another Dracon male, a headbutt would’ve been a challenge. If she were a Dracon female, it would’ve meant…
It would mean that she wanted him to join her nethellel. That she was bellanon, as every other female Dracon was.
But she was not bellanon. She was no Dracon. She was a Human, and she was his enemy.
Dracyrus would let her go, for now. He would find her again, he knew. Anywhere she ran, he would be able to find her. They were linked, connected in ways no one else was. His hands clenched into fists as he watched Faith and her group run away like frightened children. She paused before she entered Springstone, throwing one last look over her shoulder at him across the burial site. A thin trail of red blood seeped from her forehead, slowly drawing along the curve of her cheek.
The Fellowship: A Reverse Harem Fantasy (The Harbinger Book 2) Page 16
