Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 69119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 346(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 346(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
His lids narrowed. Good. Let them both know my endgame. I wouldn’t leave this field until both Cedric and Nyla breathed their last.
Nyla clicked her barbed tail once. “When I slay your man, and I will—”
“Try,” I cut in with enough menace to startle her.
The wind died.
“I’m going to enjoy it,” she finally finished with a lot less bravado.
“Not as much as I will.” Rings of fire seemed to spin in Cedric’s pupils. An attempt to mesmerize me, though we shared the same blood.
Perhaps I wasn’t his victim, after all. “Whatever you do, do not look him in the eyes,” I told Taron. “Do not strike at him, either.” His bones would turn Taron’s bones into tuning forks, fight over. “In fact, let me handle him.”
“He’s all yours, baby. I owe the prickleback.”
“I’ll show you a prickleback,” Nyla growled, and I chuckled. Dang, I loved my man.
She and Cedric crouched, preparing for battle. Taron and I did the same, side by side, heart to heart. And then, like a storm breaking over the mountains, we all moved.
My father lunged at me with predatory grace, unsheathing a sword and a dagger, his ingrained dominance coiling around him like smoke. I met him halfway, short swords in hand. Our blades clashed with a screech of metal. My limbs vibrated, but even as cracks formed over my bones, they healed.
Cedric blew his ash-flames at me, but I absorbed them, growing stronger. It shocked, confused and infuriated him, sending him into a rage. His scales shifted, revealing the spikes leaking poison, but again, I only strengthened as I parried and blocked, then headbutted him hard enough to break his nose.
Taron met Nyla with a roar of his own. She lashed her tail, but he caught it mid-swing, yanked fast, and flung her across the field. She flipped midair, landed in a crouch, and launched herself back, claws extended, teeth bared. He ducked and dodged before working her to the ground, then rolling. Her barbs slashed at his ribs as soon as he pinned her, and he went stiff, losing his hold. They grappled for supremacy.
“I will make you eat that stinger,” Taron snarled.
I walked a circle with my father. “You made a grave mistake taking my dragon. It opened the door to something far more lethal. This day, I rid this world of your evil.”
He flicked his tongue over an incisor. “For centuries, I have been the prisoner of the woman who brought me back from the dead. She left me trapped in a dark cave with nothing but memories of my slain firebrand, who lives now only because I shared my blood. This day,” he said in a mimic of me, “I make you pay for all I’ve suffered.”
An exchange of icy grins, then we were striking in kind. My swiftness surprised him. The more we grappled, the more ferocious we became, until we were two beasts tearing at each other.
He remained the strongest of us–at first. With every injury, I grew stronger, faster, hotter, until he could not overcome my heat. It melted his scales. Then his skin. Then his muscles.
I had to give him credit. He fought until his last breath. But I’d spoken true. I rid the world of his evil. In the end, he died as he’d lived: violently. And I stood amid the ash, no longer broken, no longer alone.
Chapter
Twenty-Two
There is one thing not even a dragon can overcome: Love.
-Humaning for Beginners: A Dragon’s Tale of Human Management
Taron sliced his claws through Nyla’s tail. She froze, predator instincts colliding with raw, sudden panic.
Her gaze found the stinger in his hand, as if seeing it for the first time. The venom on that barbed tip shimmered black and bright.
“I hope you’re hungry,” he taunted.
With a ferocity born of rage and a last, mad, defiant cunning, she lunged. Taron met her halfway. Like my father, she drained of energy fast, and it wasn’t long before my firebrand had her pinned, the stinger in her mouth.
I heard the crunch before her scream as her teeth closed on the barbed tip. It must have torn into the roof of her mouth.
So. He had indeed made her eat her tail.
Panting, I limped over, picking up a sword along the way. Swing. I removed her head. Then her heart.
Her limbs convulsed before she went motionless.
And with that, the war ended.
My body trembled with exhaustion, victory the only thing keeping me upright. I dropped the weapon, now panting harder, adrenaline still surging. Taron was breathing hard too, but the fire of rage had finally dimmed in his features.
Using my newfound ash-flame, I burned the manticore to ash, certain neither she nor my father would rise again. But even if they did, so what? We would defeat them every time.
“We did it,” I rasped. “We won.”
“I’m buying you every teacup,” Taron said, voice rough but sure. “And returning the one I stole.”