Dawn of Cobalt Shadows (Burning Empire Book 2) by Emma Hamm (free novels to read TXT) 📗

“What we both should have done a long time ago.”

The change rippled through him so quickly. She blinked, and he was a dragon once more. This time, she wasn’t certain how much control he retained. His horned head swung back and forth, tail twitching in agitation and eyes watching her with more than a little aggression.

His back foot caught on one of the benches, crushing it beneath his weight. Nadir lifted his head and a horn struck the ceiling. Plaster and gold plates rained down on them. He huffed out an angry breath, trying to flex his wings but getting stuck in the small space.

“Easy,” she called out with both her words and her mind. “Nadir, stop it. You’ll bring this part of the palace down on us.”

He shifted more, the idea apparently pleasing in the moment. A flare of fear made her pulse spike, and he paused to stare at her.

Could he smell the scent in the air? The way she had instantly been afraid for her own safety?

Sigrid lifted her hands. He leaned forward, stretching his neck and touching his nose gently to her outstretched palms.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

His voice echoed in her head. “Saving the kingdoms, ya amar. Join me. Together, we can finally be the gods they’ve prayed to.”

She didn’t want to be a god. But he didn’t either.

Sigrid struggled to think of a way to fix this, so they weren’t both becoming something they shouldn’t be. The door jiggled behind them, Eivor peeking into the room. Waiting for the medicine woman would only enrage the dragon in front of her.

They couldn’t fight the way Nadir wanted to. She couldn’t fight her own people as a dragon. They’d already thought she was a dead. Would she return as some ghostly figure to haunt them from the grave? It wasn’t right.

But setting loose a full-grown male dragon wasn’t right either.

Instead, she reached out and hooked a hand around a spine at his shoulder. “I’ll come with you,” she said. “Not as a dragon, but as a woman. I’ll try to reason with them.”

“I have little hope it well help.”

“Hope is hard to find sometimes,” she replied, pulling herself up onto his back. “Perhaps this time, it’s little more than a wish. I shall wish for peace. You may wish for an end to this madness.”

“Wishes rarely come true, Sultana.”

Gods, she knew it. But that didn’t deter her from wishing harder than she ever had before as Nadir lunged out of the balcony, bursting through the stone walls, and soaring up into the sky.

30

Nadir

He didn’t think it would be like this. Letting the dragon take control completely of his mind and body had seemed so simple. They were the same creature, weren’t they? That’s what everyone had always told him if they were Beastkin.

The animal and the man were one and the same. Combining them only allowed them both to be entirely free. And yet… that’s not what happened to him.

He’d noticed the moment he sat down on his throne. The words whispering in his ears weren’t those of his own. The angry thoughts, the pain, the hatred that made claws erupt from his fingertips and made his cheeks burn. These weren’t the thoughts of a man. They were the thoughts of a hunted animal who had finally changed from prey to hunter.

Tearing them apart had been the only answer to his pain. He wanted to hear them scream, and he had. Their blood had tasted sweet against his tongue, the hot spurts spreading through his mouth like the finest of liqueurs. When had he enjoyed that? Nadir couldn’t remember a time when he’d thought that death was a good thing. When he’d enjoyed such a terrible thing.

Then, the madness had faded. He’d stood in the center of the great hall, watching the blood slip down the walls and the pieces of people he’d left strewn about the room. Abdul’s head sat on a spike at the back of the throne. Saafiya had laid across it, missing both her arms while her dead eyes stared up at the ceiling.

The others hadn’t escaped similar treatment. He’d seen them as nothing more than puppets to play with. Mice in the hands of a cruel feline.

Nadir had thrown up in the pool. Staring down at the red water, swirling with blood. His own face reflected in the crimson waters, but he didn’t recognize the man staring back at him.

She’d soothed him. Sigrid. The one whose voice was a breath of cool air, brushing across his face. She’d smoothed her hands down his shoulders, tugged him away from the people whose hearts he could still hear beating in their chest.

What frightened him most was that he recognized the people standing in the hall. He’d named them all in his head. Raheem, Tahira, Solomon, Camilla, all the people who had stood by him throughout so much. He remembered them, and he’d still wanted to tear them apart with claws and teeth.

What had he become?

She’d managed to ease his mind at least a little. The pool had calmed the dragon within him. It wanted to rest, after all. Its belly was full, and its mind had calmed now that the enemies who wanted to hurt them were dead.

And then he’d remembered she was his mate. She was everything to him, the reason why the wind soared beneath his wings and everything had started to fall apart.

The dragon awakened then. It whispered in his ears that he would never be the man she wanted or deserved. That he needed to relinquish his hold on everything, because he was nothing more than a forgotten king who needed to rest.

Gods, he was tired. He didn’t want to be the sultan anymore. He didn’t want to kill more people who he was supposed to trust, knowing that everyone betrayed him in the end.

He’d told her that he loved her.

What foolish man was he? Of course she couldn’t love him back. She