The Warrior King (Inferno Rising) by Owen, Abigail (online e book reading txt) 📗

“You know…” Then she bit her lip, obviously regretting the words.

What did she think he was? A dumb brute? A killing machine with no mind of his own?

“On behalf of myself and all the warriors under my command, I must say I’m deeply offended.” He should be, at least. He was fucking proud of who he was and the position he’d earned. Only he wasn’t offended. Probably because he could tell she didn’t mean to hurt his feelings.

Her cheeks turned rose red, and not from the heat put off by those massive fireplaces. “I apologize,” she said stiffly, not looking at him. Drawing inside herself again.

He told himself to give her space, take a firm step back. He wasn’t the one who should be coaxing her out of her shell.

Instead, Samael found himself squatting down before he knew what he was about. He pulled back his sleeves to reveal his own skin, darker beside hers, made more so by the whorls of black hair over his arms. With a push from his dragon, which was always lurking close to the surface around her, he turned the skin to scales so black they would’ve sucked any light into the void had they not also been glasslike, reminding most who saw him in dragon form of obsidian.

He held his arms out to the children, who transferred their oohs and ahhs to him, touching the diamond-hard scales that, to the touch, were also surprisingly supple, more like a snake’s underbelly, but impenetrable. A living armor. To him, the roughness of the children’s own tentative touches was like being rubbed down with a dried-out loofah.

“You did that earlier,” Meira commented.

He glanced up to find her gaze on him, surprisingly unguarded fascination in her eyes, and his body quickened in response. “What? Shift only part of me?”

She nodded. “Isn’t that a rare skill?”

Samael gave a noncommittal grunt. The truth was, she was correct. In theory a skill reserved for royalty, though he knew of royals who couldn’t, but it had always been one of his talents. Only the scales. No other parts, except the day he’d seen her in that mirror and his feet had changed to talons. That had been out of his control, though. Not like Brand Astarot, who could shift any part of himself he wanted to any size. That was impressive. “Why do you think warriors are dumb brutes?”

She gasped, seemingly horrified. “I would never use words like that.”

No. She wouldn’t. It would hurt her to hurt someone else’s feelings that way.

“But you were thinking them. Don’t worry about my feelings. I’m just curious.”

He turned his head to find her watching him with worry in her eyes that disappeared as she once again tried to turn off an inner light that apparently she didn’t like to share. Or maybe that was just with him.

He didn’t think she was going to answer, but then she sighed. “I spent my entire life running from your kind because apparently you can’t discern for yourselves when a leader is as rotten as a bad apple riddled with worms. You keep taking bites anyway.”

Which begged the question, why had she left the safety of the gargoyles? Why had she offered herself to Gorgon? Especially when she could probably have hidden here indefinitely.

Carrick returned to human form, which seemed to be some kind of signal for the goat. After a pat from the gargoyle, he danced to a window, hopped up on the ledge, then seemed to drop out of sight. No doubt the thing was nimbly scaling the rocks that made up the castle walls.

Carrick, apparently unworried about his pet, crossed the room to them, speaking to the children in that foreign tongue and scattering them as he waved his arms to shoo them away. Though they seemed to giggle as they ran to their mothers. Hard to tell.

Samael rose to his feet and almost offered a hand to Meira to help her up, clenching his hands to stop himself. Touching was out.

“We have discussed it,” the gargoyle said. “You may stay.” He focused on Samael. “Our existence and location must remain a secret from the outside world.”

“You have my word,” Samael said.

Carrick stalked closer, human face contorting as if the monster was trying to get out. “Do not break our trust.”

Chapter Five

Pytheios stood in the doorway to the recently abandoned room. One built for a specific purpose.

Roughly carved from a natural cavern, it contained only a rock slab the height of a table and size of a long, single bed. Like a pedestal for a vampire’s coffin, or a platform for ritual sacrifice. The latter was closer to the truth. Against one wall dangled chains and shackles of varying sizes, all made from dragon steel.

This place had been his secret in a never-used part of his mountain. Everest, with its massive size in combination with the many millennia that dragon shifters had made their homes within its caverned walls, was now a twisting maze of tunnels, rooms, and chambers. No one, not even Pytheios, knew all of it. Which was why it had been easy to find a place for Rhiamon to wield her powerful magic.

Here they’d spent countless days together as she’d siphoned the energy, the life force, from supernatural creatures into Pytheios and herself, a necessary evil in order to prolong their own lives, granting them more time to find immortality.

They’d been close. He’d tasted that power for the briefest moment.

Now, he glared at the spot where that bitch of a phoenix, Skylar Amon, had attacked. Even still the room reeked of magic, which had a remarkably similar scent to ozone, sweat, and smoke. The smoke would be from the phoenix and the hellhound Rhiamon had been draining. Pytheios, locked in the spell and weakened, hadn’t gotten the chance to light his own fire.

“My king.” The voice of one of his guard reached him telepathically. Likely one flying patrol tonight.

Needing to conserve energy, Pytheios shifted the smallest part