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

“Pytheios claims to have a phoenix, and he may have. That does not mean my sisters and I are not also phoenixes. I want only peace for both my phoenix family and for my new dragon family. Will you help me?”

He’d warned her not to beg, not to ask, but to command. But the question slipped from her lips naturally.

Deciding not to take them back, she let the words drop into what had become a void of silence and blank faces.

Beside her Samael stood unnervingly still, shoulders held back, all warrior. “I will stand by our queen as King Gorgon would want,” he said. “He would want you to do so as well.”

They gave it another few moments to sink in.

“If you have any information, or wish to help us in this search,” Meira said, “please get in touch with the Blue or Gold Clans. My sisters will know how to reach us at all times.”

Defeat stared at her from a thousand reflections, clawing at her. This wasn’t working. She still wasn’t getting through to most of them. The hostility reflected at her, despite the mirrors blocking her empathic powers, faces bearing scowls or narrow-eyed suspicion or outright hatred, told her so.

Meira swallowed and stepped forward, though Samael held on to her hand. Forget not begging. It might be beneath dragons, but it wasn’t beneath her. “Please. Gorgon has been honorable and nothing but a friend. For his sake, please help me.”

A blast of sound boomed overhead, the reverberations of it hitting her like a physical punch, and the house shook with the impact. Something massive had struck, knocking the ceiling fan to the floor, the popcorn ceiling shaking loose and cascading over them in a fall of white.

In the same instant, Samael tackled her to the floor, covering her with his body. He grunted as the ceiling fan broke free and landed on his back before falling into the mirror and shattering the glass.

Meira lost her connections, her fire extinguished by a fear that stole her breath and her mind. Pytheios.

“He’s come for me.” The child who’d always lived in terror, never fully gone even as she’d grown into a woman, whimpered. With grasping hands, she practically tried to burrow into Samael’s chest.

“It’s not Pytheios.”

Panic tossed reason out the window as she scrambled against him, shaking so hard her teeth rattled in her head. “He’s going to kill you and try to mate me and—”

Samael shook her by the arms. “It’s not Pytheios.”

“What?”

“By the scent, I’d say gold dragon. Waiting for you or one of your sisters to show would be my guess.”

Samael’s total calm reached to an answering part deep inside her, like a balm, a rock on the rapids she could cling to. With a deep, shuddering breath, she lifted her head, focusing on his eyes, his gaze intent and steady. “We need to get out of here,” she said.

“I agree—”

The house howled and splintered as the creature outside ripped the roof off faster than a Kansas twister.

Samael was on his feet, the floating mirage of his shift eddying around his form before the roof had even cracked. Instinct kicked in, and Meira lit her fire and jumped to her feet.

“Let’s go!” She grabbed him by the hand before he could finish his shift and dragged him away. She jerked to a stop as he lunged for the kitten, scooping it into one big hand. Then, without question, he ran after her into her mother’s bathroom and through the mirror hanging on the back of the door. They emerged in a cavern that reminded her of Ben Nevis.

A hangar of sorts, with a gaping hole open to blue skies and mountain peaks beyond. Only no dragon-steel door to shut out the world and protect them.

The roar that followed them had Meira spinning back to what they’d come through, a glass partition separating the hangar from another room—no doubt a control room of sorts. Abandoned and dark. With a yelp as a golden eye peered at her through the reflection, Meira shut off her powers, the fire leaching from her skin in an instant.

The fear didn’t disappear with the flames, though, even as she gaped at the glass and the room beyond. She grabbed for Samael, only to have him shove the kitten in her hands and back away.

“Stay there,” he warned, backing away into the center of what appeared to be a massive foyer. His body continued to shimmer and waver with signs of an oncoming shift.

“What are you doing?” she called, though she remained where she against the wall, with no place else to go.

“My dragon is already close to the surface with you,” Samael called back. He glittered with obsidian scales, his body warping and stretching to accommodate his larger size. “That was…too much—”

He threw his head back on a primal roar that made the glass beside her ripple. Holding still, as though he were a T. rex and wouldn’t see her if she did, Meira waited out the rest of his shift. An incredible process as human features broadened and lengthened, vicious spikes emerged along his back, and a tail whipped out behind him. Finally, wings unfurled thirty-five feet on either side of him.

Black dragons were sleeker than blue or gold dragons, everything about them built for stealth—wings attaching differently, spikes lying flat differently. Even their scales were smaller and layered so that they could seal up, cutting wind resistance.

Samael, in full dragon form, was the most brutally magnificent creature she’d ever beheld.

The dragon fell to his forefeet in total silence and craned his neck to size her up from a single massive eye on one side of his head.

Meira watched him closely. In theory, this was still Samael. Her mind knew he wouldn’t hurt her. The reality was a different experience. “You’re not going to use me as a human toothpick or anything, right?”

She wasn’t entirely sure the question was teasing, either.

She didn’t have time to