With high cheeks and full red lips, my sister is almost more beautiful than a Blood Dragon has any right to be. I was always the little beast to her beauty; though we were both fighters growing up, I was the brawler, and she was the elegance.
Her vast inner hatred after our parent’s death at Riksfold made her intensely ugly, however. That ugliness consumes her as she stands before me now, statuesque in her nakedness, as shock that she’s even alive devours me.
Because I fought her to the death at the Grand Palace in Stockholm twenty years ago; though Bjorn finished the job, casting her down from the skies when I was mortally injured and could not, she was dead as dead when we had to leave her.
Her comrades in their revolt came for her body, scooping it up and attacking Bjorn and me, so we had to flee, injured as we were. But we checked her pulse as she lay bleeding out upon the ruined promenade, eviscerated from Bjorn’s and my battle with her.
Her heart had ceased to beat; her breath no longer gave life. I’m learning now that there’s death and then there’s death, however, as our magical revival of Baldur evinces.
As I glance to Lithava’s hand now, I see a black ring upon her finger—the same ring I recently remembered in my nightmares of our battle twenty years ago. That ring is a perfect match to mine, though all black, rather than silver.
A horrible, oilslick color that is darker than black, somehow—and eats all light.
A terrible feeling engulfs me as I suddenly understand my sister wears not just any black ring, butHedda Anderlen’sblack ring. Arvid and Lars wear similar black rings as they stand beside her, the rings of Hedda’s drakes, though Anya does not. It’s then I know that two of the High Council of the Black Dragon Knights are my sister’s mates.
Our enemy, my sister herself.
“You survived.” I rasp, as I stare my sister down across the gulf that separates us. “Twenty years ago, when Bjorn and I killed you… you survived. Because you wear the black ring of Hedda, don’t you?”
“The silver and black rings hold a resonance, Rikyava.” She holds hers up now, on her left ring finger, just like mine is. “I didn’t understand it when I first found my ring. But the Dreamspeaker had been coming to me for years, by then, whenever I secretly did a Bloodwalking to touch the Void, absent of Maryse’s training. She told me I could survive my coup on King Huttr, if I wore her ring, thanks to the ring Maryse also wore. So I did—and the Dreamspeaker was right.”
As Lithava speaks, a gargantuan black energy suddenly comes seething down from the midnight skies. Hedda’s escaped black soul-energy, it makes a screaming sound that rips through my ears and those of my drakes, as it surrounds Lithava in a howling black tornado now.
Then funnels down—into her black ring.
“Hedda. She’s your Dreamspeaker.” I understand now, as I stare at my sister with utter rage, wrath, and contempt, all hurtling together inside me. It burns me oh-so-righteously bright yet oh-so-viciously dark at the same time. “Hedda’s been manipulating you just like she did me, to do her bidding and bring Bloodwalkers to dominance again, via her arcane rituals and her beast. And you fell for it—destroying your people to do her will.”
“I fell for nothing!” My sister snaps now, as a brimstone fire flares in her eyes, terrible—the eyes of her beast. “I already knew our people needed to come into a better time, a stronger time than Huttr could provide for us. When I touched the Void and discovered Hedda, our Dreamspeaker, she told me of our glorious past as Bloodwalkers. I knew then that it wasour future, and my destiny to bring it about. Just like Hedda knew in her time and tried her utmost to do so.”
“Youwantour people to fall—utterly,” I breathe now, horrified to my blood and bones at this creature before me. Because she’s so ugly to me now, even if she hadn’t been all the way there before, with everything she’s done. “Ever since Maryse snubbed you from studying with her and maturing your Bloodwalker power, because she saw something unstable in you, you’ve carried a chip on your shoulder. A fucking enormous boulder… and it’s warped you, made you this… A person I don’t even recognize anymore.”
“I am my own person now. And Maryse was wrong about me.” Lithava is beyond cold as she stares me down with her brimstone battle eyes. As something in them darkens, I see a searing black violence come into them.
Blistering with terrible crimson runes, as the Black Dragon’s taint scalds through my sister’s eyes.
Through it all, the Council doesn’t even flinch. I understand now, as Arvid and Lars stare me down with a similar diseased black fire raging in their eyes and black rings on their fingers, that they are sworn to my sister as her Bloodmates.
They’re dedicated to her and her agenda serving Hedda’s will. They may have been this entire time, I understand now; who knows how long my sister had been impersonating Ruta, though it had to have been since the coup.
Anya is collateral damage, as my gaze flicks to her and I see nasty black curse-runes scrawling all over her flesh, thanks to my super-powered inner sight right now, though they don’t show.
The only member of the Council who escaped it was Mikka, standing at my side and backing me up now with Lærke and my drakes. All this time, it’s not just been one Council member who had it out for me, but four.
With my very own sister at their epicenter—cementing my fate.
That bitch who was once a sister of mine does Hedda’s bidding—willingly, I now understand. As I finally see who my true enemy is, standing unrepentant before me in all her evil glory, something darker than black inside me roars.
I feel it, as I’m suddenly tempted to dive into the same place I was when I tried to wield the Black Dragon. As my leviathan night roars up inside me now, it swamps my brighter nature, making everything inside me howl like a million fell demons of wrath.
Because more than anything right now, I want to punish my sister. For who she is, for what she’s done; I want to make her writhe, and pay, and pay until the very end of fucking time for everything she’s done to me, my loved ones, and my drakes.
Not to mention everything she’s still doing, to my King and to my people, trying to wield the Black Dragon. As a sudden horrible thought escapes me,I hope she fucking loses control of it and gets a taste of everything it supplies, a hand clamps down on mine, hard.
Bjorn shines like a golden star as he stares Lithava down now and remains in his love, rather than his hate. I feel his inner rage swamp me, but it’s a tower of righteousness rather than a black pit of darkness as his entire body blazes like he’s about to go supernova.
Because he’s drawing on Baldur’s power now through our bond, Ström’s, even Mikkel’s, as he stops me from just shooting right up into my midnight Wraith and battling my sister, right here, right now.
As Bjorn somehow uses all my drakes’ combined energy yet again, pouring his stalwart strength and goodness right through every bone, blood vessel, and sinew of my body, I feel how effortlessly he stands in that space.
