Blood Oath (The Darkest Drae Book 1)(77)

“Make it fast,” I wheezed.

Lord Irrik broke eye contact with me, and then he lunged forward.

I closed my eyes, feeling the whooshing air of his movement brush my cheeks. The hair on the top of my head rippled. I felt the warmth of Irrik’s body, and his terrible snarl echoed in my ears. The last sound I would ever hear.

I wasn’t afraid.





32





There was no pain.

There was no darkness.

There was no end.

The warmth receded. The air settled around me.

The king released my hair, and my eyes flew open.

Lord Irrik stood before me, boxing me between his legs and the king’s. I twisted to look up.

Shock drove me out from between them, and I scrambled back, unable to tear my gaze from where the Drae’s black talon was punctured clear through the king’s neck, several inches of the tip visible on the other side.

Irdelron opened his mouth and gurgled. His eyes wide and disbelieving.

“You can’t compel me to do that. Your blood oath isn’t strong enough, Irdelron.” Lord Irrik’s eyes gleamed as he retracted his deadly talon, slowly. He lowered his arm to his side, the king’s blood dropping from the sharp tip to the stone ground.

The king slumped to the floor as blood pooled from the gaping wound. He gurgled again, attempting to speak.

I began to hyperventilate, feeling my face and body, over and over again, certain my mind was playing tricks on me.

Irdelron continued his attempt to communicate, hands gripping the floor uselessly as his lips opened and closed. Head spinning, I stared at the dying monarch, unmoving as his movements became weaker and weaker.

I knew what happened next. I’d seen it happen to my mother.

His movements stopped.

Irrik crouched next to the king, staring into his fading eyes. “You sealed your fate,” he said, jaw clenched. “With the command to kill her.”

The king’s expression slackened, and he looked past Irrik to where I was curled. Irdelron clearly understood what Irrik meant.

The life disappeared from the king’s eyes as he suffocated on his own blood, but my mind said it should be me. Why wasn’t it me? How had Irrik broken the oath?

I shifted my gaze to Lord Irrik. He shuddered, and black scales danced up his arms. He snarled a reverberating roar at the Druman, flashing his fangs. They dropped their weapons to the floor as though the swords were scalding hot.

Irrik continued to roar until every one of them was on their knees.

Dyter rushed to me and supported me with an arm behind my shoulders. “Ryn,” he said hoarsely. “Mistress Moons, Rynnie. What have they done to you?”

I heard him, but Dyter’s question didn’t seem to want an answer as he clutched me to him, stroking my silver hair with shaking hands.

I couldn’t tear my eyes from Irrik, and finally, finally he met my gaze.

“How did you do that?” I managed, glancing toward the king’s blood nearly touching my extended foot.

“Not here,” he replied tersely. His hand had shifted back to human, and the king’s blood coated Irrik’s fingers.

“No!” I shouted. I extricated myself from Dyter’s arms and sprang to my feet, ignoring my shaking legs. “I want to know right now. Right now!”

Cal and Dyter gasped to my right at the way I was speaking to the king’s Drae.

Not the king’s anymore.

Irrik’s fangs appeared again, and he forced them back, the struggle evident on his face. “There are too many ears here.”

“Then get rid of them,” I ordered. “But I’m not leaving here until I get answers.”

“Ryn?” Dyter asked.

Irrik snarled an order in Drae to the Druman, who marched out of the throne room in ordered lines. He turned to Cal and Dyter, but I held up a hand. “They stay.”

We warred silently, Irrik before me. He showed all the signs of being about to lose control and shift: scales, talons, fangs, inky eyes.

“As far as I was aware,” Cal spoke for the first time, calmly—as if his father hadn’t just suffocated on his own blood. It made me like him more. “Your blood oath was absolute. If there was a threat to Irdelron’s life, you had to protect him. Him above everyone else.”

Irrik sucked in a breath between his fangs, and the black glossy scales appeared up the sides of his neck. He shook his head. “There’s always been a way to break it.”

What? Without thinking, I closed the gap between us and gripped his forearms. “Tell me. Irrik, talk to me. Whatever it is, I can handle it. You know I can.”

He turned his head, closing his black eyes and breathing thinly. “One hundred years ago, the emperor gave King Irdelron a choice. He needed to get the Drae to fight for the emperor or eliminate the risk they posed to his war plans. With the emperor’s help, Irdelron slaughtered my kind. When all the male Drae were murdered—my brothers, father, uncles, grandfathers—he took me, the youngest, to where the females were corralled, unconscious from their mates’ deaths. He then gave me a choice: I could swear an oath to him, or he would kill my female kin. I was nine and hadn’t come into my power. There was no way I would’ve said no. And so I swore to protect him. But a blood oath is not infallible. There is one thing that is more powerful to a Drae, something which supersedes a blood oath, something that is unbreakable.”