And as I watch them go, I think again of the vow Nuri and I made to each other.

These are still early days. The war is coming, the world we live in changing as incessantly as the seasons by which we mark our lives. But now, as I stand here, surrounded by the people I love most in the world, I finally understand what it means to rule with compassion. With dignity. With love.

159

On a Wing

and a Prayer

Silence reigns after the dragons disappear into the horizon. Until Macy whispers, “What. The. Fuck. Just happened?”

The words open a floodgate of emotion—astonishment, joy, despair, anger, fear, resolution. I think we all run the gamut as we stare at one another with wide and wild eyes.

Hudson collapses on the ground next to his brother, arm braced on Jaxon’s shoulder as he keeps staring at him like he can’t believe he’s real.

Jaxon blinks at his brother. “My soul. I can feel my soul again.”

As I watch Hudson pull Jaxon into his arms, a few tiny pieces of my broken heart start to mend themselves together. Because this is how Jaxon and Hudson should always have been, how they would have been had their parents and a grotesque promise not ripped them apart all those years ago.

With Mekhi’s help, Flint manages to stand, then hobbles over to Luca’s lifeless body.

Macy and Eden hold each other, faces pale with the ordeal we have all suffered through while Liam, Rafael, and Byron don’t seem to know how to feel any more than they know what to do. They end up moving back and forth between Jaxon, who is alive again, and Luca, who I never even had the chance to try to save.

As for me, I stay exactly where I am—on the ground between them all as conversation and emotions ebb and flow around me.

“What does it mean for a vampire to have a dragon heart?” Macy whispers to Eden.

Eden gives her an I have no idea look and whispers back, “What does it mean to have a dragon queen who has given away her dragon?”

Macy shakes her head.

Flint kneels down beside Luca, jaw locked and eyes broken as he pulls Mekhi’s hoodie down enough to see his boyfriend’s face. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

It hurts worse when I remember the way he and Hudson were teasing each other just the other day, and the promises he made about what was going to happen when he saw Luca again.

“We need to take him home,” Jaxon says hoarsely as he pushes to his feet. He’s still a little wobbly, but Hudson reaches out to steady him.

Jaxon walks over and squats down next to Flint, his hand heavy on the dragon’s back as he reaches out and takes Luca’s hand for the last time. He murmurs something over the dead vampire, then turns to Flint, who hasn’t relaxed his death grip on Luca’s body one iota.

“It’s time to let him go,” Jaxon whispers to Flint. “You’ve got to let him go.”

Flint nods even as his shoulders begin to shake. As he lets go of Luca, he seems to collapse in on himself, but Jaxon is right there, holding him up. Flint wraps himself around Jaxon, burying his head against his shoulder as he sobs.

Jaxon holds him through it, deep pain etched on his own face—for Flint and for Luca.

Tears roll down my own cheeks—I didn’t know I could cry this much—and Hudson finds me. Of course he does. He pulls me up from the floor, wraps his arms around me, and holds me as I try to find the energy to keep going.

He’s drained himself, his energy left on the field of battle. But somehow just holding each other—my arms wrapped around his middle as his lips skim across my hair—makes us both feel a little bit better.

“We need to take him home,” Jaxon says again, his voice thick with his own grief when Flint finally stops crying.

Flint nods, jaw working but eyes finally dry. The Order nods as they move in to pick up the body. Seconds later, they’ve faded away.

Only then does Flint grab Jaxon and me in a hug and whisper, “Thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”

I don’t say anything back—there’s nothing to say at a time like this except what’s already been said—so I hug them both as tightly as I can. Then Jaxon and I step back as Flint shifts, his dragon form much better at balancing his missing leg than his human form is yet. And then he takes to the air to help the Order bring Luca home.

When they’re gone, those of us who are left—Jaxon, Hudson, Macy, Eden, and me—all kind of collapse, the emotions of the last few hours catching up with us.

I don’t know how long we sit there.

Long enough for my hands to finally stop shaking.

Long enough for my shoulders, and my soul, to finally relax just a little.

More than long enough for Hudson to pull me into his lap and hold me like I’m the most precious thing in his world.

Eventually, though, I’m ready to do what we came here to do, and I push myself to my feet. “I think it’s time,” I say, holding up the key I’ve managed to hang on to through everything.

“Damn straight!” Eden says, hopping to her feet right alongside me. “Let’s go get this Crown and shove it up Cyrus’s ass.”

“I can totally get behind that,” Macy agrees, holding out a hand so I can pull her to her feet.

Jaxon and Hudson nod, too, and then the five of us make our way along the rocky ledge until we get to the entrance that leads us to the Unkillable Beast.

160

Ill-Gotten Chains

The cave is exactly as I remember it, circular in shape with a giant, rocky wall against the back. As we get closer, the wall starts to move like it did last time, and the beast slowly lowers himself to his feet.

He’s even bigger than last time, his shoulders wider, his chest broader. But his face looks the same, sad and a little macabre at the same time.

Please, no, he says, and I hear him in my head like I have for so many months. Leave. You have to leave.

It’s okay, I tell him as I walk slowly but steadily toward him. I came back to free you. Just like I promised.

Free? he asks.

I take the key from my pocket to show him, and it becomes a kind of mantra in his head…and in mine. Free. Free. Free. Free. Free. Over and over again.

“Be careful,” Jaxon tells me, his body poised to intervene.

“She’s got this,” Hudson tells him as he grins at me.

And I grin back at both of them, because some things will never change.

There are four cuffs—two for his wrists and two for his ankles—and after I undo the bottom two, I grab my platinum string and shift, flying up so I can unlock his arm cuffs as well.

As the last one falls away, the beast throws back his head and bellows like his life depends on it. The roar bounces off the rocky walls and ceilings, echoing throughout the cavern for several seconds.

And then he shifts, and a man is standing in front of me dressed in a royal-blue tunic, gold leggings with laces, and a gold and royal blue cloak tied over one shoulder and fastened with a large sapphire broach.

He’s tall, with smoke-gray eyes and blond hair fastened into a braid. He’s also got a short, pointed goatee and seems to be in his late thirties.

I shift back but don’t try to approach him. “Are you all right?” I ask this man who has suffered so much and who, in his own way, has helped me through so many of my own troubles.

He looks at me like he doesn’t understand what I’m saying, but eventually it must sink in because he nods. “Th-th-thank you,” he finally manages to say.

I approach him slowly, but he shrinks away from me. And I get it. It’s been a thousand years since he’s been human, and the last people he saw did this to him.

My eyes narrow at the thought. Just one more atrocity Cyrus has to answer for.

“It’s okay,” I murmur to him—out loud and with my mind. “I’m a friend.”

He stops, tilting his head like that last word gets through to him.

“Friend,” I say again, placing my hand on my chest. “Friend. I’m a friend.”

He studies me for a while, then puts a hand to his own chest. “Friend,” he says as well.

I smile at him, then glance at Macy, about to ask if she brought some of the granola bars I practically live on when we go on trips like this. But she’s already walking forward, a bottle of water in one hand and a pack of cookies in the other.

He won’t touch them when she offers them to him, so I take them and try. I even open the bottle of water and take a sip to show him that it’s okay. His eyes follow the water bottle like a starving man, and this time when I hand it to him, he practically snatches it away from me.

He drinks it down in a few long swallows. By the time he’s done, Macy has another one for him. He drinks this one much more slowly, and I open his bag of cookies for him while Macy stashes the empty bottle in her backpack.

After he’s had his fill of water and cookies, he bows toward Macy and me both, then says, “Thank you.” This time his voice is a little stronger, more confident.

Which means it’s time to ask him about what I came here for all along. “Crown?” I ask.