Coming Soon
Frost Fire
A Novel of the Dracol Book 3
Excerpt
Continuous spasms in his hand caused Faris to drop the pen and ink he’d been using to send a missive to Rylin of the Black. He staggered to his feet as a familiar refrain began. Low whispers. Pleas to commit violence.
Kill. Maim. Destroy.
Not his thoughts.
“Not my thoughts,” Faris said aloud to ground him.
He listed heavily to the side, dragging his hand on the wall as he made his way through his suites to his bedroom. Voices hammered inside his head every step of the way. Brutal visions of women and men savaged by teeth and claws played in a seamless sequence. Abhorrent acts in vivid detail ran in a non-stop loop through his mind.
The mantle trembled under this new onslaught and Faris worked hard to still the evil urges. He understood at his core that these were not his thoughts or wishes. The madness only wanted him to believe that. All consuming, it wanted to drown Faris with the unnatural desires until he gave in or broke.
It happened to the Black sending one of their own on a murderous rampage. Recently the Green had one of their own attack an unborn child. It didn’t take much to realize the disease was spreading through the sects.
And spreading within him.
The last meeting of the four Kings had been eye opening. Faris confessed what he’d been battling for the last several months. Madness. It had a firm hold on his mind and what had once been sporadic became daily. Not even Simeon, his advisor, knew the truth.
Only his fellow Kings. And Faris had only touched on the surface of what he tackled each rise of morning and fall of night. Containing it was becoming an endless fight. One he no longer was sure to win.
Agony exploded from his temple and worked its way down his spine. Faris bit his tongue to hold in the scream of pain and fell onto his bed. Muscles locked in place as he lay there bombarded by false images of death, cries and pleas for mercy.
The mantle struggled to provide balance, to aid Faris in a swell of power. Instead he became bloated with power, the brilliance setting him on fire from the inside.
The madness gorged on the surfeit of energy. In his efforts to resist, Faris unwittingly fed the hungry beast. What started as a tiny nugget grew into a dark vortex of negative space housed within his core.
His inner Dracol screeched and scales of silver tinted with hints of black lined his arms from shoulder to wrists. Faris twisted to his back on the sheets, panting as he slammed up a mental partition between the mantle and blocked his people from the danger attempting to drag him under.
In the past, these spells of horror lasted for brief moments. Moments he hid from everyone as he convulsed wherever he fell and then over as if they had never occurred. This episode was different.
Very different.
It turned into a spiraling cycle he couldn’t escape. A maniacal chuckle slipped past his lips, the deep bass sound scaring him as nothing else ever had. More than when he’d been chosen by the mantle and ravaged by bone numbing pain. More than when he’d forced himself to turn his back on the possibility of a future with a lira.
Faris bit down hard on his tongue, the jolt of pain barely helped. Darkness encroached, his ability to think rationally fading. Disoriented, he swiveled his head to the side, staring at the wall across from his bed. His vision of the room tilted, streaks of red coloring his vision. Rumbled growls broke free, interlaced with snarls of rage.
With mounting fear, Faris realized if he didn’t do something drastic right now, he’d doom the Silver. He needed something strong enough to shield him from succumbing. One tangible thing to hold on to.
“Please,” he mumbled, fingers clenching on the sheets beneath him as he arched up and a low whimper escaped.
The goddess of fate must have been listening. Her help came in a way he didn’t expect. An image of Rena appeared from the last night they’d shared together. Surrounded by the brown and white fur on his bed she teased him as he knelt between her legs and kissed her inner thigh.
‘What are you about?’
He arched a brow, gaze dipping to the glistening folds at her center then glancing back up. It seemed pretty obvious to him. ‘What do you think?’
Rena chuckled, swiping at the tangle of dark hair hanging over succulent pale pink nipples. She tucked strands behind her ear then propped up on her elbows to stare, head tipped at a sassy angle. Her lips pursed in humor. ‘I think you should come up here and let me hold you.’
Faris ducked his head to hide his smile and placed another kiss higher up, closer to his end goal. ‘I have not finished what I came down here to do, amans.’
Lover. His sweet lover. The only he knew.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to kiss me?” she asked, lids lowered to give him a seductive look.
Faris slid up further, face only inches away from her puffy outer lips. ‘Oh, I’ll be kissing you, don’t worry.”
Then he buried his face in her wet core and sucked her swollen clit. Rena’s hands dove into his hair, yanking on the loosened black length. Faris licked, sucked and teased, passion’s moisture trickling into his mouth.
It didn’t matter. Faris consumed every drop, the scent and taste of Rena filling him. Her release hit hard and she screamed his name. He clamped his hands on her rocking thighs about his head and rode the wave with her only slowing down when her cries changed to broken gasps and half-whispered promises of eternal love.
Love. For that moment, that frozen place in time, Faris held Rena’s love and it was that love that broke his mind free.
Faris sat up with a jerk, chest heaving. He braced his hands beside his trembling legs and exhaled in shaky breaths. The scales on his arms faded but the horror lingered. Faris checked the mantle, a quick reassuring touch to confirm none of his people had been touched by what he’d suffered.
Gliding over the minds and skimming the surface thoughts, he sensed calm. They were at ease. But for how long. How long before Faris couldn’t pull himself from the abyss and turned on them in a killing rampage?