Prologue
Arach frankly couldn’t wait.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, attempting to ignore the throbbing pain in his arm, a remnant of the injury he’d sustained when facing Lalura Chantelle. It wouldn’t be so bad if it were the only pain in his body, but right now it was accompanied with a second incessant ache that would not cease. As long as the Entity lived and breathed, this particular wound would not heal.
He lifted his shirt and looked down at his abdomen. Muscles sculpted a ripped canvas, but at the moment it was stained with the paint of blood. A slightly curved scar just above his left hip bone had once more opened up, a crescent moon of pain that reminded him who he worked for. Each time the Entity employed a new being, this mark was made upon their bodies. Blood was taken. The Entity seemed to enjoy carving up dragon abdomens for some reason. For other employees, other body parts were chosen.
The blood was then kept in one of several secret hiding places and utilized as the Entity saw fit. It was used for healing spells, scrying spells, and to inflict pain. It was one of the many, many ways the Entity ensured obedience.
Arach stared narrow-gazed at the mark for a moment – until he remembered that Evangeline had one just like it. And then he smiled. The Entity had yet to exact any vengeance upon her for betraying and abandoning him in his time of need, and this admittedly perplexed Arach. But he had little doubt her due would be coming soon enough. If the Entity didn’t give it to her… he would.
He chuckled very softly to himself. He was so looking forward to having that woman bent to his will. It was what the Entity had promised him, after all. A queen of his own. The Dragon Queen, to be exact. Pity that at the time she’d been employed by the Entity, neither of them had known Evangeline would wind up being that very same queen.
He should have, though. He’d been the king at that juncture; shouldn’t he have felt the instant and intrinsic knowledge that she was meant to wear that particular crown? All of the other kings had known the moment they’d met their mates. Why hadn’t he?
An answer to that question banged at the door to his consciousness, but he threw home a few more locks and kept the door firmly bolted. He refused to bear it witness. He was meant to be king, damn it. And she would be his. Every last stubborn, delicious, defiant inch of her.
He’d hated her the moment he’d met her. Evangeline. The Legend.
She’d been so confident – beautiful, strong, smart. And she fucking knew it. That was the worst. If she’d been in the dark, a little less sure of herself, a little more easy to control, he could have summoned patience for her. But she’d burned through what little patience he’d had for her half-way through their first meeting. Confident women always did.
And now she thought he was dead.
He chuckled at that thought.
“She will be yours,” the Entity told him now. “As promised.”
Arach glanced at his boss. “She’s insufferable,” he countered. “And uncontrollable.”
“On the contrary,” the Entity replied. “She’s a challenge. Think of how much sweeter it will be when you break her.” He smiled that too-wide grin he was infamous for. “And do not fret. She will be taken down a few pegs before she is handed over to you. As you believe appropriate.”
It was oddly endearing that the Entity was taking the time to reassure him at this particular moment. He couldn’t have had much energy; his power was so diminished in fact, that Arach could actually feel the weakness of its waves as they emanated from the Entity’s body. It made sense. Could anyone really claim to be at their best when freshly dragged from the recesses of the Abyss?
The Entity had been right. The sons-of-bitches would eventually succeed in killing him. But he was unstoppable, seemed to know everything, and planned for every contingency, even this one. Hell, especially this one.
He’d known that it was a distinct possibility the kings and their queens would one day get the better of him, so he’d put a plan in motion for just such a day. He had literally torn himself in two, and placed half of his miraculous being in a pendant, something he called an Animus. Arach wore the Animus now, a rather intricate and admittedly beautiful creation of black platinum that was covered top to bottom with inscriptions almost no one in the realms could read. The words were the Entity’s real names, and there were dozens of them. Maybe hundreds.
Some of the kings and their irritating constituents had in fact noticed the Entity’s general weakness. They’d chalked it up to inhabiting too many forms of late. But the reason he’d been weak was not because of how many bodies he’d possessed; it was because he was literally half the being he’d been before.
That was the thing about the Entity. He was strong enough and immense enough that even half of him was ample to be frightening. Half of him was sufficient to take on a personality of its own and carry out a plan. He was just that tough.
What the Entity had not planned on was that Amunet would be killed at the same time, and that her body and soul would need to be extracted from the Abyss along with his.
Arach leaned his normally strong body against the cavern wall and rested his head against the stone. He closed his eyes. He was enveloped with pain and exhaustion. Putting the Entity back together had been the easy part. But Arach had known that doing so without saving Amunet, the woman the Entity loved, would be suicidal. So he’d used every last ounce of his power to save her next.
It had literally taken blood, sweat, and tears to pull her from the gravity of the Abyss before she’d been too far gone to wrest from its clutches. He’d set the spell in motion the moment he’d learned everyone was headed there. The Entity had been given no choice; that was where Amunet’s body was. But the Abyss that had developed due to the imbalance of life and death in the Duat posed a very real problem, one that Arach had recognized from the beginning.
He’d just known the goddess would fucking fall in. Leave it to a woman to cause the most trouble. And that, she had. Amunet had tumbled to her nearly ultimate undoing along with the Nightmare King and the Entity. But again, by that point Arach had already set a spell in motion.
Casting it was the most painful thing he’d ever done, including going up against Chantelle, and it left him without his dragon magic for an untold amount of time. Hell, it had left him anemic and dehydrated, and several of his vital organs had begun to fail. Fortunately, the Entity still saw him as useful, still had a bargain to keep with him, and seemed to want to reward him for thinking of Amunet’s well-being. That was probably why he was trying to reassure Arach right now about Evangeline, and it was also why he had given Arach several magical items to help him while he was on the mend.
Now Arach leaned against the wall and willed the items to work, because if he had to submit to this amount of pain much longer, he was going to lose his ever loving mind.
“Come here, Arach.”
The former Dragon King opened his eyes. He could feel them burning in his skull, spinning between the green they normally were and the red they became when he was emotionally charged. The Entity was watching him from across the cavern, beyond where Amunet’s casket lay in the center of the stone floor like a coffee table.
All around them, the cave had been outfitted with modern amenities, from electric lamps to sofas and love seats, a massive carved wooden armoire, tapestries on the walls, and throws draped over the backs of seating arrangements. The Entity had done it all with a snap of his long, thin fingers, too. Apparently he wanted Amunet to be comfortable when she returned to the world of the living. It was a small thing.
He planned for her to take over the world. So whatever helped.
Arach pushed away from the wall and strode across the room, trying his best to ignore his discomfort as he approached his employer. The Entity was in half-form at the moment. That was what Arach called, it anyway. Half human, half bizarre as fuck scary as hell shadow thing from some multi-realm version of Hell. That half-form turned to face him, tall and skinny and full of smiles that were full of teeth which were full of dark promise. “You did well, dragon,” said the Entity as Arach approached. “You should not be suffering.”
With that, the Entity reached his long, shadowy, bony arm toward Arach, and for a split second, the former Dragon King was certain the monster was going to just out-and-out kill him. After all, what better way to end suffering?
But there was no death. Instead, there was a brief repass as the pain ebbed away. His blood stopped boiling, his eyes stopped burning, his head stopped throbbing, and the wound in his abdomen closed back up again. At least that was gone.
“Thank you,” he said calmly as he turned to glanced at the sarcophagus. “What will you do with her now?”
“Why, awaken her of course.”
That stopped Arach. He turned back to the Entity, his brow furrowed. “Come again?”
The Entity laughed. It was a grating, terrible sound. But he had to be forgiven. He was only half-throated at the moment. “You were marked when you came to work for me,” the Entity reminded Arach. “As are all of my servants.” He paused, letting that sink in.
That’s right, thought Arach. He’d just been thinking of it, in fact. The Dragon Queen was marked. Of course, she hadn’t been a queen at the time. Or she probably never would have agreed to being marked.
What did a servant give when he or she was marked? Their blood. And what was the one necessary component to awakening the former goddess that had, until now, remained inaccessible? A queen’s blood.
“Holy shit,” mouthed Arach. He slowly turned back to the sarcophagus, and his hand absently touched the crescent-shaped mark on his stomach. Evangeline the Dragon Queen bore a similar mark.
And the Entity had her majesty’s blood.