Chapter Thirty-One
Mina was trapped, her hands still cuffed to the barbaric consummation altar as Dominik unlaced his trousers and edged closer. Her heart was full of fear and relief at the sight of Mikhail, storming toward Dominik like a demon come to collect his soul, but he’d been catapulted aside by Radomir. And this crazed animal was still intent on raping her right here and now.
She recognized Nikolai and some of the guardsmen who’d pledged their loyalty to her now engaged in fierce combat with the Legionnaires. And another grave warrior with an eye patch, whom she didn’t recognize. More of the king’s men flooded onto the battlement, having heard the fighting upon the towers. There were more men on the second tier of battlements for she could hear the cries of the wounded and the clang of steel.
A distant thudding sound vibrated from the ground through the stone castle. Queen Morgrid hissed as she swept away toward the parapet. While the Bloodguard were entangled in battle, the sound grew louder. Then a horn bellowed up into the crisp, clear night.
“Hurry, my son,” commanded the queen, rushing back to the altar where Izzy was bound, her black mantle whipping behind her. “It must happen at the same time.” The queen assessed the scene below. “Get to Dragon’s Eye. Summon them all,” she snapped at an officer standing at her side.
“Yes, my queen.” His dark voice was a whisper on the wind as he sped away.
A fireball burst upon the queen’s cloak. In a whirl of icy wind she summoned out of the air, it snuffed out. Crossing the battlement between men in fierce combat strode Sienna. She raised her hands, palms up, and flicked her wrists. Tendrils of ropelike fire snaked down and coiled on the ground, the ends of the fire whip gripped in her hands. She raised her arms and snapped the fiery ends with a loud crack in the air.
“Let them go.” An orange aura of flame enveloped her from head to toe.
She snapped a man in half who dived at her, his body sliding in two charred pieces across the pavement.
The queen backed up a step, whispering some incantation under her breath.
That whisper, that inner secret sprung to life once more, rising out of a maelstrom of emotions. The one ringing clear and true above all was righteous anger. Singing to her a dark lullaby.
The growing awareness of the magic, that whispering that had kept her company for so long, intensified. The aura of flame billowing around Sienna in a mystical shroud and the knowing look in Sienna’s golden eyes told her what she couldn’t understand all this time.
Drink the blood of fire.
“It’s Sienna,” she whispered, her heart leaping with joy, even as Dominik snapped to two guards to go after her.
Sienna’s fire whips cracked in the air, wrapping around their necks. With a hard tug, the two decapitated men fell at once. Sienna locked on Mina’s gaze and smiled, the second before a burst of power threw Sienna across the battlement, knocking her head into the pillar with a crack. She fell at once, blood pooling from her auburn hair, the fire halo dimming until it evaporated into smoke.
“No!”
A cold electricity sparked in the air where the queen had closed her eyes and lifted her hands to the heavens, calling on some dark spell. Where the sky was clear before, a gathering of black clouds swirled in a maddened tempest, flashing with menacing magic.
Izzy squeezed her eyes closed, looking away from the queen, who stood over her altar, hands raised to the sky.
“Now, Dominik!” bellowed the queen over the winds.
Grief swept over Mina, watching Sienna’s prostrate form bleed out while the world went to hell around her. Then Dominik was on her again, yanking up her skirts. As he gripped a handhold near her head and leaned his large body over her, his expression set with grim determination and a hint of sadistic pleasure, her grief melted away, replaced by such dark rage she could only think one thing.
Survive. And kill.
His hand gripped her upper thigh, leaning forward just enough. She lurched up and latched her fangs in deep at his pulse, sucking so hard he screamed, squeezing her thigh harder.
“Let go, bitch.”
She clamped even harder, drinking him down, molten fire burning through her body like a volcano spewing lava into her veins. Burned. It burned, but she wouldn’t relent, determined to take his life in any way she could.
He jerked up, screaming, but she didn’t unlatch. Finally, he gripped her throat, blocking off her swallowing his blood, then finally her breathing. When she saw black in her periphery, she let go. He flew back off of her, blood dripping from his wound. Before he could set upon her the black vengeance in his gaze, Mikhail tumbled him to the stone ground.
The burning persisted as the potent blood of Dominik pumped hard. His blood blazed like liquid fire through her body, igniting a conflagration of its own.
“It wasn’t Sienna,” she whispered, staring up at Dominik’s banner, the black dragon sigil with fire-gold eyes. “Dominik is the blood of fire.”
Without a thought, she pulled on her restraints. They broke at once. She stumbled off of the altar and gripped the parapet wall. She heaved in breaths of the night air, taking in the sight below as a strange sensation swept through her body.
Far down the hill filtering through the now-open double gates and spilling into wide lines was the army of the Black Lily. Mina caught her breath. Merging with the human army on their left was Lord Rathbone leading his force of Arkadians, riding astride a great black horse, his silver armor glinting under the moonlight. Lord Maksim was at his side. The equestrians filled the fields beneath Izeling Tower by the hundreds, including the black-clad Bloodguard.
A great blast exploded a hole in the western exterior wall. Katya and Dmitri rode upon their mounts through the opening, leading the Bloodguard cavalry onto the western slope. Behind them came the armored men of the Black Lily and a solid force of hart wolves flanking Friedrich, Marius, and Arabelle. The white coat of Allora beamed under the moonlight. Her black-furred mate at her side.
Even from here, Mina could see the difference in Arabelle. Her proud stance, wearing a man’s armor with her blond hair tied in a tight rope of a braid, her skin gleamed pearlescent white like that of a vampire. She’d finally done it. The revolution that this peasant girl started would end this night. Mina laughed.
The king’s right hand, that vicious viper called Kostya, was down below on the snowy ground, calling out commands as lines of Legionnaires marched into place to face the onslaught preparing to charge across the open field.
And all this time, Mikhail went at Dominik full force. Mikhail bore a streak of blood across his cheek, though he appeared as strong as ever. He dove at Dominik, taking him around the chest right over the parapet. Mina gasped, leaning toward the parapet wall, finding them both back on their feet on the lower tier, where Gregoravich and Yuri fought side by side. Bloodied, but not fallen.
A roar of overlapping battle cries sounded from the field where raging vampires—no doubt infected with the blood madness—ran in a frenzy from the thick of the woods across the field toward the Black Lily army.
Morgrid cried out in rage, staring across at Mina, who’d escaped her dismal fate. The wicked queen held her hands to the sky, summoning the storm. A blistering wind swept across the battlements, filled with the crackling energy of malice and death, building stronger and stronger. A cacophony of snarls, howls, clanging metal, tearing flesh, and breaking bones echoed up to the ramparts as the mayhem of battle raged on down below. Mina glanced to Mikhail and Dominik, still locked in combat, though Mikhail’s side bled profusely, gushing onto the stone floor.
“Mikhail.” Then she found Izzy, still bound helplessly, still precariously close to the witch who wanted her as a blood sacrifice. “No,” Mina panted, standing tall.
The whispering grew louder, overlapping voices colliding into one voice, a woman’s melodious voice as she spoke clear and loud.
Awaken the white queen from her long, long slumber.
Strange words. Dominik’s blood scorched like living flame through her body. A burn that didn’t hurt but purged all weakness away, leaving a tower of strength and power in its wake. A purge of the girl who was afraid to hold her head too high or to acknowledge the beast that lived within. The beast that Mikhail had taught her to embrace. To love.
A sudden memory whirred through her fevered thoughts, her nurse walking her through the gardens of Briar Rose.
“You know the bones of the white dragon lay right here beneath your feet.”
“No. That can’t be true. That’s just a fairy tale.”
“Aye, sweet girl. ’Tis true. And that magic lives in your own blood, did you know?”
Mina’s mind snapped back to the present, but she answered her sweet nurse over time. “Yes. It does.”
She could feel it, the fire blood of Dominik melding with the magic inside her own, awakening something she knew was there all along but was too afraid to face.
The gathering storm of Morgrid’s making swirled with enraged violence, blocking out the stars and the moon. Morgrid finally opened her eyes and bellowed to the night sky. “Winds of night! Heed my call! Take my blood. Make them fall.”
She’d taken a blade from one of the fallen soldiers and sliced open her palm, raising it to the freezing gale, which thickened with icy crystals. The crystals crackled and grew as they rocketed down from the dark heavens. Nikolai cried out as he ran to where Sienna lay, blood pouring from her head, when a six-inch spike of ice embedded in his back, knocking him to the stone floor, immobile.
Mina backed up to the parapet, shaking her head in helpless rage as the deadly shards crashed into stone and into her friends and warriors. None of the icy spikes even touched her. They wouldn’t. The queen needed her alive. But it could kill everyone she knew and loved. Panicked, she leaned over the parapet wall to see on the battlement just below a dagger-size shard impale Mikhail’s wrist, forcing him to drop his sword. Dominik slung his weapon and scored Mikhail across the upper chest, just missing his neck as Mikhail leaned away. Mikhail’s blood spattered the air. Two more ice daggers impaled his thighs, dropping him to the ground. Dominik grinned like the feral predator he was, edging toward his wounded prey.
Mina screamed, gripping the stone of the parapet wall, claws pricking, blood burning.
Far down below on the field, ice daggers and ice swords fell from the sky, piercing the soldiers of the Black Lily army. A rain of ice daggers fell upon Lord Rathbone, his horse squealing as it fell and rolled over the vampire who’d helped her to become queen and had joined her cause.
Another hail of ice blades fell upon Arabelle, Marius, Friedrich, and Grant, who fought back to back, the shards hitting their marks and felling Friedrich to the ground, unmoving.
Kostya pushed his army of rabid vampires forward, bellowing the call to kill them all. In a swarm of screams and blood, the vampires descended and leaped upon the Black Lily army, ripping and clawing them all to the ground. The human army fought, but few could stand up against the rage-filled monsters the queen and her son had created.
Another troop of them filed in from the gaping hole in the wall, coming up behind Lord Rathbone’s army, behind her own Arkadians, slicing through throats. The vampires were on more equal grounds, but with Queen Morgrid’s ice daggers felling Mina’s people one by one, soon there would be no one left standing.
They were losing. And if they lost, she would be a slave to Dominik, for a child to be born of her, ripped from her womb and sacrificed in a black rite to bring an eternity of darkness across the land.
Panic seized her as she watched in helpless horror. “No.”
Then, she heard the call of the white woman inside her. Mina. It was the white witch of legend who spoke to her from within. It is time. Awaken the white queen from her long, long slumber.
Morgrid laughed behind her, a sinister chill filling the air. “What’s wrong, Princess? Not what you had planned with your little army?”
Mina swiveled to face her.
Morgrid flinched at something she saw in Mina’s eyes. Yet her haughty demeanor remained unchanged. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m speaking to a queen, aren’t I?”
Morgrid narrowed her menacing gaze as the ice daggers she summoned from the black sky continued to rain down upon Mina’s friends. Upon her own love. Hart wolves yelped and howled on the field as they were stabbed through.
“Yes,” said Mina, crawling up onto the parapet and then standing slowly as the wind threatened to tip her over. “I am a queen.”
The burning fire of Dominik’s blood coursed through her veins with savage fury, lighting her up with palpable energy that crackled in the air around her. Magic sizzled along her skin.
“I am the white queen of legend.”
Mina’s voice deepened. Darkened. A beast speaking the words. Her body pumping hot and hard, no longer with blood, but with pure powerful magic. Pouring lavalike through her body as her senses intensified, amplified well beyond a vampire. All she could think and feel and yearn for was fire. She smelled it come from her lungs as she breathed deep, smoldering to life inside her own body, the furnace buried at the core of her being.
When she spoke again to Morgrid—now stupefied in place, staring with blatant shock at Mina—her words were barely audible through the earth-deep growl resonating with peril and doom.
“And I am going to kill you.”
…
Dominik smiled, his throat dripping blood where Mina had bit him, easing in a circle. Mikhail didn’t move, his stance straight, his fist clenched on the hilt of his double sword, the gold-tipped blades winking under the moonlight.
“So you’re the one who stole what was mine. Some untitled nobody who couldn’t even make the Legionnaires. Had to start your own little guard.”
“She was never yours.” Mikhail bent his wrist, twirling the blades menacingly. “She never will be.” The moonlight cut the butcher king into harsh angles and lines, but all Mikhail saw was the perfect point and angle he’d slice to remove the bastard’s head. “There are many reasons I want to kill you.” His words were smooth as silk, low and sonorous like a poison that slid into one’s veins without one ever knowing. “The innocents you’ve butchered over the years. The villages you’ve raided and destroyed, including my own mother’s. The countless number of people you’ve terrorized for your own pleasure. But you’ll die tonight for one reason alone.” He took a threatening step forward, his gaze sharp on his opponent’s movements. “Because you dared to touch one hair on her head.”
He scoffed, puffing up his barrel chest. “I touched a lot more than that.”
Red dominated his vision. Mikhail dove onto his enemy. They met in a violent clamor of steel on steel.
Bleeding from the icy shards that had pierced his body in at least seven places, Mikhail crawled up the parapet wall to reach for Mina’s dagger, sheathed in his boot. Pain lacerated his body. Dominik drew closer with certain intent to make the killing blow. Another needle-thin shard of ice hit Mikhail directly in the chest, piercing deep. The shock of the sharp pain distracted him long enough for Dominik to slice across the wrist of his one good hand. The severing of his tendons forced the dagger from his fingers, clattering to the stone.
An ice dagger had cut his other wrist, leaving him literally helpless to even hold a weapon. He bared his sharpened fangs, nevertheless, as the butcher king drew closer.
“Know this, Captain Whoever You Are, before you die.” He inhaled and exhaled a great puff of white air. “I will enjoy Vilhelmina’s sweet body and sweet blood day and night till she gives me an heir.” He tossed Mikhail a haughty smile, swinging his sword up to lay flat against his shoulder in a too-casual manner. “Then I’ll let my Legionnaires have a go at her. None of them have bedded a queen. That will be entertaining. And in all that time, you’ll be rotting in a cold, dark grave.”
Mikhail charged the animal and brought him to the ground, burying a knee on his throat. Dominik leveraged up and launched him off. Cries erupted on the parapet, not cries of pain and death, but of exclamation and surprise. The clanging of swords ceased. Both Mikhail and Dominik looked up to the upper parapet wall, where all eyes had swiveled.
Mina stood atop the banister, her arms outstretched, her unbound hair whipping in the glacial wind, and a haunting vibrant green aura rippling in flames around her body.
“Magic,” whispered Mikhail. “The legend.”
Her body rippled with power, then she roared, letting loose a sound that no human could produce. Her arms extended, stretching outward, long black claws like a bear’s growing from the ends. Then her legs lengthened and widened, as did her torso and her neck.
“Heaven save us,” whispered one of the Legionnaires standing nearby.
Her neck continued to stretch and stretch, her skin changing, shimmering like scales. No, not like scales. They were scales. Her face extended, jaws opening wide. Wider. Her long blond hair stiffening into a jagged spiky spine extending along the back of her lengthening neck until she wasn’t a woman any longer at all.
“My God,” he whispered as she grew taller, until the parapet wall crumbled beneath one of her mighty back claws, her body filling up the entire battlement. And the force of the promise, the vision given to her at her birth when Morgrid had cursed her launched upward in the behemoth form that towered on top of Izeling Tower and roared to the stars. A great white dragon.
She was fixed on something, someone beyond Mikhail’s vision from below. Her neck coiled back like a cobra, then snapped at the unseen object. A piercing woman’s scream echoed into the night as Mina, the dragon, lifted Queen Morgrid in her jaws, clamped around her torso.
“No! Guards! Help me!” screamed the queen who’d murdered and brutalized hundreds, thousands of her own people, just like her son now staring up in stupefied horror. “Nooooo!”
Mina’s eyes glittered bright emerald green with a shocking spark right before she snapped her jaws closed and severed the queen in half. The black storm of ice shards evaporated in a blink, the evil mass of clouds dissolving into the ether. Ice shards falling without force from the sky.
The white dragon queen reared up her head toward the night sky and released a deafening roar. Her head then snaked around and snapped down to the parapet where Mikhail stood, her serpentine green eyes focused on Dominik.
“Oh, no, she doesn’t.”
The wrist where the ice dagger had cut through him had knitted together and healed enough for him to bend over and pick up his double sword. While Dominik stared up in shocked horror at the dragon queen, Mikhail grabbed a fistful of his hair and jerked back.
“I am not a nobody. Know this, before you die. I am Mikhail Romanov, great-grandson to Rodin Varis, the first king of the land before your bloodthirsty mother slayed him on his throne. And I will restore his world of peace while you lie rotting in a cold, dark grave.”
Mikhail then tore through Dominik’s throat with his blade in one slice, jerking his head loose of his spine and slinging it up and over the parapet wall.
Mina’s dragon snorted a satisfactory huff of smoke. While Legionnaires scrambled to get away, she unfurled her white wings and flapped. The gusting wind was now caused by the storm of Vilhelmina Dragomir as she lifted off the battlement into the air, her body glittering like diamonds under the moonlight. She was horrifyingly beautiful. Mikhail smiled.
“My queen,” he whispered to himself as she circled down toward the battlefield.
With a hissing intake of breath, swooping down toward the retreating vampire army, she blew out a stream of electric-green flame, incinerating the screaming vampires in a flash. Dmitri and Katya, still mounted, led the charge against the retreating enemy.
“Yah!” bellowed Dmitri, letting fall from his hand a gold-tipped grappling hook on a chain, one of the many weapons forged in Cutters Cove for this day.
The Bloodguard and Arkadian equestrians still standing launched toward their enemy and let fly their grappling hooks, winding them above their heads as their cavalry pounded down the fleeing Legionnaires. A dozen hart wolves lay in pursuit with them, careening toward the woods.
The rabid vampires with sanguine furorem, and especially those pumped with Dominik’s elixir, didn’t retreat but fought like the maddened beasts they were. Marius, bleeding and roaring with rage, battled three at a time. Arabelle, not far away, engaged two more with Allora swooping in to take down a vampire coming at her back.
The pounding of boots reverberated on the battlement below as Legionnaires stormed upward to defend their queen and the king of Izeling. They circled Yuri, Gregory, and Dane. Dane tossed down his weapon and with a growling howl, ripped open his shirt the second before electricity snapped in the air and a flash of light blinded them all. In his place stood a towering, fierce hart wolf. A low growl rumbling from his throat, his tail whipping. The soldiers took a step back and raised their swords.
With a satisfied grunt, Mikhail heaved his weight off the wall, gripped his double-edged sword tight and leaped the parapet wall to land directly in the center with his men and Dane. The landing jolted his leg injuries. He winced but shook it off.
“Good of you to drop in, Captain,” said Gregory, grinning and wielding a battle ax with a head nearly the size of his own.
Mikhail smiled at the man’s humor at a time like this. He scanned the numbers. “Looks like ten to one.”
Yuri shrugged, blood dripping down his temple from a gash on his head. “We’ve had worse.”
“Indeed, my brothers. Let’s kill the bastards.”
With Dane’s agreeing growl, they lay into the enemy. The fight was far from over.
But above them, the roaring white dragon, the white queen of legend, burned away the enemy of the people, of the good and righteous. Creating a new world, ending the old in green flame. The night wasn’t won yet, but it assuredly would be.
He smiled, remembering the prophecy at her birth. “And she will be the savior of them all.”
Mikhail sliced through one attacker on his left then his right, taking a quick panting breath to glance up into the sky where she soared. The strength and power of beauty and beast in one body.
“Mina mine.”