A Queen of Ruin (Deliciously Dark Fairytales 4)

I felt a comforting hand lower onto my shoulder, and then another. Calia and Dessia. They’d been here all night, not leaving my side. When I cried so hard I threw up, one of them wiped my face while Nyfain continued to hold me. The other held my hair. They’d watched the little wooden house with me in silence, lending support, certainly not because they harbored a slender hope, like I did, that Hannon might walk back out of it at any moment. As though this had all been a horrible prank and he wasn’t gone forever.

Not far away, Hadriel and Leala sat holding each other, their grief just as raw. They’d gotten very close to Hannon in the demon dungeon. Vemar was sitting with them, offering his quiet support. Weston and Micah and my guard were also keeping vigil with us. A lot of the other dragons had stayed close, too, and many of the wolves, those that didn’t need to sleep to resume their guard.

Several faeries had joined us, many I didn’t know and had never seen before. It wasn’t their custom, sitting out all night rather than viewing the lost before burial, but they did it anyway. The garden staff had stayed, and even the queen had come to sit with us for a time. Everyone shared in my devastating grief, in the grief of everyone who’d lost someone this night.

When the first rays of the sun painted the sky, I blinked up in confusion. It didn’t feel right, the sunrise. Light didn’t belong here. It felt unnatural.

“We should send for something to eat,” Nyfain said, stroking my face.

“I’m not hungry—”

“I’ll take care of it.” Leala jumped up, turning to go, but her step slowed. She looked around. “Do you hear something?”

“Is that…” someone else said, and everyone’s faces started to slowly turn toward the houses all lined up in a solemn row. “Is that smoke?”

I looked over in confusion.

As though it were waiting for me to notice, the little house that contained Hannon burst into flames.

Nyfain jumped up, hauling me up against him, and then rushed forward and barked commands. The scene quickly turned to chaos, shifters bursting into wolves and rushing to secure the area, trying to find whoever might’ve set the fire. The faeries were quick to follow them, not trusting foreigners to secure the castle grounds. Dragons shifted and took to the sky to get an aerial view as those left on the ground rushed to the woodshed, issuing commands to get water and put out the flames.

I stared in horror. I couldn’t fathom who would try to kill my brother again. There was a personal grievance, and then there was this.

The fire burned hot and bright in the new morning. Black smoke rose into the sky, disrupting the beautiful colors of the sunrise. The little house was quickly consumed and just as quickly burned down to the ground. The fire must have been magically charged, because matches and fire starter never could’ve created that effect. No dragon could’ve burned it that fast.

As the wood fell to a blackened crisp and the flames died, a great, fiery beast rose into the sky. As large as a dragon but with slender, more efficient wings, it was a beautiful sight to behold. Flame shivered out from its feathered yellow-orange chest and blasted through its deep red wingtips. Its clawed feet flexed and curled, as if it was testing them out, and it gnashed its pointed beak. The feathers on its head, long and wild like a tornado, caught the light and threw it in a beautiful kaleidoscope of color.

Its head swirled until it saw me. The flame minimized until it was just a whisper, curling along its wings, and then a soft glow of power that reminded me of those illuminated everlass leaves.

“Hannon?” I whispered softly, knowing what this beast was. I’d read about its kind in books, although they were always described as mythical. No one believed they had ever been anything but a great, magical, fantastical story.

The story of the phoenix.

The story of a creature who would never die from violence. Only old age could kill the mythical being, and its age was clocked in hundreds, sometimes thousands of years. Or so the stories went.

The creature beat its wings and rose a little more before flying forward, toward me. The house behind it was a pile of blackened wood. Nyfain’s hand tightened on my shoulder.

I expected people to scatter, to give the creature more space, afraid of a beast whose firepower was greater than any dragon, even Nyfain. Instead they rushed toward me, standing in front of me. Dragons crowded overhead, dipping low, ready to battle.

“Hannon?” I asked again, tears again filling my eyes. Hopeful tears this time. Tears of desperation.

The phoenix dropped low, hovered so that those in front of me would give it a little more space, and then landed gracefully.