Page 97 of House of the Iron Reaper

We all turn to Aythora.

Chapter 51

Deyanara

Quiet fury is etched across Aythora’s face. She drops my arm and raises her chin, mouth set.

“You could have had a quick death,” she says to me. “You threw that away.”

My mouth forms the words before my brain has even caught up.

“Poison?” I whisper. I do not understand. “You poisoned me?”

“How?” Novalie steps forward, lips drawn back in a snarl. “Better yet, why?!”

Aythora looks at her with something like pity.

“You should take more care to look into your ancestry,” she says. “Poison dragons are just that—poison.”

Nausea roils in my stomach. No. No, no, no. Aythora taps her cheek.

“You secrete it, right here inside your mouth,” she says with a shrug. “It was not hard to collect.”

All the fire goes out of Novalie. She looks like she’s been slapped.

My mind reels, every moment of the last few months spinning out in front of me. Deimos, dying from an overdose all of us know he did not take. The dizzying breathlessness from kissing Novalie. Ronan smelling something he could not place on all three of us, most of all Deimos before his fight.

My head swims. This is… This cannot…

“They thought it was bahk,” I whisper hoarsely. “They told us he took too much bahk. But it wasn’t—it was you. It was poison.”

The clerics would not have recognised it, a poison dragon has not been here for two hundred years. But they knew he used to take bahk. They made their own conclusions.

“You killed Deimos,” Ronan says lowly. His amber eye is wide and rimmed with white.

“You tried to kill Deyanara,” Novalie chokes out, face twisted.

“I-” Aythora starts.

A fist comes flying from behind me, connecting with Aythora’s chin. With a sickening crack, she flies to the side, landing in the sand. I whirl to see Lysandra with her fists raised.

“You poisoned my daughter?!” she screeches.

In all of Lysandra’s moods, throughout anger and weariness and exhaustion, she has emanated an infallible regalness I thought was inherent to her nature. Now, she’s akin to a feral street cat, wild eyes and bared teeth. Smoke pours from her nostrils. Even I take a step back.

Aythora rolls to the side, spitting blood in the sand, but Lysandra does not give her a moment to breath. With a scream, she launches herself at Aythora, landing hard and grabbing her by the collar. Coal black wings unfurl from Lysandra’s back as she showers blows down on Aythora.

“You dare touch her!” Lysandra shrieks between hits. “I’ll kill you!”

“I think we should get back,” Ronan murmurs, putting his arm in front of us.

Aythora roars, pushing Lysandra off her. Crimson wings snap out from her back, tattoos glowing like lava.

“And I’ll kill every one of you,” Aythora spits back. “Worthless, less-than dragons, a drain on our city!”

Lysandra and Aythora scream at each other as they transform, bodies lengthening into dragon form. Lysandra’s scales are black as night, the white of her fangs stark, but she is significantly smaller than Aythora.

The Ascended dragon stands back on her hind legs, wings spread and maw open as she rumbles the arena with her roar. Lava erupts from her throat, spilling down the sides of her face, but she does not seem to notice. Her scales are black as volcanic rock and lava runs between the seams. I choke back a breath from the sudden heat around her, the moisture stripped from my skin.