Page 7 of A Kingdom of Wild and Power
Ash kissed the tip of her nose, then brushed his lips across her cheek. Taking her hand, he pressed it firmly over his heart.
‘Trust me, Mal.’
Mal inclined her head in silent assent before leaning forward, her lips claiming his. Her fingers slid into his fair hair, tugging him closer until a low groan rumbled from his throat,the kiss deepening with a fierce, desperate hunger. When she was this close to Ash, she could no longer feel the corrosive pull of the God-Killer gnawing at her soul. She did not know why. Ash had once murmured that perhaps it was the nature of their curse; to be bound together, inextricably, for better or worse.
But what would become of her if the day came when he could no longer stand at her side?
Mal refused to think of it. She refused to dwell on curses, or the future, or the gods who hunted her with punishment etched into their design.
With a sudden urgency, she pressed him back onto the vast wyverian bed and climbed astride him. His golden eyes, usually so bright, were now darkened with desire, and she held their gaze unflinchingly as she stripped him bare, until his body lay revealed against her black sheets.
‘Mal…’ he breathed.
‘Don’t speak,’ she whispered, her voice low and commanding. ‘Not now. Just let me love you.’
She read the pain and worry etched in his golden eyes, yet still he nodded, understanding what she sought. With steady hands he slipped the long black gown from her shoulders, and without hesitation Mal straddled him, guiding his length into her. A gasp tore from both their throats in unison.
She moved against him with slow, deliberate rolls of her hips, a smile ghosting her lips at the sight of Ash undone—his head thrown back, breath ragged, hands gripping her waist as though she were the only anchor left in the world. Mal’s gaze never left him. She watched every expression, every tremor of pleasure—banishing thought of gods, curses, and futures from her mind, until at last they both broke into a chorus of breathless curses as release claimed them together.
Afterwards, she collapsed beside him, his arm encirclingher, his fingers threading through her dark hair in slow, affectionate strokes.
In silence they watched as the grey heavens surrendered to night, the blood-red moon rising like an omen above the mountains.
‘You were right,’ she whispered as his lips brushed her ear. ‘We are the villains.’
Hand in hand, their palms entwined protectively over the swell of her stomach,Ash and Mal drifted into sleep.
Is there, truly, a way to forgive someone who has done terrible things? Can even the deepest wounds be mended, the darkest acts softened by time or remorse? Or is there, somewhere in the quiet architecture of morality, a line that once crossed can never be stepped back over?
And if such a boundary exists… who draws it?
For what one soul deems unforgivable, another may excuse, or even understand. We measure wrongdoing with uneven scales, shaped by our own histories, our own fears, our own quiet justifications. Evil, then, is not a fixed thing, but a shifting shadow.
So perhaps redemption is not a universal truth, but a fragile, subjective grace.
Tabitha Wysteria
Hagan paced with a slow, imperious calm along the towering stone battlements of the keep—a grim military school where the Red Guard were forged—perched on the northernmost fringe of the Kingdom of Fire. They had swept through the land like wildfire; this wretched city was the final ember that would make whole their claim upon dragon-haunted lands and relentless flame.
He paused to peer down into the square inner courtyard, where a dozen or so young men knelt in the dust—the fewsurvivors of the day’s slaughter. His eye lingered on the scarlet of their uniforms, the very red he himself had once worn for years. He noted their drakonian horns, burnished like beaten gold, and the brown eyes that stared up with fierce, bitter hatred.
He would remove that hatred swiftly.
Many witches and warlocks had infiltrated the Red Guard years ago with the finality of ending the royal family. But not all who wore the red uniform were witches, for the Red Guard was a vast elite group of warriors. Impenetrable, some would have claimed. Now, now what was left of them were the scattered remains of what once had been mighty—leaves swept away by the breeze, the empty branches the only reminder of their existence. Of their greatness.
Hagan closed his eyes for a moment and breathed in the acrid smoke curling from the distance, letting the last, ragged screams of his enemies fall into the wind like dying flares.
‘Shall we take them prisoner?’ Theodora’s voice came beside him; she moved with the quiet efficiency of a shadow. His most faithful servant, she was unremarkable to look upon—pale, milky skin and an ordinary sort of face which, in a trifling way, suited him well; had she been fairer, perhaps he might have required her company by day as well. She made amends for any plainness at night, tending to him with a devotion that left him sated. He could afford to be indulgent.
‘Kill them,’ Hagan said, his tone final. His gaze drifted to a young drakonian woman at the periphery of the kneeling group—a split lip, one eye slightly swollen, clearly the evidence of some earlier scuffle. She may have been a servant of the keep; but her face struck him with an unnerving familiarity, calling up Alina’s likeness. ‘Bring me that one,’ he added, pointing with a casual cruelty towards the girl. Theodora’s frown was fleeting,quickly smoothed into a nod of compliance.
Before turning to leave, Hagan fixed his attention once more upon the young men in the scarlet of the Red Guard. He snorted, contempt curling his lip.
‘Burn them,’ he commanded.
Witches answered without delay, their palms alight with an unholy green until witchfire leapt from their hands and engulfed the prisoners. Fire, they said, could not truly fell a drakonian; witchfire was another matter entirely, a cruelty that seemed pulled from the very pits of Hell.
Hagan watched with a thin smile as men writhed and cried beneath the flames, their screams snatched up by the wind. He remained unmoved as the light consumed them until, one by one, only blackened ash was left upon the paving stones.
