The Warrior King (Inferno Rising) by Owen, Abigail (reading a book txt) 📕

mirror she reached, a shard of pain split through her mind, as though the mirrors were splitting her with each new reflection. Like she had to donate a part of her soul to gain that reflection. Was this what Kasia had gone through with her own migraines with each vision before she’d mated?

“Meira?” Samael’s voice came at her from a hundred different directions.

She slapped her hands over her ears, closing her eyes, even as she tried not to lose the connections she’d already made.

“Talk to me, Meira. What’s happening?” Urgency underlined the dark tones of his voice and hovered around her own emotions. As well as command, the captain of a king’s guard showing through.

“It’s…too much,” she said.

“Stop.”

Vaguely she was conscious of the squeak of the kitten as he swung in front of her, trying to force her to open her eyes and look at him, hands on her arms, steadying and compelling at the same time.

“Stop, Mir.” If she hadn’t been fixated on the pain and the power, she might’ve paid more attention to his use of her childhood nickname her sisters sometimes still used and the slight tinge of panic brushing against her emotions.

Samael didn’t panic. She knew him well enough to know that for certain.

“No,” she mumbled. “I can do this.”

Silence greeted that. Had he heard?

“What do you need?” he finally asked in a voice gone dragon.

Her mind managed to break away from the pain enough to latch on to that question. What did she need? More of herself? No, that didn’t make sense given how she’d done this on a smaller scale. She wasn’t splitting her soul to teleport the way she did, no matter what this felt like.

So, what was she doing?

“Fire.” She wasn’t sure if she said the word aloud. Didn’t matter. She needed more fire. More power. Maybe if she could get to her sisters—

Suddenly the searing agony in her mind eased under an unexpected onslaught of heat. Perhaps merely thinking of her fire had stoked the inferno inside her? The hundreds of connection points grew less painful with each passing moment until she was able to drop her hands and open her eyes.

Oh. My. Heavens.

The fire wasn’t coming from her, but from Samael. He stood before her, ablaze in flames of pure black sparking silver at the tips.

Living, dancing, beautiful death.

Eyes consumed by the inferno, he focused solely on her in a way that turned her insides liquid, melting her, feeding her his fire, turning her own red-gold flames blacker with each passing second, as if his power consumed hers.

A gasp threatened to escape her, but Samael covered her mouth with his hand. “Let’s not risk my fire getting inside you.”

In other words, let’s not risk an accidental mating, if such a thing was possible without the sex.

A shard of hurt, not from the use of her powers, embedded in her chest. Why? Because he didn’t want to mate her? Why would he? She belonged to his king. No matter what she’d thought she’d seen in his eyes earlier.

Even so, she couldn’t rid herself of the sensation it left inside her. Emptiness. Like the time they’d had to abandon their home and her mother made her leave her favorite toy behind.

Abandoned.

“Is it working?”

His question jerked her back to the task at hand. Gods, what am I doing? She forced her concentration to her powers alone and the task she’d set herself to complete. “I think so.”

All those connections sliced and pulled at her. A glance over his shoulder showed her tiny images across the mirror, like a thousand picture-in-picture screens. Concentrating, Meira used the power coursing through her, making her fingertips tingle. The points of connection came easier now, as though she simply had to sift through the mountain to find each one and add it to her display.

“I’ve got them all,” she said when she could feel no more within the mountain.

Even through the flames she could see his eyebrows go up. “All of them?”

“Yes, but let’s not test how long we can do this.” She waved at him to step to her side.

The kitten weaved around his feet but remained close. Once he stood beside her, she took a deep breath and made it so those on the other end of the connections could see. Gods knew what the clan would think about Samael feeding her his fire like this, but they’d have to risk it.

Now for the worst part. Public speaking.

“Dragon shifters of the Black Clan,” Samael boomed beside her.

In the tiny reflections, those who already hadn’t turned to look did so now, expressions reflecting a hundred different reactions—mistrust, hate, curiosity, horror, hope. No sense of emotions bombarded her though, not through the reflection. At least she didn’t have that extra chaos to contend with.

Meira held on to the hope.

“You know me. I am Samael Veles. You have heard from Pytheios, the false High King,” Samael continued. “Now it’s our queen’s turn.”

Shouts rose from the mirror. “She is not our queen,” they said, or various versions of the same.

Meira held on to the solid determination radiating from the man at her side and put on that mask of confidence she’d known she’d have to wear the day she offered to mate a king. She tipped up her chin the way she’d seen Kasia and Skylar do a thousand times. “Your king still lives.”

“Liar!” came the louder response from the collective.

She hid a flinch. “The man who died in my fire was a red dragon bewitched to look like Gorgon. We are searching for our king now.”

Those who fell among the angrier of the clan continued to shout, but others quieted, listening. She said the words Sam had told her to use.

“Gorgon’s most loyal protector stands at my side. Gorgon is my mate in words, and when I find him, we will be mated in deed.”

She tried not to pay attention to the doubts wanting to take the strength of conviction away from that declaration. Or the sudden fracture of