Shadows of Fire (The Shadow Realms, Book 1) by Brenda Davies (free e books to read .TXT) 📕

lycan part of himself under control. Hecouldn’t lose control of it now. That’s exactly what theLord wanted.

“How about some poker?” his fathersuggested.

Cole turned toward him as a click sounded inthe door. Both their heads shot toward it as a key turned. A secondlater, the door swung open to reveal the same messenger who hadescorted them from the Gloaming.

CHAPTER 61

“The Lord will see you now,” the man said.

Cole exchanged a look with his father, andthen Tove smiled as he rose from his chair. He smoothed out hisshirt and pants before striding toward the messenger. The warlock’seyes flickered nervously as Tove approached him, but he lifted hischin.

“Of course,” his father said with an airytone that belied the rage simmering beneath his surface.

Cole matched his dad’s laid-back demeanor ashe followed him from the room. They swept through the enclosed,gray stone hallway before arriving at a set of stairs. Those stairsspiraled down the middle of a circular opening that descended tothe main entrance ten floors below.

Like the hallway, the walls here were allbarren and lacked any color. He’d heard that when the arach whoonce ruled this land still lived here, the palace was alive withcolor, noise, parties, the arach, and other immortals, but none ofthat remained.

One of the mad Lords had stripped all thetapestries, rugs, and paintings from the palace and burned them inthe courtyard. Now, not only was the place bleak, but it was alsoas hushed as a tomb.

There was no banister for the stairs, so theystayed close to the wall as they descended. Their footsteps echoingoff the stone was the only sound until a dragon released a roarfrom somewhere within the palace. That roar reverberated off thewalls and rebounded incessantly around them.

The hair on Cole’s nape rose, but he kept hisface impassive as they arrived on the first floor. The messengerled them down a hallway filled with statues of golden dragonssituated in various positions.

Some of the statues had the ill-fated arachposed beside them. He suspected the only reason these statuessurvived the purge of all the other decorations was because theylooked like they weighed a ton.

Cole examined the statues as they passed. Ithad been a thousand years since the last arach ruled the ShadowRealms and Dragonia. He’d never met an arach, but his father hadknown them and would sometimes tell stories of them.

Besides controlling the dragons, the powerfularach could withstand being burned by flames, throw fire from theirhands, and cast spells like witches. Some of those spells remainedon this palace as they blocked vampires from teleporting out.

No vampire could teleport into a residence,even if they were invited in at some point, but they could allteleport out unless something stopped them. And here, the lingeringpower of the arachs kept them trapped.

The arachs weaved a powerful brand of magic,but despite their many powers, they were now the cautionary talemany children heard at bedtime and many rulers tried to avoidbecoming.

The long-lost rulers of the dragons lookedlike most other immortal creatures. They didn’t have wings like thepixies and didn’t shapeshift like the lycan, but they had fangslike vampires, and if the statues were any indication, they had thearrogant stance of an immortal sure of their place in thisworld.

They shouldn’t have been so confident as thatplace no longer existed.

His father once told him that in thebeginning, the arach were a rather peaceful species. Still,disagreements on how to rule the Shadow Realms resulted in a civilwar that dethroned the original ruling family and sent them intoexile.

But the war didn’t end there, and eventually,all the powerful creatures destroyed each other.

That war nearly destroyed the Shadow Realmswhen it spilled out of Dragonia. The dragons wreaked havocthroughout the realms as the arach battled to the death.

When the dust settled and nothing remained ofthe arach, their once-tamed dragons ran wild throughout the realms.His father once told him they’d believed they were all doomed.They’d managed to kill some of the dragons, but there were far toomany, and the realms were falling apart.

However, when the first non-arach ruler saton the throne, the dragons returned to Dragonia. That was when theimmortals learned whoever held the throne controlled thebeasts.

It didn’t take them long to realize thatwhoever held the throne couldn’t handle its power, and iteventually eroded their sanity until they became a corrupted,broken version of their old selves.

The first ruler had only taken the throne ona whim. The warlock entered Dragonia in the hopes of avoiding thedragons now living in the other realms. He’d been lured by thepower of the throne and decided to sit on it. That decision was theturning point in the war against the dragons as his presence on thethrone called them back to Dragonia.

That warlock went from a peace-loving man toone consumed by the paranoia that others were trying to kill him.He became determined to stop his imaginary assassins before theystopped him and set the dragons free again. That mistake cost him.He was dethroned by a lycan who moved in for the kill while thedragons were gone.

The lycan ascended to power only to sufferthe same fate.

The messenger stopped outside a set ofimmense double doors. Each door held the carving of a dragon inmidflight. The dragons’ tails curled before them, and their wingsspread open as fire erupted from their mouths.

Almost everything within this place was drab,but these dragons were a splash of vivid, detailed color amid allthe gray. The fire looked so real it seemed it would burn hisfingers if he touched it. The rubies in their eyes gleamed in therays of the sun streaming through the windows. The emeralds oftheir green scales cast green color across the floor.

The messenger pulled both doors open andstepped back. He gestured for them to enter the enormous, grandhall. It was at least the size of two football fields long andanother football field wide. The room was so large that the throneon the other end, and the man sitting on it, were barelydiscernible.

Half a dozen dragons lounged inside the room.They were coiled up with their tails near their heads as they dozedcontentedly in the sun streaming down on them.

When the doors opened, the dragon closest tothem cracked its