Page 115 of The Serpent Prince

A loud blast above startled the air into an eerie silence before everything was raining down on her. Rocks, dust, shingles, pieces of wood … and then a body slammed into the rocks above. It fell in front of her then tumbled lower. She ducked, covering her head as Kiran’s dragon banked left and roared again with his horde behind him.

The ground shook with another blast. A wall of fire from the dragon—Kiran—erupted. More debris hit her.

Gasping, she pushed a hand and a leg off her and screamed. Swiping her wand through the air, she created a protective wall of shadow around her, watching everything blast away from her.

She turned to head back up to the castle, to confront him.

A rush of heat stung her back. Imani whipped around, facing the clearing, taking in the dancing flames of several massive fires just beginning to rage in the courtyard.

Prowling forward, no longer afraid—just furious he would keep this truth from her—she moved everything out of her path and looked up. Now most of the right side of the palace was on fire. Dark, black smoke billowed, so hot and thick, and getting hotter as it burned.

People trapped inside waved white clothes, their clothes, and threw shoes. The Niflheim Kingdom’s people were begging for mercy.

Kiran didn’t have any mercy. He was unstoppable. A weapon of mass destruction, there was nothing that could stop an actual dragon, let alone the horde.

She watched them die. Burning alive in a heat she could only imagine. So hot it must have been true hell, like the deepest parts of the Under.

Some decided to end their misery and jump, and she heard the bodies smashing into the ground.

Smash.

Smash.

Scream. Smash.

Bodies literally piled up around her.

Imani clenched her fists, trying to ignore the sight. While her heart was hardened, she wasn’t heartless—this amount of violence and destruction was something she’d never witnessed or had even imagined. Magnus needed to be stopped from taking over Essenheim—his work camps were an abomination to magic users—and when Imani learned of the witches he’d enslaved, she believed any means justified the ends.

Now she wasn’t so sure.

She kept moving, unable to think too long about how hot it must be on those top floors.

Imani made good time back up to the castle, but she could hear rumblings of something happening above. The ground shook some more, and she lifted her chin as another blast of fire from the dragons circling overhead blew through the lower level. A few breaths, and she watched more of the right side crumble.

Almost everything was on fire now. It was so hot. Hotter than anything she’d ever felt.

Another screech from the dragon above motivated her forward faster.

She was back in the gardens now. She was so close.

A loud rumbling sound came from the castle. Imani gasped, blasting her wand above her head in a makeshift shadow shield while covering her head as half the palace collapsed, the structure unable to withstand the heat. Some debris knocked her back, covering half her body in a dust cloud of poisonous air. Her shadows blasted everything away, clearing her body of the dirt and rocks.

A darkness like she’d never seen surrounded her—protection from her magic. The heat was so hot she felt her skin might melt as she tried to catch her breath.

Another rumble, and she was powerless to stop the second wave of debris exploding down over her crouched body.

Then everything went still.

She lifted her chin to the mountain and saw the palace on fire, but most of the left side was standing still. A calm fell as she heard the fire blazing above. A screech in the distance alerted her to Kiran. She needed to move before he attacked again and she was crushed.

Was she nothing to the prince if he was willing to risk her safety with this attack? Or did his faith in her magic give him the confidence? She didn’t know. As with everything with Kiran, he was duplicitous.

Another blast sent her stumbling, and she tried to stay upright as an explosion of fire raged above her.

Terror like she had never known filled her chest as a cloud smothered everything.

It covered her entirely, and the air was sucked from her lungs in a powerful swoosh as the cloud smothered her.