Semua Bab The Dragon Slayer's Queen : Bab 51 - Bab 56

They had a good reason to fear a trap.The moment Zayla and Bella pressed their palms against the relic’s cold, coiled bone, the world erupted into chaos. The ceiling hissed and heaved; a web of glassy veins sprang to life, channeling a blizzard of blue fire into the walls. The dead shifters surrounding the column spasm one last time, their bodies hollowed by centuries, but still not nearly hollow enough. Their skulls jerked on broken necks, jaws dropping in near-unison rictus, and what bled their eye sockets wasn’t mere emptiness, but smoke and wrath—shadows erupting like wasps from a nest.Jenifer, Liam, and Amanda hit the floor with trained reflexes just as a shock wave of force flung every living being back from the column. The Queen remained upright, her mouth twisted into a feral, vindicated smile. Zayla, half-blinded, felt the bones in her hands screaming with raw, overcharged power; her vision fractured into violet shards until all she could see was Ari’s fear reflected back a

It was not even midnight when the world turned itself inside out.Zayla felt it first as a metallic taste in her mouth, a wild current slicing through her bones. The sensation was so sudden that she dropped the relic she had been inspecting—the artifact rolled across the uneven sanctuary floor. It clinked against the glassy obsidian, spinning like a coin between fate and chaos. The air in the sanctuary, already razor-thin, now vibrated with a pressure that made her skull hum.The celestial event was heralded for twelve generations and dreaded by every person as arriving a week ahead of schedule.Ari’s panic was instant. With a scream that cut straight through her mind, Ari warned Zayla, “You are NOT READY.” But that wasn’t even half the truth.Against the wall, Bella stood doubled over, hands braced on her knees, strands of wet black hair sticking to her cheeks. Blue scales flickered up one arm, then vanished. Zayla rushed to her, and in that moment, the world stopped pretending it ha

Zayla could not remember the last time her heart beat without dread, but tonight it managed it—two, maybe three solid thumps of pure, uncut joy. The great hall of Cordiva was chaotic, all bruised knuckles and celebratory shouting, the high windows glowing with the kind of indigo twilight that made the world outside feel solicitous and far away. At the head of the table, the Queen—their mother—sat sinuous and tall, her sleeves rolled to the elbow, laughing in a way that was so unfamiliar it almost hurt to look at her. Even the guards, faces usually locked in predatory readiness, had split into raucous factions, gambling on the outcomes of arm wrestling matches or, in one case, a contest to see who could eat the most pickled eggs without retching.Bella and Zayla, for the first time in all their years, took up their places together at the heart of it: not hiding, not calculating their exits, but simply present. Bella’s hair was a damp rope down her back, her jaw bruised and knuckles spl