A Birthright of Blood (The Dragon War, Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

the
night—one blue and veined, the other a contraption of leather
stretched over wood.
    "Twisted freak,"
Leresy said, staring at her.
    The pup Relesar, a soft boy, had
ripped off her left wing. Shari had built herself this prosthetic,
this mockery of true dragon glory. The wood-and-leather apparatus
creaked like a sail.
    "You look like a
fisherman's barge, Shari!" he screamed at her, voice hoarse, and
laughed. "Look at you! A freak. A joke."
    She flapped her wings and rose
several feet in the air. Her claws reached out. Before Leresy could
even stumble back, let alone become a dragon himself, she grabbed him
like an owl grabs a mouse.
    "Shari!" he screamed
and struggled in her grip, but couldn't free himself. He tried to
shift now, but her claws constricted him, keeping him in human form.
    "Silence, brother,"
she said. "I'm taking you to him."
    She flew. Her wings beat in
unison, her true wing and her mechanical monstrosity. Leresy
squirmed in her grip, screaming and cursing and spitting. The city
rolled beneath him, a whirlpool of black buildings, streaming lights,
and streets like veins in a rotted heart. Leresy gagged again,
spewing wine into the sky. His head tilted back, he moaned, and he
saw it there.
    The ground lay above him, the
sky below. The palace of Tarath Imperium hung like a stalactite, a
thousand feet tall. It ended with a claw of black, jagged
battlements. Torches flickered across it, and dragons circled the
tower like flies around the hand of a corpse.
    Tarath Imperium. The greatest
tower in the empire. The home of his father.
    It was the very last place
Leresy wanted to go.
    "We would have ruled this
place together, Nairi," he whispered, head dangling. "It
could have been ours. It should have been ours. But she betrayed
us." He growled and wept. "Kaelyn betrayed us. We will
kill her, Nairi! We will kill her."
    His eyes fluttered shut. He
barely noticed Shari shrieking, descending, and carrying him to the
palace doors. Next thing he knew, he was stumbling on his feet
again, wobbling so madly he almost fell. Only Shari, who marched
while gripping his collar, held him up. He blinked, trying to bring
the world into focus, and saw his sister dragging him into the palace
throne room.
    He blinked madly. Shari was in
human form again; he hadn't even noticed her shifting back. He
shoved her off.
    "Let go!" he said.
"Unhand me. I'm not one of your dogs."
    He reached for his sword, then
cursed when—yet again—he realized it was gone.
    Shari laughed, released his
collar, and shoved him so powerfully he stumbled several paces back.
He hit a column, managed to remain standing, and glared.
    The throne room of Requiem was,
quite handily, the largest chamber Leresy had ever seen. Dragons
could fly here and find it roomy. A hundred columns stood in two
palisades, rising taller than the greatest pines. The vaulted
ceiling sported paintings of dragons flying among clouds. More
dragons, these ones battling phoenixes, coiled across the floor in a
mosaic. That floor stretched between the columns, leading to the
distant throne of the emperor.
    Leresy hissed at that throne.
His father sat there, the man Leresy hated most.
    "Father!" he cried,
voice echoing in the hall. "You wanted to see me, Father. I am
here! Your son is here."
    He lurched down the hall,
swaying from column to column for support. He cackled as he walked,
spraying saliva. Finally—it seemed like he walked for hours—he
stood before Frey Cadigus, Emperor of Requiem.
    The old bastard sat in that
ivory throne of his, looking like some stuffed vulture. Leresy
imagined him roosting on eggs and barked a laugh. Grooves framed the
emperor's thin, frowning lips. His dark hair was slicked back. His
shoulders were wider than Leresy's, and his pauldrons made them seem
even wider. But his eyes, Leresy thought… his eyes were the
hardest thing about him. Those eyes were black, narrow, and cruel.
They could see better than eagles, he thought. They could see
through