THE DRAGON BLOOD SON-IN-LAW

CHAPTER 6

"Adrian…"

The voice filtered out from the broken floor, low and familiar and devoured the rest of the sounds in the room. The cracking stone, the yelling, even Ravian's breaths.

Adrian stopped in place.

Twenty six years of his life, she had been a ghost. Something he sometimes smelled in the air. A hand brushing his forehead in dreams he could barely remember upon waking.

Now she was calling him.

"Mom?"

Adrian took a step towards the opening before Seraphine gripped his arm.

"Adrian, wait."

He wrenched himself free. The marble beneath him trembled and another portion of the floor gave way, revealing a drop of golden light. A thick heat rolled from the darkness below.

"She's down there."

Nyxara blocked his path. "No."

"You told me she was dead."

"I told you that the records said she was dead."

His eyes narrowed. "You knew."

Nyxara said nothing.

"How much?"

Nyxara shook her head. "Not enough."

Adrian chuckled mirthlessly. "Seems to be the answer everyone's giving me tonight."

Ravian raised the cylinder and the amusement bled from his voice. "Get away from the opening. Whatever's beneath this house is no longer contained."

"Your people caused this."

"No," Ravian said, nodding at Orren. "They did."

"We protected Veyrith," Orren said.

"You surround it with a prison."

"We had no choice."

"I'm tired of hearing that," Adrian hissed. "You knew about my father. You knew about my mother. And you knew exactly who I was."

Orren finally looked at him. "Yes."

Adrian's stomach twisted. Three years of being ridiculed in this house, three years of wondering why the Sterlings had allowed him to be here at all and he suddenly understood that his marriage had been no accident.

"Why?"Because keeping you ignorant kept you alive."Then why not tell me?"

"Because the second you knew what you were, they would know too."

"Who's they?"

Orren glanced at the opening. "Everyone who has been waiting for the Dragon heir to appear."

The mansion shuddered again. Caedmon gripped the table. "What's happening now?"

"The seal is failing," Nyxara said.

Ravian shook his head, looking into the golden light. "No," he said. "It's not failing. It's opening."

Adrian's eyes dropped to the image that floated above the broken floor.

[DRAGON SOVEREIGN SYSTEM]

[ORIGINAL DRAGON CORE RESONANCE: 31%]

[HOST STABILITY: 5%]

[WARNING: DIRECT CONTACT WITH CORE PROHIBITED.]

"Why?"

No answer. That was what frightened him the most. The System had been his guide since the night his blood had awakened, the one voice in his life that had not deceived him. But his mother had warned him against trusting it. Now it was warning him away from the very place his mother's voice was coming from.

Seraphine came to stand beside him. "What did it say?"

"Don't touch the Core," Adrian muttered.

"Then don't."

"I have to find her."

"You don't know that's her."

"I know my mother's voice."

"You did twenty six years ago. You're hurt. You're bloodline is unstable. Something down there is reacting with you and someone, using her voice, is attempting to lure you in."

Adrian looked into the darkness. She was right. She was always right. That was the problem.

"I can't leave her."

"I'm not asking you to. I'm asking you not to do this alone."

He looked at her. Three years of her barely standing at his side while her family tore into him, and today, was different.

"Then come with me."

"I'm coming."

"So am I," Nyxara said, stepping forward.

Ravian raised the cylinder. "No."

"You stay here," Adrian said.

"You think you give me orders?"

"No," Adrian said, closing the distance betwen them. "I think you need me more than I need you."

Ravian's knuckles whitened around the cylinder. "Give me that."

"You don't even know what you're holding."

"I know exactly what it is."

Dragon sight flared and Adrian saw the connection running from the cylinder to the seal. It was searching. Looking for something. Someone.

"You've been trying to open the gate," Adrian said. "And you need my blood to do it."

Ravian's silence was confirmation enough.

A deep crack split the ceiling and Orren swore. "Enough." He pulled a silver key from his coat.

"Father?" Seraphine asked.

"We don't have time," he said, kneeling at the opening and inserting the key into a mechanism hidden beneath the broken floor.

Click.

The stone beneath them groaned and a staircase appeared, made of black marble smoothed with age and leading into nothing.

Nyxara's face had gone ashen. "I've never seen that."

"Because no Veyne was ever meant to open it," Orren said, refusing to look at her.

"You knew this was here?"

"I prayed you would never have to know," Orren said.

"Then let's see what you've been hiding," Adrian said, stepping onto the first step.

The trip down the staircase seemed endless. The stone grew colder with each step and the light above grew dimmer until Seraphine's only illumination.

No one spoke. Then Adrian heard it. A single tap. A sound too quiet to be anything but deliberate.

Tap.

He stopped. Seraphine's hand brushed his sleeve.

Tap.

Something was shifting on the other side of the stone.

"Did you hear that?" she whispered.

He nodded and they continued downwards.

The stairwell opened into a cavern that stretched away into darkness. Adrian barely had time to stop before Seraphine ran into him. The far end of the chamber was not stone, but glass. Beyond it, a chamber held a single golden crystal. The crystal was cracked from end to end.

Inside the crystal stood a woman. Her hair was dark and her skin was too pale under the golden light, one hand pressed to the glass from the inside.

Adrian's breath caught in his throat. None of this was familiar, and yet, he knew her.

"Mom."

Her eyes found him and grief bloomed across her face in the space of a heartbeat. He took a step closer and she raised her hand. He did the same, pressing his palm against the other side of the glass, and for a moment there was nothing in the world but the space between his skin and hers.

Then the System spoke.

[HOST CONNECTION DETECTED.]

His mother's face crumpled in horror. She shook her head, once, twice, fiercely.

"What?"

She pointed at him, then at the air where the System's words had vanished. She was warning him.

[UNAUTHORIZED MEMORY ACCESS.]

Adrian yanked his hand back and his mother's eyes widened. She struck the glass with her palm once, twice, her lips forming silent words.

Then her gaze moved past his shoulder and her face drained of color.

Adrian turned and saw Seraphine standing a few steps back, her shadow stretching over the black floor

Except it wasn't her shadow. Something else stood behind her, tall and broad shouldered and silver haired.

Adrian's blood ran ice.

The figure smiled.

All the lights in the chamber flared to life and Seraphine's body jerked violently, her body going rigid as her eyes went hazy and blank

"Seraphine?"

No response.

"Seraphine."

Her mouth moved. The voice that came out was not her own.

"Adrian."

He stiffened. That voice. That calm, cold voice belonged to someone who had stood in this very chamber, moments before, with a black ring in his hand and a broken window at his back.

Behind the glass, his mother's face contorted in pure, naked terror.

Seraphine's lips moved again.

"Your father wants to speak with you."

The System flared again.

[CRITICAL ERROR.]

[UNAUTHORIZED ENTITY DETECTED.]

Then all the lights went out in the chamber and something behind the glass began to laugh.