The Dragon King's Hated Bride
Chapter 112: Save

Chapter 112: Save

>>Draegon

I couldn’t breathe.

Not like how I should be breathing. My chest was tight, every inhale was fire and gravel. I stood because instinct told me to. But when the nun crushes me under her, she punctured my ribs pretty bad and since then I have been having trouble breathing.

My vision was a red haze. The courtyard was little more than a blur of broken bodies, shattered stone, and the shrill shrieks of the spider nun echoing endlessly in front of the crumbling palace walls. I swayed where I stood. One leg buckled slightly, and I corrected with a stumble, claws dragging a groove into the dust beneath me.

I could hear them fighting around me—Ariston’s voice cut through the chaos, sharp and defiant—but the battlefield was warped, as if I were underwater.

I opened my mouth to warn them.

"The eye. Her core was in her eye." I wanted to say it

But nothing came out.

No sound. No flame. No words.

Just the metallic taste of my own breath.

I had burned too much. Spent too much. My lungs ached, scorched raw from the last burst of fire that had scorched her underside. And yet it hadn’t killed her. I need time to heal my throat but I don’t have the luxury to wait it out.

We have to kill her here and now.

I took a step toward her.

Pain shot up my thigh. I staggered. Something inside me twisted—something wrong.

Black.

Her blood. Her cursed blood had seeped into the gashes in my side when she crushed me earlier, and now it burned inside me. Not like fire—no, I could have endured that. This was corruption. Infection of something darker.

I grit my teeth. Shook my head.

It was weird, painful. Like something was trying to eat me from the inside. This feeling was familiar. I had a taste of it during the war as well, but it wasn’t this deep then.

I tried again.

But my knees collapsed beneath me, hitting the ground hard. I gasped. The courtyard spun. I felt bile in my throat. I couldn’t.

She shrieked.

The sound carved straight through bone, and when I looked up—

She had taken out the others. I saw them—bodies flung across the walls like broken dolls, crumpled, unmoving.

And she was coming for me.

Straight for me.

I saw her limbs rise, crooked and pointed like spears. Her maw opened—jagged, sharp rows of needle like teeth, unhinging like a beast unbound. She was going to eat me. Chomp off my head like I was nothing. No weapon. No strength left to raise. I had nothing left to give.

I closed my eyes.

I can’t lose like this

I have to move

I opened my eyes again.

DO SOMETHING!!! I took out my claws and for what felt like ripping my muscles apart, I tried to get up again as her mouth closed in on me, those sharp teeth came towards me but right at the last moment my knees gave out and I went down again

No-

I raised my claws to defend myself. I have to!

This—

A sound.

A crackling roar.

Light.

Golden. White. Blinding.

It surged past me so fast the air itself rippled, and for one breathless second, the battlefield froze. Everyone—soldiers, demons, even the spider nun—halted, stunned by the sudden pulse of holy flame that cut through the chaos.

And it struck her—dead center—in the eye.

Her eye.

!!!!???

The corrupted one.

Where her core was hidden.

Her shriek turned to a scream, a raw, guttural wail of pain. Her body convulsed backward, smoke pouring from the burning socket, limbs writhing like severed wires.

What?

For a moment I couldn’t believe it. How her body was getting electrcuted. Her limbs jerked as if she was being ripped apart from the inside.

I shot my head up, blinded, blinking away the haze.

And there—

Among the humans who were watching the battle through the broken wall-

Standing straight-backed, her outstretched hand—

Was her.

My wife.

"Aelin?"

***

>>Aelin

I stood at the edge of the broken palace wall, the fractured stones at my feet like jagged bones, my hands trembling against the chill. Below us, the battlefield was chaos. Smoke. Screams. The metallic stench of blood and burnt flesh. And in the middle of it all—him.

Draegon.

I watched as his knees buckled, watched as he struggled to rise, again and again, even though he clearly had nothing left. His claws dug into the ground as if that alone would anchor him to life. My chest clenched.

He was going to die.

"You shouldn’t be here," King Orin’s voice cut sharply beside me. "What are you even doing?" Honestly, I hadn’t noticed father was here too. Not until he spoke.

I turned my head slightly, my vision swimming with the effort.

"I came to help," I whispered, the words barely rising above the wind.

Orin scoffed, rolling his eyes as though I was a child playing dress-up in a war.

But I couldn’t explain. Not to him. Not now.

I had woken up barely an hour ago, the world a blur, my body heavy and sore. Seraphine’s arms had been around me, cradling me like a daughter. She’d whispered something soft and worried, begged me not to move, told me to rest, that I wasn’t strong enough yet. That the battle was out there—not mine to fight.

But in my dream...

In my dream, someone had called me. A voice I couldn’t name but felt too familiar.

It felt like Asha’s voice. one that pulled on my very soul.

"He needs you."

I had jolted upright. And I knew.

I had run. Run without armor, without a plan, ignoring Seraphine’s voice calling after me, telling me to stay put and that it was dangerous.

My legs carried me faster than they should have. I wasn’t ready. My body knew I wasn’t ready.

But my heart didn’t care.

Because Draegon was down there. And he was falling.

Now I saw it with my own eyes.

His shoulders slumped forward. Blood poured from open wounds. His breathing was shallow, ragged. And the spider nun towered above him, black limbs twitching, her disgusting, gaping mouth stretching open wider than it should have, razor-sharp teeth glinting

She was going to eat him.

No.

No, I wouldn’t let it happen.

A cold spike of panic drove itself into my chest and forced my hand upward before I even thought. My fingers trembled as I began to chant

The air stilled.

A golden thread sparked in my palm.

I focused it on her and it led me towards her eye, it focused on the eye that glowed like poison in her head. That must be the place her core hid. I could feel the dark magic pulsing there like a heartbeat. \

Waiting.

The chant spilled from my lips, clumsy but desperate.

And the golden flame raced from my hand.

It howled down the battlefield like a divine arrow, slicing through smoke and shadow until it struck the nun’s eye dead-on.

She shrieked—a horrid, alien sound that rattled the stones beneath my feet. Her limbs flailed wildly, her body convulsing as white-hot fire exploded inside her skull.

Her eye burst

Then

Her face burst.

She screamed again—then collapsed. Crashing down like a mountain, her twitching limbs stilled at last.

Silence followed.

All eyes turned to me.

I tried to smile.

Tried to see Draegon—still alive. On his knees. Staring up at me with those wide, stunned eyes.

But then the world tilted sideways.

The wind disappeared.

My knees gave out, and darkness swelled up around me before I even hit the ground. The very last feeling I felt was someone rapidly holding me in his arms before I hit the floor and hurt myself.

And it clearly wasn’t any of the humans because I clearly heard the sound of wings flapping.

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