The Rise of Deragon (The Deragon Duology #2)

12

Venus

J ericho jolts awake in the night, a cold sweat forming along his brow.

I’ve become all too familiar with the behavioral patterns his visions tend to draw out of him—mainly because, sometimes, I experience them, too.

I’ve always found our divine connection peculiar, albeit fascinating. In the beginning, it terrified me to be inside his head against my will. Then again, nothing scared me more than the way he lodged his way into the depths of my heart. But throughout the course of our reign and our marriage, none of my blessing’s other oddities compared to the ability to inherit Jericho’s dreams. Not all of them, of course, as the Saints still afford Jericho some semblance of privacy—but critical ones.

However, there was one vision that I foresaw before Jericho ever did— years in advance. It was vague back then, but it disturbed me to my very core: Broadcove burning all around, smoke swallowing me whole. A reaper posed before me in all black, their face shielded from sight. And Jericho’s crown broken down the middle, as if someone sliced it off his head.

I foresaw the doomsday sight the night of our wedding, and was so electrically charged with terror, that I started a path of bloodshed over it. Sure, I would’ve felt guilty had it escalated to a full-on war, but the Mosacian territories fell like dominoes. I confided in Jericho about it soon after we took control of both continents, and from there, I assumed we’d squashed any potential threat. The dream never came back for me, and it never reared its ugly head at Jericho.

Until, ten years later, it did.

Only when Jericho told me what he saw, a few things had changed. First, there was the fact that he saw it from his perspective. The fact that he was seeing the scene play out through his eyes assured me he was alive. I hadn’t lost him. But the look on his face in this moment tells me that he’s uncovered something new, something grimmer.

“What do you see, my love?” I ask, my tone gentle and my hands faintly brushing the skin over Jericho’s torso. It’s a habit I’ve done to help lure him back into reality in a less jarring manner, a way to coax him between grave imaginings of the future and the eerie stillness of the present. Sweat gleams along his pectorals, along the dip in his collarbone, and his body temperature runs hotter than usual.

“The attack definitely takes place at sunset. But . . .” he chokes out. His eyes squint against the moonlight pouring into the room. “The concealed figure didn’t come alone this time.”

My heart gallops within my ribs, the sensation pounding against my stomach in a way that makes me feel queasy. “How many?”

Jericho shivers. “Three of them.”

“What about our family? Please tell me Genny was okay,” I whisper, remorse for the way I brushed her aside and insulted her earlier today slowly creeping up on me.

“Calliope, yes. Eli and the children, yes. But I didn’t—”

Just as he opens his mouth to say more, he promptly shuts it. His eyes expand to a degree that makes me want to leap out of my skin, and before I can stop him, he’s sprinting out of bed.

I know better than to chase after him with a robe, even though he stampedes through the halls of Broadcove in nothing but his boxers. He could run through the gardens naked and the staff wouldn’t bat an eye, now that everyone believes that the visions that drive him mad are, in fact, real. If anything, they’d rush to his aid. Mine, too.

I take note of the route Jericho courses through—we’re headed for the South Wing, where the rest of our family resides. It hits me all at once.

Genny wasn’t in his vision at all. He’s making sure she’s still alive.

Sleek hands on a clock perched at the far end of the hallway point towards 2:57 a.m., just minutes before the rotations of the second-string night guards. Two of them, backs board-straight as they pace the straightened path, catch sight of their relief staff. The incoming guard’s polished shoes click across the linoleum floors, screeching to a halt as their faces come alive in recognition of Jericho and I coming at them full speed.

“Your Majesties!” one of them cries out as the other three bow.

“Who last had eyes on Duchess Geneva?” Jericho calls out, unbothered by his volume, despite this unsaintly hour and seeing no sense in wasting one breath on formalities.

The cluster of young, uniformed men stumble over their different versions of what they know about Genny, all of them unfazed by Jericho’s state of undress. One has little substance to share, one had just gotten back from temporary leave and knew nothing, and one confessed to having drank alongside some of his comrades earlier that evening.

But the youngest of the group, a strapping blond that reminds me of a young Henry Tolcher grits his teeth before saying, “One of the early evening guards. Word has it he came down with a sudden illness,” he says, addressing the both of us with a solemn gaze. “I took over his post at seventeen hundred hours.”

“Where was his delegated post?” I ask, my nerves short-circuiting beneath my skin.

“The main slope descending towards the harbor, Your Majesty,” he reports.

“Why they hell would Genny be—”

That’s when I feel Jericho’s hand cover mine, his grasp intentional and firm. I mean to look into his weathered blue eyes for a truth I know I’ll dread, but when I do, I find him peering out the window and towards the moonlit expanse of our beloved territory.

No . . . further down.

My husband is studying Honeycomb Harbor.

Where Crystal Wrath no longer bobs in its designated docking point.