Read Online Forged in Dragonfire (Flame of Requiem Book 1) by Daniel Arenson - Free Book Online Page A

of light and
splendor. You are but a child. Twenty-seven summers old, a mere babe, spoiled,
impudent. What do you know of pain? What do you know of the agony of our long
banishment, of the fires of war, of the triumphs your brother gave our
race?"
    Meliora held her
burning cheek, struggling to keep the tears from her eyes. "I will defy you! Yes, I am young. No, I never knew our fall from paradise, and I never
knew our long exile in the desert. Yes, I was born into a life of splendor,
slaves to wait upon me. But that doesn't mean that I will serve you as a slave.
I—"
    "Slaves?"
Kalafi laughed. "You take them for granted, as if they're as inherent a
part of our lives as our wings. It's thanks to Ishtafel, the conqueror of
Requiem, that slaves now serve you. Yes, thanks to this brother you spurn. And
so you will learn to live without them." Kalafi's lips stretched into a
thin grin. "Your two house slaves will die tomorrow. Come see them burn in
the bronze bull, daughter. Come hear them scream, then return to your chambers
where you can make your own bed, pour your own wine, and wipe your own
backside."
    Meliora gasped.
"Mother!"
    She thought of Kira and
Talana, her two slaves, young women who served in her chambers. The two were
meek things without sin—aside from the sin of their lesser race. To burn them in
the bronze bull?
    Meliora had heard
Ishtafel speak of the bronze bull before—of Malok. Her brother used to terrify
her with those stories. As a child, Meliora had believed them and would cry and
cower. Ishtafel had described how soldiers pulled an unruly slave into a great,
hollow statue of a bull. Fires were lit under the bull until the bronze heated,
boiling the slave within. The slaves' screams would rise through a network of
pipes, emerging from the bull's mouth in a melodious song.
    If you're a bad
girl, Ishtafel had once taunted her, I'm going to toss you into Malok's
belly and dance to your screams.
    Meliora had cried so
much that Ishtafel had hugged her, soothed her, confessed that he had lied. Yet
now her mother resurrected that old threat. How could Malok be real? How could
the cruel bronze bull truly exist in Saraph, this realm of light and beauty?
    "You lie,"
Meliora said. "Those are just stories Ishtafel invented. There is no
Malok."
    Queen Kalafi laughed.
"Yes, daughter. Mere stories. And little fairies conjure up our bitumen
with the snap of their sparkling fingers, and unicorns bear us the tar on their
backs. I have sheltered you for too long, girl. You will accompany me tomorrow
at dawn to see your precious slaves sing in the bull. And then you will return
to your chambers, where you will pray to never see true horror as I have seen.
And in two moons, on the blessed summer solstice, you will marry your brother.
And nine months later, you will bear me a pure heir. You will do this or it will
be you burned in the bull."
    Meliora's chest shook,
her head spun, and her eyes burned with tears. She spun and fled the chamber.

 
 
VALE

    He stood in the blood, dust,
and agony of Tofet, burying his mother.
    My people languish
in chains. Vale's eyes burned, and his fists trembled. My sister was
taken captive. His breath shuddered, and the chains around his legs
rattled. My mother is dead.
    For all his twenty-one
years, Vale had labored in this place, making bricks with his father while his
mother and sister mined the bitumen that would hold those bricks together in
palaces and temples. For all those twenty-one years, Vale had sweated, wept,
screamed when the masters whipped him, yet still clung to hope—clung to a
desperate dream that someday Requiem would rise again, that someday he would
fly free with his family.
    Now that family is
broken. Tears burned in his eyes. Now I bury my hope along with my
mother.
    The grave yawned open
before him. A pit. A mass grave for all the slaves killed that day, over a
hundred souls. A hundred slaves worked, starved, beaten to death. Some mere
children, the whips of their