Shadow Bound (The Soulsworn Chronicles #2)

Prologue

Valen was five when he ran into the mountain.

He knew his age because his birthday had come with ceremony and pain, and because his mother had braided his hair that morning and warned him not to fidget.

He remembered the ribbon pulling at his scalp, the way her hands shook as she tied it, the way she kissed his forehead too quickly before leaving the room.

Later, when he ran, the braids came loose anyway.

He ran because his father was shouting.

The sound followed him down the halls, sharp and cracking, the kind of voice that meant punishment.

Valen’s legs were short and his slippers were thin, meant for ceremony, not escape.

He slipped on the stone floor, scraped his palms, and kept going.

Stopping meant being found. Being found meant kneeling, meant pain.

The torches ended long before the passage did.

Light vanished all at once, swallowed by a darkness so thick it felt solid. Valen stumbled until he struck the wall. He spun around and slid down, curling into himself on the cave floor, pressing his knees to his chest. His heart pounded hard enough to hurt.

He did not cry.

Crying echoed.

Crying brought guards—brought his father.

He breathed the way his mother had taught him, slow and careful, and then he waited.

The stone beneath his hands was warm.

Not hot like the fires of the throne room, but steady, alive. The rock hummed faintly, a low vibration that seemed to move through his bones. Valen lifted his head.

The passage opened into a cavern, vast and hollow, the darkness stretching wide instead of closing in. Shapes gathered at its center, immense and unmoving.

Something breathed.

The sound was deep and slow, so large it felt as though the mountain itself were alive. Valen stood. He did not know why he walked forward. He only knew that turning back felt impossible.

Then the shadow shifted.

Firelight bloomed without flame, molten gold gleaming along scales darker than night. A wing lay folded against a body so enormous Valen could not see its end. Smoke drifted lazily from a mouth lined with stone-bright teeth.

A dragon.

Valen did not scream.

He had heard the stories. Dragons burned cities and kings alike. Dragons did not suffer intruders.

But this dragon did not move.

It opened one eye.

Gold and endless, fixed on him as if it had always known he would come.

Valen’s knees gave out.

He hit the stone hard enough to jolt his teeth, palms slapping flat against the floor as if the mountain might catch him.

It didn’t. The ground only stayed warm beneath his skin, steady and breathing, and the humming that had been a whisper in the rock swelled into something he could feel in his bones.

His hands tingled.

Not pain. Not numbness.

Something waking.

“I was hiding,” he whispered, voice thin in the vast dark. “I didn’t mean to come here.”

The dragon exhaled.

Heat rolled over Valen like a blanket pulled up to his chin, gentle. It didn’t scorch. It didn’t bite. It eased the tightness in his chest until his next breath didn’t feel like it might break him.

His eyes stung.

But the dragon did not move toward him the way monsters did in stories. It only watched.

Valen swallowed.

“You won’t tell,” he said, and it came out wrong.

The dragon blinked.

And something in the air shifted, as if the mountain itself leaned closer to listen.

Valen’s palms pressed harder into the stone. The humming rushed upward, climbing his arms, settling in his ribs. His heart stuttered once, then steadied, like it had been waiting for permission.

The dragon lowered its head.

The cavern walls caught the glow and threw it back in molten ribbons, veins of gold threading through the rock like blood.

Valen couldn’t move.

He should have been terrified.

He was.

But he was also… pulled.

He pushed himself up on shaking arms, small body trembling, and took one step forward. Then another. The closer he got, the louder the humming became, until it wasn’t outside him anymore.

It was in him.

The dragon’s massive head dipped lower, stopping just short of him.

Heat gathered in the space between them, thick and alive.

Valen lifted his hand.

It was a child’s hand. Soft. Unimportant.

The kind of hand kings never looked at.

The kind of hand his father had always punished.

His fingers hovered in front of the dragon’s scales, trembling so badly he could barely hold them still.

He touched it anyway.

The moment his skin met the dragon’s hide, the world split open.

Not with sound.

With knowing.

A line snapped taut inside his chest, bright and sudden as lightning. Heat surged through him, not burning, not harming, but claiming. It rushed down his arms, flooded his palms, stitched itself into his bones like it had always belonged there.

Valen gasped.

The dragon’s breath hitched, smoke spilling out in a rough, startled burst.

The mountain groaned.

Valen’s whole body arched as the heat tightened, pulled, and locked into place. His thoughts tangled. His senses doubled. For one impossible heartbeat, he felt the cavern, the stone, the flame sleeping deep inside the mountain.

And he felt the dragon.

Ancient. Vast. Watching.

Not above him.

With him.

Valen’s mouth opened, but no words came out. Only a strangled sound, half sob, half shock, as the connection settled into his skin and made him something else.

The dragon lowered its head until its brow rested against the stone in front of him.

Reverent.

Like a vow.

And somewhere deep inside, where fear had lived for as long as he could remember, fire unfurled.

Warm.

Endless.

Awake.