Chapter 16
The dragons began their descent in wide, lazy circles that made my stomach lurch with each banking turn.
Below us, the landscape had shifted into something altogether more unsettling—twisted trees that seemed to grow in impossible directions, patches of ground that shimmered like water, and in the distance, a familiar silver line that made my blood run cold.
The Veil.
We’d been flying for hours. Hours. My ass was numb, and my thighs ached from gripping Caorath’s sides.
But as we spiralled lower, something nagged at me. A discrepancy that didn’t make sense.
“Darian,” I called over the rushing air, my voice tight with more than just the altitude. “How long have we been flying?”
“Oh, about four hours or so. Why?”
Four hours. On dragon back. At the speed these creatures could fly.
I thought back to that first day, stumbling through the forest with my children, desperate and half-mad with fear. The memory of Varyth pulling me from the Veil, of the strange journey that had followed.
“When Varyth brought me from the Veil to Edrithas,” I said slowly, “we walked for maybe half an hour. Through the forest. That’s all.”
Darian’s shoulders went rigid beneath my arms.
“If it takes four hours by dragon,” I continued, my tone sharpening. “How the fuck did we walk there in thirty minutes?”
For a long moment, the only sound was the rush of wind and the steady beat of Caorath’s wings. Then Darian let out a long breath.
“Ah. That.”
“Yes. That.”
Another pause. Then, “You’re not going to like this.”
“I already don’t like it. Keep talking.”
Darian shifted in the saddle, and I could practically feel him weighing his words. “Varyth can sort of... travel more instantly than most. It’s a High Lord thing.”
“Instantly how?”
“Think of it like...” He made a vague gesture with one hand, the other gripping Caorath’s reins. “Like folding a piece of parchment in half. Normally, you’d have to walk from one end to the other, right? But if you fold it, suddenly those two points are touching.”
My blood turned to ice. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying Varyth can fold space. Bend distance. What feels like a thirty-minute walk to you was actually... well, it was actually a four-hour journey that he compressed into thirty minutes.” Darian’s voice was casual. “He brought you through the world, not across it.”
I stared at the back of his head, my mind reeling.
The strange disorientation, the way the forest had seemed to shift around us, the feeling that we were walking through a dream.
He’d been manipulating the world itself. With me inside it. With my children inside it.
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Please don’t,” Darian said cheerfully. “Caorath hates it when people vomit on his scales. Very undignified.”
But I barely heard him. My mind was spinning, trying to process the implications. If Varyth could fold space, bend distance, manipulate the very fabric of the realm...
What else could he do?
What else had he done?
The ground was rushing up to meet us now, Caorath’s wings spread wide as he prepared to land. Thessarian touched down first in a spray of dirt and pebbles, Varyth dismounting with fluid grace.
Caorath landed a moment later, and I slid off his back on unsteady legs, my mind reeling from Darian’s revelation.
Varyth approached, taking in my expression with uncomfortable intensity. “Everything alright?”
I stared at him—this insufferable, world-bending bastard who had the audacity to look concerned.
“Oh, everything’s fantastic,” I said, dripping with enough venom to poison a small army. “Just found out you can apparently fold the fucking realm like laundry. Really adds a special touch to our working relationship.”
Varyth’s expression didn’t even flicker. “Ah. Darian told you about the fold.”
“The fold,” I repeated, letting out a laugh that could have cut glass. “Is that what we’re calling it? How wonderful. Next you’ll tell me it’s perfectly normal for High Lords to casually tear holes in realms for convenience.”
“It is, actually.” He said it like he was discussing the price of bread. “Most High Lords can bend space to some degree. It’s hardly unusual.”
I wanted to throttle him. Actually, genuinely, wrap my hands around his throat and squeeze until that infuriating calm cracked. “Right. Of course. Silly me for not realising. I suppose next you’ll mention you can also manipulate time? Stop the sun? Maybe juggle a few moons for entertainment?”
Behind me, Darian made a sound that was absolutely not a cough. When I whirled to glare at him, his eyes were dancing with mirth.
“Sorry,” he said, not looking sorry at all. “You’re just... you’re handling this exactly like I thought you would.”
“And how exactly is that?”
“Like a feral cat someone just told the laws of reality are suggestions.” His grin was pure evil. “It’s entertaining as hell.”
I turned back to Varyth, who was watching our exchange. “So when you rescued me from the Veil that first night—”
“I didn’t rescue you,” he said mildly. “I extracted you.”
“Oh, well, when you put it like that, it sounds so much less traumatic.” The black fire stirred beneath my skin, responding to my spike of fury.
“And then you decided to take me and my children on a lovely stroll through your personal pocket realm without mentioning it might be slightly fucking relevant information?”
“Would it have changed anything?”
The question hit me sideways. I opened my mouth to snap back, then stopped. Would it have changed anything? Would I have refused to go with him? Forced my children to face whatever horrors waited in that forest?
“That’s not the point,” I said finally.
“Isn’t it?”
Varyth stepped closer, and I caught that familiar scent of sandalwood and dewed grass that always seemed to cling to him. “You needed safety. I provided it. The method was irrelevant.”
“The method was you casually rewriting the world around my children without their knowledge or consent.”
“And the alternative was leaving you to die in the wilderness.” His voice had gone soft, dangerous. “Tell me, Isara, would you have preferred that?”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to rage at him for the manipulation, the casual dismissal, the way he made decisions about my life like I was a chess piece to be moved around his board.
But underneath the fury was something else. Something that tasted like gratitude and felt like betrayal.
Because he was right. I would have died out there. My children would have died. And whatever else Varyth was—arrogant, secretive, insufferably calm—he had saved us.
Even if he’d done it by bending reality to his will.
“You’re unbelievable,” I said finally, the fight draining out of me. “Absolutely fucking unbelievable.”
“I’m aware,” Varyth said, and there was definitely amusement in his tone now. “Shall we continue? We have a limited window to complete our business here.”
I glanced around, taking in our surroundings for the first time since landing.
We stood in a clearing, and beneath the familiar hum that had threaded through my consciousness since crossing the Veil, something else stirred.
A different melody, hauntingly beautiful, like wind chimes made of starlight and sorrow.
And there, maybe a hundred yards away, the Veil stretched across the landscape like a silver scar.
“Business,” I repeated. “Right. And what exactly is our business at the place that nearly killed me the first time I crossed it?”
Varyth’s smile was sharp as broken glass. “We’re going to find out what you really are.”
“What I really am?”
“The black fire, Isara. The shadow flames.” His eyes gleamed. “They didn’t just appear when you crossed the Veil. They were always there, waiting. The Veil simply... awakened them.”
“You’re saying I always had this power?” My voice came out higher than I wanted.
“I’m saying the Veil doesn’t create magic, it reveals it.” Varyth moved closer, his presence overwhelming in the charged air. “And I’m going to prove it.”
Behind us, both dragons settled down to wait with the patience of creatures who had done this before. Caorath even closed his eyes, apparently planning a nap.
“Well,” Darian said, as he bounced on his toes. “This should be fun.”
Varyth moved toward the Veil with the kind of predatory grace that made my skin crawl and my pulse quicken in equal measure.
The silver barrier stretched before us, that impossible wall between worlds that had nearly torn me apart the first time I’d encountered it. But now, seeing it again, I could sense something different. The air around it didn’t just hum with magic. It screamed with it.
Varyth stopped abruptly about twenty feet from the Veil, his head tilting as he studied something I couldn’t see.
“Here,” he said, carrying a note of satisfaction that made the hair on my arms stand up. “This is where you crossed.”
I squinted at the spot he was examining. It looked like every other section of the Veil to me, that same shimmering, silver barrier that seemed to exist somewhere between liquid and light. But as I focused, something began to emerge from the magical static.
A distortion. Subtle, but there. It was like looking at the world through water, everything just slightly bent and wrong.
“How can you tell?” I asked, though part of me already knew I wasn’t going to like the answer.
“Because you left a mark.”
He gestured toward the distortion, and I could see it more clearly now. The Veil wasn’t just bent at that spot, it was scarred. Like something had torn through it with enough force to leave a permanent wound in the fabric between worlds.
“That’s impossible,” I breathed. “I just... I just stepped through it.”
“You didn’t step through it,” Varyth corrected, his attention fixed on the damaged barrier. “You burned through it. Your magic carved a path where there shouldn’t have been one.”
The song stirred beneath my skin, responding to his words like it recognised that twisted section.