Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Icollapse onto the metal platform, chest heaving.
I ache everywhere. My nerves are humming a violent, frantic rhythm, and blood is still oozing down my leg, my face.
But I'm here.
I made it.
Through our bond, I feel Blight's fierce pride mixing with my own exhausted relief, and for once, I don't immediately push her out. I let her strength continue to flood through me, letting it overwhelm me, because it takes my focus off my pain.
After catching my breath, I slowly sit up to find the mood in the arena has shifted dramatically. The soldiers who were just gleefully taking shots at me have gone quiet, their expressions uncertain. Gareth is staring up at me with something I've never seen on his face before—shock, maybe. Or awe.
I make my way back down the steps. Blight's strength starts to recede from my veins as I descend, but it lasts long enough to carry me to Gareth on steady feet.
I can still see perfectly, too. Not quite the supernatural, dimensional vision of moments ago, but both of my eyes are functioning normally.
Gareth studies my right eye, his brow furrowed and a small, thoughtful frown on his face.
I glance back at the platform I just conquered. “That will do for today, I hope?”
“Yes. I suppose it will.” He looks between me and Blight, his forehead still wrinkled with that contemplative expression.
As his gaze settles back on my previously-blind eye, he lowers his face in a way that seems almost…
reverent. Then he seems to catch himself, giving his head a little shake.
His expression returns to the familiar stoic, slightly sour look.
He gives a few quick commands to the soldiers around us, then turns to leave.
Even though I'm used to him being a man of relatively few words, I'm surprised he doesn't have more to say about what just happened.
But I don't try to stop him from making a quick exit.
Hopefully, he's going straight to the king to share a report.
The meeting that Reave was due to have with his advisors was likely delayed because of the turmoil in the city last night, which works out in my favor; it gave me the time I needed to prove my dragon bond was no farce.
There can be no denying it after what happened this morning—especially not with so many witnesses.
Briar should be free by dinner time, if not before, and maybe I'll be able to negotiate supplies for the Burn based on my victory, too. The possibilities fill me with something warm and bright, and something I wasn't expecting to feel in this cursed place. Something like…gratitude.
As the last soldier follows Gareth out of the arena, I turn to face the chained dragon.
A rigid silence stretches between us, as it so often does, but I find the tension melting away with every step I take toward her. Movement isn't as painful as I'd expected; maybe because of the hint of her strength that's still humming through my veins.
It’s such a powerful gift that there's only one thing I can think to say once I'm standing in front of her.
“…Thank you.”
She exhales a soft huff of air, her intelligent eyes gleaming and her tail twitching.
I brace myself for her voice in my head, but it doesn't come.
Maybe because I'm not ready to hear it again, and she knows it.
A polished shield rests by her tail—one of the many gifts she's received this past week. Kneeling before it, I take in my reflection. The extensive scarring around my right eye remains, a reminder of what I’ve been through.
But the eye itself isn't the grim, milky white I'm used to seeing.
Instead, it's gold, with a slit pupil cutting vertically through the center.
Like a dragon's eye.
Staring at it sends a flood of confusing emotions through me. My chest feels tight. My body, numb.
I have to leave.
Now.
The moment I step away from the arena, away from the dragon, the vision in my right eye begins to fade. It's like watching a bright day dwindling to a moonless night, so much color and depth slipping just out of my reach...
And there's nothing I can do to stop it.
Within minutes, I'm back to living in the half-world I've inhabited for years. It feels like having an old wound ripped open. Tears start to well up. I quickly swipe them away. I've grieved this particular loss enough for one lifetime, haven't I? What does it matter if it's gone away again?
If only grief could have neat, precise endings.
I've found this is never the case, though. And surviving traumatic things doesn’t mean they end; it just means learning to live with them over and over again, in different ways, as they change shape.
I press my palm over my ruined eye as I walk, trying to figure out how the hell I'm supposed to feel. A dragon took my sight. Now another has given it back, if only for a moment, if only when we're connected…
But it doesn't really make things even, does it?
Part of me is still humming with the power and potential of the bond. Another part can only think about how cruel it is that my vision is within reach, yet it isn't truly mine anymore. I have to borrow it. Beg for it. Accept help from one of the very creatures who stole it in the first place.
I make it to my room just before the emotions get overwhelming, the tears coming faster than I can wipe them away.
It's stupid to cry over this.
I know it is.
But gods, now that I know what it's like to see the whole world again...
I wash my face in cold water until all evidence of blood and tears is gone, then force myself to change into clean clothes and lie down.
When I wake, hours later, my body still doesn't feel as destroyed as it should, given the number of arrows I took. The bruises are there, dark and tender, but the deep ache I expected is muted.
Another gift from the bond, I suppose.
I hate that I'm grateful for it.
But I carry that gratitude, and the memory of what we accomplished together, with me as I leave my room and head for the library. I need to think. To plan. To understand what I'm becoming—what I’m afraid I’ve always been—and what it all means.
The elderly librarian brings me more books on dragon lore without my asking, her wrinkled hands setting them gently on my table.
She says nothing, but there's something almost sympathetic in her expression; like she knows I have little hope of finding real answers to all the things I don’t understand.
I'm used to functioning on very little hope, thankfully.
I bury myself in the texts, parsing through centuries of history and theory, sorting myth from fact.
Some of it I already know: how the four kingdoms were allegedly founded by a different dragon, each created by one of the four most powerful deities.
How they each represented a different element of the world, and the creatures were formed in such a way as to create balance when they all worked together.
Those four dragons each eventually bound themselves to a human, and then those chosen humans became the first rulers of the Kaldran Empire.
Even in Halvgate, we learned this as children—the history of a world that we're still technically a part of, even if it's beaten us down and tried to bury us in the margins.
I've never learned any real details about those first rulers, though. I've never really cared to, honestly; most of my education was focused on survival and practical skills. Any other kind of knowledge was a luxury.
But now I'm here. I'm surrounded by more books than I've ever seen, an entire world of information at my fingertips. It would be foolish not to learn more.
I’m intrigued to discover the names of the first rulers, along with snippets of their histories…and fascinated by the realization that they were all queens. All women, who all ruled for an incredibly long time—much longer than the lifespan of a normal human—if the dates I'm reading are accurate.
Heldra. Zara. Morrigan. Isolde.
I write the names down on a slip of parchment, and then add the names of their bonded dragons beside them; the latter are more familiar, because this is where the names of the four kingdoms were derived from.
Heldra—Bolvael.
Zara—Dralsk.
Morrigan—Solvare.
Isolde—Ormyth.
I want to dig deeper into it all immediately, but as soon as I write the last name down, the library is invaded by Princess Kestrel and a small entourage of noble ladies.
They're loud and obnoxious, their laughter echoing off the high ceilings.
And even though the princess was relatively cordial last night, I'm not in the mood to try my luck with her in front of an audience.
I slip away before any of them see me, clutching a new pile of books to my chest, wondering about the kind of power the first four queens must have wielded through their bonds.
The power to shape an entire empire, to command magic and armies, to live for centuries…
I have the same feeling I did last night, suddenly: That something big is circling around me. That some upheaval is rumbling beneath my every step, just waiting to break through. There’s no running from it any longer. And somehow, I have to keep my footing through all of it.
The king was absent again before I holed myself up in the library, and he's still missing when I leave it. Off dealing with some new crisis in the city, maybe. More unrest. More rebels circling closer.
Is it really because of me?
It's still hard to believe I could be important enough to be a target. But I still haven't forgotten Gareth's words from the other day.
There is a reason the king needs you.
He apparently needs me badly enough that he's choosing to weather these attacks rather than sending me away, risking his entire city in the process—a decision that reeks of cold calculation and desperation.
Which, combined with the latest proof that my dragon bond is not something to be taken lightly, means I have more power in this arrangement than I originally thought.