Chapter 20 #2
“You are. You're reaching for magic, but refusing to truly accept it once it’s offered. You want the power without the connection.” He lifts his gaze to mine. “That's not how it works.”
My frustration continues to simmer, making my words clipped. “Are you an expert on divine bonds, then?”
“No. But I know a thing or two about power.” His expression is insufferably smug as he holds his hand out in front of him, beckoning with his fingers.
His eyes darken as an icy wind rises, briefly lifting the sand and swirling it around his body.
Even though I don’t think he’s directing it at me, I feel some of his power crawling over my skin, slowing my breaths and making my body heavy and sluggish.
A shadow overtakes the arena moments later, something massive soaring over the opening in the roof—a dragon. Just like the ones that heralded his arrival on the night we met.
Blight rises to her feet, her frill flat against her neck as she gazes up at the circling beast. I still can’t get a proper read on her emotions, but curiosity remains one of the clearest. And now there’s something that I think might be longing.
Like she wishes she could fly, too.
I slowly lower my gaze back to the king. My heart pounds, and I hate how breathless and impressed I sound when I ask, “How do you summon them, and their magic, so easily?”
“It isn’t easy. Of course, nothing worth having comes easily, does it?” He blinks, his posture relaxing slightly, but his eyes are still darker than normal. “All magic requires sacrifice.”
“Sacrifice…”
“Yes.” He flexes his hand, studying it for a moment before clenching it into a tight fist. “More than you seem to understand.”
“I’m not exactly a stranger to sacrifice.”
“Maybe not. But this is a different game than the ones you’re used to playing.”
The dragon overhead roars. I grit my teeth, resisting the urge to touch my eye, to show any kind of weakness or regret in front of this man.
“Maybe you aren’t capable of letting go, of sacrificing what you have to in order to make space for what you desire?”
My gaze flies to his. “I’m more than capable.”
“And yet, nothing is catching fire,” he says, lazily sweeping a hand toward the untouched targets.
“Maybe I could try setting you on fire?”
“I’d be worried by that threat if I thought you could actually manage it.”
I try to take a deep breath. Part of me knows he’s only baiting me. That I shouldn’t give in, because there’s only one way it will end if I do—in violence, and then an even higher wall rising between the two of us.
But warmth is kindling in my heart again, and the king’s words are like tinder tossed upon it, crackling and threatening to ignite.
A different game, he said.
Nothing about the life I’ve lived—the things I’ve survived—has felt like a game. Maybe that’s all this is to him; he’s the one that holds most of the pieces, after all.
“I’m a busy man, Ashwalker. Are you going to make this worth my time or not?”
The heat in my chest expands, filling my body.
I’m not purposely reaching for Blight, but I’m imagining fire on every surface, searing every inch of air, consuming everything in its path.
I’m so desperate to burn it all down that there’s no way she could ignore my desire, and suddenly her power is flooding through me with an intensity I've never felt before.
Reave's eyes widen slightly. “Wait—”
But I'm not listening.
I'm done with his games, his condescension, his smug certainty that he knows everything about power and sacrifice and—
The target doesn't just light.
It erupts.
Fire explodes outward, columns of flame that strike several more targets with enough force to knock them over. They catch fire as well, all of them building into an inferno that makes everything shimmer and warp.
Blight's power surges through my veins like molten lava carving new paths down a mountainside, too powerful and too hot to contain.
I can't stop it.
The fire around us keeps growing, keeps spreading, and now there are flames licking up the walls, racing across the sand, catching in ways that normal fire shouldn’t.
Dragon-fire has different properties, apparently, and soon I can feel Blight roaring in my head, telling me to stop dragging this power out of her, but I can't—I can't—
“Enough!” Reave's voice cuts through the chaos. His magic follows, a quick frost that clings and suffocates.
When our two forces collide, I’m rocked off-balance enough that I feel the taut hold I had on Blight’s power start to fray.
The flames sputter and shift. Some of them fall away to smoke, but others continue to burn, bright and angry and defiant.
“Stop,” the king commands, pushing through the haze, trying to reach for me.
I stumble away. The fury inside of me threatens to expand. I swallow it down. It expands again. Over and over, like steam building in a sealed pot, rattling a lid, threatening to explode.
My eyes water, blinding me, making me an easier target. The hold Reave manages to lock around my arm is crushingly, painfully tight, but it’s also the only thing that keeps me upright.
“You’re going to hurt yourself if you don’t stop.”
“What if I do?” I snarl. “What does it matter? You can just find another weapon to use, another sword to swing at your enemies.”
I jerk away. Hard. I’m dizzy, the world is tilting, and I end up on my hands and knees.
“I don’t want another one,” I hear Reave mutter as he kneels beside me—though I wonder if I’ve misheard him, because it seems like a stupid thing to say.
I’m nothing.
I’m no one.
I don’t know why any dragon would choose me. Why any king would waste their time on me. If the uncontrolled flames blazing around us are any indication, they clearly have the wrong woman.
My eyes close, and I sink to the ground, fervently wishing unconsciousness would just take me.
This isn’t what happens, though. As delirious as I am, I can still tell when the fires begin to recede.
The king’s magic is suffocating them, slowly and methodically.
Blight seems to be helping, too, letting out a low, resonant hum, each shift in her somber notes drawing more of the subdued flames back toward her.
At least these two seem to be working well together, I think, dully.
When I blink back into awareness, the dragon is crouched as close to me as her chains will allow, her golden eyes fixed on my face. When she sees I'm awake, relief floods through our bond.
Foolish, she says, but there's no real anger in it; only more relief.
She keeps still, oddly calm once more as the king slips a hand under my back and carefully props me upright. I keep waiting for her to warn me of the danger this man is to me.
I vaguely wonder if Reave is somehow controlling her, keeping her from saying what she wants to.
Then I remember that Mouren isn’t even a proper kingdom, that it’s never controlled any divine dragon.
If she’s truly what she seems to be, then there’s no chance he has that sort of sway over her, is there?
But the alternative explanation—that she actually thinks I’m safe in his arms—doesn’t make sense, either.
I don’t get very far trying to puzzle these things out before pain pounds through my head, driving out all thought and reducing me to a miserable, whimpering heap.
Reave lifts me into his arms as if I weigh nothing at all. I would fight, but I can’t find the strength to move any part of my body.
We pass several servants as we rush into the palace. To one of them he says, “Have a healer meet us in my chambers.”
My chambers.
I see an astonished look flash across the woman’s face before she gives a hasty bow and scurries away. We hurry on in the opposite direction, and it vaguely registers that I’m being carried to the private bedroom of the King of Mouren.
Then I close my eyes and faint against his chest, trying to escape the growing urge to vomit.