21. Interlude 2
Interlude 2
Sidon the Strong had never truly known what pain was. He had always been faster, stronger, and more capable of winning a fight. When he’d been a Youngling, the Elders had been forced to separate him when wrestling. He was too dangerous and too large. He’d never learned what it meant to be hurt.
Today, he learned what pain was.
His scales shimmer with the same silver that they always have, the power that he was born with. Magic, pure and undiluted, it’s the exact thing that the hunters are searching for. They hadn’t found him, though. They’d found his mate.
Vesper the Bright. She is… No, she was a small dragon whose scales shined as beautifully as the dawn. Sidon had found her to be the most wonderful female he’d ever known. She was not a warrior like him. She wasn’t meant for death and destruction. Even her claws and fangs were smaller.
Instead of destruction, she brought light and laughter everywhere she went, but none of the worlds and none of the dragons will witness her light again. Memories of how she had changed him race through Sidon’s mind. She met him when he was a brute of a dragon. He was always in search of a fight, always looking for a new conquest. He had been what his powers had made him into, the greatest warrior the dragons had ever had.
And nothing else.
Vesper showed him that there was another side of him. She showed him he could be a leader and maybe even an Elder. He could be more than claws and fangs and flames. He could even become kind enough to be her mate. She’d seen the parts of him that had hidden beneath his reputation, and she’d become his world.
The stone in front of Sidon is shaped just as she had been. Every scale that he knows by heart is there. Her eyes stare at him as if calling for help, but there’s no way to help her any longer.
Sidon the Strong had never known pain, but now he can’t stop the tears from rolling down his silver cheek scales. He cannot stop the ripping and shredding feeling that courses through his soul.
Revenge had not cured the ache, for he had crushed all the hunters he had found.
Sleeping had not cured the ache, for he had hidden in a cave for days, his eyes rarely opening.
Dreams had not cured the ache, for all he could see when he slept was his mate.
He roars as another wave of pain rolled through his breast, like two stones are crushing his soul where he’d been bound to Vesper. Tiny flames lick the air just beyond his snout, but he has no more true fire inside him. He has spent it all in his anger.
Now he is being pulled away from this world—away from what is left of Vesper. Calyr demands that they leave, to journey far through the void to find a new world, but that will mean that he’ll have to leave even this last bit of her.
He knows Calyr is right. He knows that if he wants any of the other dragons to survive, they must leave, and he can’t stay behind. The hunters won’t come to him, they will follow Calyr and Vyran. They’ll go where the magic goes, and Sidon is the only one capable of defeating the hunters.
They’ll be helpless without him.
His soul aches to rejoin his mate. They need you, Sidon . Her voice whispers on the wind, and he knows it’s the fractured pieces of her soul whispering to him. There is no sound. The voice is only in his mind, but that doesn’t make it any less real.
“I cannot leave you,” he snarls.
They need you. I do not.
He knows the rest of what she’s saying. That he had failed her already. He hadn’t been there when the hunters had come. He had been watching another area of their roost with Kasan. He should have been here to protect his mate.
Protect them, Sidon, as you swore you’d do. Protect the Younglings and the Elders. Stand between them and your enemies, whatever it takes. I will always be with you, a voice on the wind. No one can take me away from you completely.
Sidon’s tears dry, and he presses one claw against the stone that had once been his mate. His claw runs over the scales behind her wings as he had done so often when she was alive, and he whispers, “I will protect them, Vesper, because you would have me do it. I will not be the brute that you met. I will be the better dragon that you helped me to become. But I will miss you. Forever.”
And Sidon walked away from his mate’s body to follow the rest of the dragons, the only one who had ever defeated one of the hunters. He knew what pain was now, and he let it fuel him as he fought. Every battle, he hoped to give the hunters just as much pain as he felt.
But that was impossible, because no amount of physical pain could compare to the ache of a lost soul bond.