Chapter 38 The Secret
Trivian moved toward us as Lorik tried to speak to me, but I froze. I wasn’t listening; my body was still caught in fear and in the anticipation of a death that could plunge the island into chaos.
“Thea, stop spiraling,” Lorik’s voice echoed in my mind again. I shook my head, forcing myself to let go of the fear and the dark, spiraling thoughts. Even injured, this male was able to ground me.
The wildweaver was close, too close, already lifting his hand to attack us again when a shield snapped into place around Lorik and me. I had meant to wield fire. Fire was all I
knew. But something else poured from my hands.
“Impossible,” I heard Trivian say from the other side of the shield, his voice distorted and muffled by the air I had just wielded. The air barrier was impossibly tight, dense enough to protect us from the attack if I could hold it in place.
“How did I …?” I asked not knowing exactly why, but the words didn’t completely leave my mouth.
Lorik grabbed my free hand and pulled me toward him. I turned to Lorik as I kept the other one towards the air shield I had just created.
“Listen to me, Thea,” Lorik said, his voice challenging and urgent. “You don’t have air or ice magical traces. You can replicate magic.”
My eyes widened as I remembered my lessons with Headmaster Marvek. A magical trace believed long lost to history, one that had remained dormant for centuries.
“I suspected it beyond the Veil,” Lorik continued. “When you used electric charge to get out of my grip.”
I swallowed. I remembered I had gotten out of his grip, but I thought I had used fire to burn him.
“I didn’t think much of it then. But today, I felt your pain through our bond. You were breaking and then I felt your body regenerate and heal again and again. You took Marla Yung’s healing magical trace and used it as your own.”
I didn’t respond. I focused on holding the air shield as the wildweaver hurled magma at us, but the air was so dense that no heat or matter could penetrate it.
It was unheard of, and yet it made sense. I glanced down at the holes in my uniform. Acid rain had damaged it, yet my skin below was untouched.
The dome I had wielded in the meadow hadn’t been fire, it had been air. I had replicated Marla’s magic. The Siren had known. The island had known. That was my test all along, to test if I was an echo.
Then, all the pieces came together. We didn’t need a healer. “I can heal you as I healed myself,” my voice edged with hope.
“No, I’ll hold them as much as I can while you get yourself safe. I told Shakari and Rowan to bring reinforcements. They should be here soon.”
Beyond my air shield, the crimson dragon was now throwing its magma in our direction, applying more weight and pressure on my dome, but I didn’t flinch. I lifted my hand further in the air to strengthen the air around us as I looked back at Lorik.
“And here I was thinking you wouldn’t let me go,” I said, repeating with a smirk what he had promised me in the hall of mirrors. “Keep your damm promise, you stubborn Moonveil.”
I didn’t know how this magic worked, but I was going to try to heal him. I kept my left hand towards the air shield and hovered my right hand above his shattered leg.
Magic came from channeling emotion, so I drew a deep breath and anchored myself in everything raging inside me, my fear of losing, my yearning for this Moonveil, and the brutal urgency to save the life of the male who’d saved mine more times than I could count.
The male I’d fallen for despite his faction. The male I would lose my sanity for.
For a long heartbeat, nothing happened. Then, muscle and bone began to knit. Cracked bone was sealing, straightening, and setting as muscle fibers braided themselves back into place, rebuilding a shattered leg. The burned crater that once stood there closed and regenerated rapidly.
I had done it.
Blood still stained his skin and soaked his uniform, but he was safe. Our gazes caught and held, suspended in the space between breaths, neither of us knowing what to say and yet one certainty slid through me, loosening every clenched muscle in my body: Lorik was going to make it.
“Can you move it?” I finally asked.
Lorik didn’t respond; he just stood up, lifting me with the hand that had healed him.
“It will hurt and burn for a while, but we have an asshole to kill,” he said with a smile that reached his eyes. “Thank you.”
I pushed the air shield towards the outside, commanding it as I would with fire, and it responded with a burst of air that pushed the solidified magma in all directions. The debris threw the wildweaver towards his dragon behind him.
“You messed with the wrong princess,” I screamed at Trivian as I drew fire into his chest, followed by Lorik, who aimed at him with his shadow.
The dragon, in protection of his master, created a wall of magma in front of Trivian that solidified in an instant, but our fire and shadow pierced it through.
We were strong, channeling rage and anger into our magic, making it stronger and deadlier. The wildweaver could only die from both fire and shadow magic.
Our faction's magic collided with the wildweaver’s body as he screamed in pain and agony. His screams were music to my ears after all he had put us through for centuries, at entering my island, at almost killing Lorik and injuring my friends. The parasite deserved worse than death itself.
Trivian’s face shriveled and cracked as he collapsed to his knees.
It was as if our magic had dried him from the inside out.
No screams came from him. His lungs crushed inward, leaving no air, no sound.
His green eyes bulged in a body already consumed.
I let myself savor the victory as he fell flat onto the magma-strewn debris below.
The dragon behind him roared as he stepped in our direction. Each step made the magma crush below his feet. The earth vibrated at the reaction of his massive body and relentless speed.
“Why isn’t it free?” I screamed in despair.
“It takes time for her to sever the parasitic bond,” Lorik screamed. “Don’t hurt her.”
The dragon was aiming at Lorik, its green eyes flashing in the dark forest. It hadn’t severed the bond; it was going to kill Lorik, and his hands were relaxed on either side of his core. He was not ready to attack.
“What are you doing?” I screamed at Lorik, but he didn’t turn, didn’t move.
Perhaps he had just used all his magic, extending his shadows to kill the wildweaver. Or, perhaps, Lorik was depleted of magic from his leg injury, even if the night above us should recharge him.
Regardless, he wasn’t doing anything, and the crimson dragon was just feet away from Lorik, wings open, and his mouth roaring a deep, excruciating sound that screamed it wanted to destroy us.
I had just saved Lorik’s life, and I couldn’t lose him. We had just killed an immortal being against all odds, and I was not going to give up now.
I ran towards them, my hands lifted in the air, pointing at the dragon. My emotions were flooding, anger, rage, fear, passion, adoration, all at once. I breathed to channel all into my magic, into my hands.
Then, from one hand, fire and light erupted; from the other, shadow and darkness surged.
Shadow and fire merged in the sky and fell on the dragon’s core.
The dragon roared differently this time, perhaps in pain.
I heard Lorik scream, but I couldn’t understand his words; all I could hear was the dragon's cry echoing in my ears, and something broke inside me.
Sorrow, anguish, and torment inundated my chest as I forced my body to my knees.
I saw the dragon stop running as he stumbled from the magical impact. The dragon’s face was fixed at Lorik’s for a beat, then snapped at me. Deep blue eyes pierced through mine, but I didn’t see sadness as on the bridge beyond the veil, no anger or void. Its gaze showed peace and relief.
The dragon swayed, one, two, three times, before falling in front of me. After the sound of impact that made birds cry into the sky, I sank down onto my heels and then, exhaustion hit me, heavy and longing, as I drifted to my right side to the earth beneath me.
Lorik’s voice was everywhere and nowhere at the same time, but my eyes were on the stars above. After so much fire, shadow, and magma, I could still see the clear night above me.
Lorik’s arms lifted me halfway and held me tight and lovingly, momentarily pulling me from the storm inside of me.
The dragon’s eyes had turned blue. Not green, not burning with rage or control, but blue—clear, unbound. The parasitic bond had broken, just as Lorik had said it would. That was why he hadn’t been attacked. That was why he had stood still.
Terror had consumed me. The raw, instinctive fear of losing him after I had just pulled him back from death. Panic had drowned out reason, eclipsing everything else. In that moment, I hadn’t seen the dragon as it was. I had only seen a threat between me and the Moonveil holding me together and me.
So I had struck.
I had unleashed my fire and the stolen echo of Lorik’s shadow, fusing them into something devastating. I had shattered the dragon when it was no longer an enemy, but a victim—an ancient creature enslaved for years, perhaps centuries, forced to burn, kill, and obey against its will.
The truth lodged deep in my chest, heavy and suffocating, impossible to deny or justify. No explanation softened it. No victory erased it. I had killed an innocent creature.
I lifted my gaze to the night sky, the stars stretched like silk across a sheet of black. The realization struck sharp as a blade, and my heart pressed hard against my ribcage. I didn’t need a clock to know the truth. The twenty-four hours of the Dragontail trials had expired.
I had known, from the moment I took that detour in my trials to save Camelia, what it would cost me but knowing it didn’t make it easier. I had tried to save her, only to fail. She died asphyxiated in my arms, her last breath spent telling me the truth.
I had chosen the detour to pull Shakari and Rowan from the parasite’s claws, and I had chosen it again when I stepped into this clearing to face the wildweaver, Trivian. I knew exactly what I was sacrificing for myself.
And I had killed him.
Yet I felt no happiness, no sense of accomplishment, only the weight of it all, heavy and unmoving in my chest.
“I didn’t pass the Dragontail trials,” I told Lorik, my eyes on the stars and dark sky. From everything I had boiling up inside me, that was the first thing that left my mouth.
Agony, panic, and despair crashed through me all at once. I felt too much, every sensation magnified; every thought spiraling faster than I could grasp it. My chest ached, my head throbbed, and the world seemed to tilt as fear and grief pressed in from all sides.
“We will find a way, Thea. Together. I know that. Don’t let the panic take you. Stay here,” Lorik said urgently.
I didn’t respond. The pain behind my eyes sharpened as the truth settled in, cold and absolute.
The Dragontail trials had bound me to Elarion and I had failed them.
I couldn’t stay at the academy. I couldn’t rule Rionis.
And the wildweavers would get exactly what they wanted. Rionis was unstable and weak.