Chapter 9 Vaylen
Vaylen
The silence stretches between us like a ravine. My future—everything I've built since that orphaned boy first stepped into the Aerie Academy—hangs on her next words.
The Commander’s face reveals nothing as she rises from behind her desk. She thinks I surrender my dragon and my rank.
I feel my knees threaten to buckle, yet I force myself to remain standing. To face my sentence with dignity, though everything within me screams in protest.
"It would be the proper punishment for your deception," she continues, her voice hard as stone.
Then something shifts in her expression.
But it's nothing soft, it's pragmatism. "And yet, it would be unwise to deprive Embernia of the best High Prime it's ever had, regardless of your. .. personal failures."
I blink, uncertain I heard correctly. Hope flickers like a tiny flame.
"Commander?"
"Do not mistake this for forgiveness," she says sharply. "Your loyalty to that woman has compromised everything we stand for. But I suspect you're already paying dearly for that mistake."
I nod.
She steps closer, her gaze boring into mine. "Swear to me now, Stormsong. Swear that you will never again conceal anything from me. Not a whisper, not a thought, not a suspicion. The next time, there will be no mercy."
"I swear it on my life," I answer without hesitation. "You have my word."
"Good," the Commander says. "Now, summon the Council of Primes. We meet within the hour. We need to determine our next course of action regarding Heratrix's return and the danger these Weavers may pose."
I click my heels. "I'll send word at once."
When the door closes behind me, my legs nearly give way beneath me.
I press my back against the cold stone wall, drawing in ragged breaths as relief washes through me like floodwater.
The weight of command remains on my shoulders, though it should have been stripped away.
I've gotten a second chance—one I don't deserve, yet desperately need.
Pushing away from the wall, I straighten my spine through sheer force of will. The empty corridor stretches before me with no one to witness my moment of weakness.
This mercy cannot be squandered. I must excise Rhealyn from my heart as a medic removes diseased flesh. No more thoughts of her smile, her defiance, her passionate nature that awakened something dormant within me must enter my mind.
I was whole before her. Duty-bound. Focused. I didn't need love to fulfill my purpose.
There's a small voice that protests within the back of my mind—that reminds me how she taught me to truly live, to remember the wind not only as an element to command but as freedom itself—but I silence it ruthlessly.
What use is passion when it leads to dishonor?
What value has love when it breeds only betrayal?
I square my shoulders and march forward.
I have work to do. Renewed purpose forms as I exit the tower.
The Commander's reprieve offers a chance to make amends for my failures, beginning now with assembling the Council of Primes.
A young Claw walks past, his dark blue uniform still stiff with newness.
"You there." I point to the fresh-faced recruit. "Find every Prime you can. Tell them Commander Voltguard requires their presence within the hour. A matter of the utmost urgency."
The Claw salutes, fist to shoulder. "At once, High Prime!"
He turns and sprints to action. Before I can take another step, a familiar figure emerges from behind a stone column. It's Dakar with arms crossed over his chest and an expression as dark as storm clouds.
"Give us the straight of it, Stormsong. You still owe us an account," he says, his reproachful gaze burning more than Heratrix's flames did. "They’re waitin' in the old armory. All of 'em. And they deserve honesty this time, not whatever wyrm-shit you just fed the Commander."
I nod, accepting the truth in his words. "Lead the way."
Bile rises in my throat with each step. These people—my friends—followed me despite the risks. They betrayed oaths, risked their dragons, all because they trusted my judgment, trusted a woman who proved herself unreliable from the very beginning.
Rhealyn trained for years at the Academy as a forbidden Weaver and lied repeatedly about killing Cindergrasp. We all met her as an accomplished liar. Why should I have expected anything different in the end?
The Commander's mercy was truly undeserved, but I'm grateful for one thing. She doesn't know about Dakar or the others. My final lie and act of protection was keeping their names from my lips. I wasn't about to let them lose their positions because of my failings.
As we approach the armory door, I raise my chin, ready to do the right thing. These good people deserve their lives back, unburdened by the secrets I should have never asked them to keep. They have enough to deal with as it is.
"They're waiting," Dakar says, pushing open the heavy wooden door.
Inside, I face the team—the people Rhealyn and I decided to trust with news of Heratrix's presence under the Flametop Mountains.
Cliffbecker's old face radiates fury, same as Dakar's.
Phoebe clutches her leather notebook, green eyes red-rimmed from weeping.
Nate towers like a mountain of disappointment, massive arms hanging at his sides.
"I won't insult you with apologies," I tell them, voice steady though my heart isn't. "Words cannot mend what I've broken. I was wrong to drag you into this. Wrong to trust a woman I knew from the beginning was a liar."
The confession is bitter, but it's a truth they deserve and I should have acknowledged long before I asked them for help. Their faces register shock, like I've just told them water burns and fire quenches thirst.
"A liar, eh?" Dakar says. "How so? Because that was fuckin' Heratrix, Vaylen. The Goddess herself! We all saw her. That was no lie."
Cliffbecker steps forward, eyes narrowed. "What did you leave out when you asked us to join you? Why did Skysinger Wyndward leave like that? Who was that rider? And what about the eggs?"
Phoebe shakes her head. "Rhea wouldn't do something like that without a good reason. Something must be really wrong."
"She lied to you too, Phoebe," I say, my voice softening despite myself.
"Does that mean you knew the whole truth? That you lied to us too?" Cliffbecker's eyes fill with disappointment.
I nod, the weight of shame settling back across my shoulders like a yoke I'm destined to bear. My team deserves the full truth, however bitter it tastes upon my tongue.
"There is more to Rhealyn than any of you know," I confess.
The words pour from me then, all that I revealed to Commander Voltguard. How Rhealyn is not just a Skysinger but a Weaver whose Cleansing failed. How her uncontrolled power killed her own mother during that botched procedure. How she murdered Cindergrasp in retribution.
I remind them of what we'd already shared with them, her missing year beneath the mountain with Heratrix, of the thousands of dragon eggs supposedly lying dormant there, waiting to be awakened.
I reveal Tahranis's true identity, not merely the impostor who masqueraded as Silas Pyrewing, but a man Rhealyn met under the mountain, a man who told her she's something called Omneira, a word whose meaning I still don’t know.
When I finish, silence grips the room like winter frost. Each of them processes the revelation in their own way.
Phoebe's hand rises to her chest, Nate's massive frame seems to grow heavier, Cliffbecker's eyes narrow to slits, and Dakar paces, cursing in the most colorful way I've ever heard from him, which is saying a lot.
"I'm sure she never intended to stay," I conclude, the admission still raw. "She was always supposed to leave with… him."
What I can't share, what I will carry alone to the edge of the world, is how I loved her.
The way her laughter soothed me and made me feel whole again—a sensation that became foreign to me after my mother died.
Yet, they watch me with knowing eyes. All except Cliffbecker, perhaps.
I see it in Phoebe's pitying glance, in Nate's awkward shifting, in Dakar's clenched jaw.
My love was never secret, despite my best efforts to guard it.
Cliffbecker slams his fist against the wall, the sound reverberating through the armory.
"Deceived by a traitor with forbidden powers," he spits, face contorted with fury.
"That witch was in our heads, Stormsong.
In our thoughts! While we risked our necks, she was merely playing us for fools, and you let that happen. "
I bite my tongue until I taste blood. The instinct to defend Rhealyn rises unbidden. I want to remind them how she fought alongside us, risked her life against the Matron. But what purpose would it serve? My judgment is compromised, my perception clouded.
"We've been pawns in a game whose rules we know nothing about," Cliffbecker raves on, gray eyes hard as steel.
Everything she ever whispered in my ear, every moment of vulnerability, every passionate embrace… were they calculated moves in some grand strategy? The thought turns my stomach to ice. If she lied about her intentions all along, what other falsehoods did she weave with those perfect lips?
"I think that we…" Phoebe's voice cuts through the tension. "We can't blame her for killing Cindergrasp." She clutches her notebook tighter, knuckles white with strain. "If someone caused me to kill my own mother, I would have done the same."
The others shift uncomfortably, but Phoebe stands her ground. "And as for reading our thoughts..." She shakes her head firmly. "I've known Rhea since our first day at the Academy. Four years we trained together. Not once did I see any evidence she could read minds. Not once."
Her conviction feels like acid on a wound. She shows loyalty, even in the face of betrayal. It mirrors my own weakness perfectly.