Chapter 25
Chapter
Twenty-Five
ALBIE
Irose to my feet on shaking legs. The brutal, stabbing agony in my eye was gone, but the memory of it left me queasy.
Tavish bent and retrieved my spectacles from the ground. Worry hovered in his eyes as he settled them gently on my face.
The shadow in the portal screeched, and my stomach pitched. An echo of the pain flashed through my skull. Bile burned my throat as the shade of Mullo Balfour tried to claw its way toward Portia.
The Oracle of Asmira shook her head, her long, white curls stirring around her golden shoulders. “Not Portia, scholar,” she said. “You.”
Shock rooted me to the ground, and not just because she’d read my mind. What could Mullo Balfour want with me? I was no one significant.
Asmira didn’t smile, but something in the air around her shifted. It was nothing I could have put my finger on. Nevertheless, an overwhelming sense of warmth radiated through the space between us.
“No one significant,” Asmira said, “and yet you’re the last full-blood dragon ever born.”
I swallowed hard. I’d never given much thought to my birth. It was hard to feel special when my species’ women were dying all around me.
The wind around Asmira picked up as she continued speaking. “Mullo cursed you in your time, scholar. But you didn’t stay there, did you?”
She waved her hand.
The air beside her rippled, then darkened. Shadows coalesced, forming shapes and images like a painting coming to life. The Bay of Orz’galach, the red sun of Razrothia turning its waters the color of blood.
Mullo Balfour sat in the center of a boat with a red-and-black flag atop its mast. The demon fishermen rowed him toward a rocky shore where Asmira waited, ageless and terrible, her white robes fluttering in a breeze that touched nothing else.
“Mullo Balfour already possessed four of the seven elements when he approached me,” Asmira said now. “But he wanted everything, so he traded his fertility for body and spirit.”
The shadowy Mullo stepped from the boat and knelt before the oracle. The sun dimmed, and the fishermen in the boat bowed their heads.
Asmira observed the vision, then said softly, “And still, that wasn’t enough.”
The scene shifted.
Mullo stood at a witch’s spell table in a room lit by a single candle.
Glass bottles lined wooden shelves behind him.
His hands moved quickly as he crushed herbs with the flat edge of a knife and then scooped them into a small black bowl.
He closed his eyes, his lips moving as he murmured something under his breath.
Shadows climbed the walls behind him. The candle snuffed out.
Asmira looked from the vision to Niall, who stood stiffly at my side. “There is a reason so few witches possess all seven elements,” she said, and something fond entered her tone. “Those who least desire power are typically best suited to wield it.”
Niall said nothing, his dark eyes going to the shade of Mullo over her shoulder.
Asmira waved her hand again. Once more, the scene changed.
Mullo worked feverishly at an altar, sweat beading his brow as he arranged seven stones in a circle. All but one were glossy black. The seventh was red. Shadows slid from the ceiling down the walls as he pulled something from his barasta and placed it on top of the red stone.
A clump of long, black hair with a piece of bloody scalp attached.
“His daughter’s,” Asmira said, and Niall jerked where he stood. On his other side, Portia covered her mouth with her hand.
Asmira’s tone turned grave. “To gain the blood element, a witch must willingly kill someone they genuinely love. The price is too high for most.” She shifted her gaze to Niall.
“But once gained through such sacrifice, the blood element becomes part of the wielder’s bloodline.
When Mullo Balfour died, his power sought his nearest magical heir. His grandson.”
The son of two dragon shifters. My gaze went to Mullo’s shade against my will. It twisted and seethed, its wretched cries spilling from the portal.
“Mullo was greedy for power,” Asmira said.
“He believed his daughter’s union with two dragons was a critical weakness.
He couldn’t understand beings who would rather die than live without each other.
” She looked at the shade still writhing in the portal.
“He didn’t understand that love is more powerful than any element. ”
The shade howled, the sound echoing off the auld stones.
My chest tightened. Warm fingers laced with mine, and I looked up at Tavish, who watched what remained of Mullo claw uselessly at the air between the stones.
Asmira continued. “Mullo set the curse that killed the female dragons in motion, but he knew his curse would die with him.” She looked at me. “So he created another.”
Ice slid down my spine.
Asmira waved her hand. The scene shifted, and a narrow street appeared.
My heart sped up, recognition pumping with it. I’d walked the same cobblestones, excitement coursing through me as I rushed to meet a witch who claimed to have knowledge of the Curse.
The shadows in the vision swirled, and a past version of me appeared, my eyes—both eyes wide and clear—my face unscarred.
A hooded figure rounded a building at the other end of the street. The figure raised his hand, and light burst from his palm. It struck me in the face, and I crumpled to the ground, one hand clutching my bleeding eye.
The vision winked out.
The shade of Mullo behind Asmira wailed.
She looked at me. “Mullo Balfour cursed the last full-blooded dragon born to a full-blooded female. He struck you down, Alban MacLean, storing his curse in your eye.”
Ticking sounds filled the air. Chimes rang out, striking on top of each other, the clanging, discordant noise bouncing off the stones. Mullo’s shade howled, its cry joining the cacophony.
“Left unchecked,” Asmira said, her voice cutting through the noise, “Mullo’s curse will echo in all directions, unraveling the threads of fate in the past, present, and future.”
The ticking grew louder.
Red-hot agony stabbed my eye. My knees buckled.
Tavish caught me with a low, anguished cry. He sank to the ground with me and held me in his arms. Saliva rushed into my mouth, and I moaned as my stomach sloshed and bile burned my throat.
“Mullo was clever,” Asmira said, and now her voice was as terrible as the rest of her. “But time is the god element, AND NONE BUT THE GODS CONTROL IT.”
The ticking stopped.
The agony in my skull vanished.
Asmira spoke into the silence. “The gods will not allow Mullo’s curse to survive him. The moment he lodged his curse in another, he ripped a hole in the fabric of fate.” She turned to Portia, and her voice softened. “The gods chose to repair it. In doing so, they chose a very special Timekeeper.”