Chapter 6
Lore
Shadows rose, lunging, wrapping around me and pulling me down or sideways or…elsewhere. A wall of darkness reached from beneath Reyla, curling up my arms, dragging over my chest. It swallowed them first, then my breath. My hands clenched, but I did not fight.
I let it take me.
Reyla exhaled, and Evergorne disappeared. Colors smeared around me, streaks of red and gold and violent purple.
Soundless.
Then came a vibration, though not music. More like a feeling. Emotion turned into a sensation thrumming through my bones.
Cold swept across my face before vanishing.
I opened my eyes to find Reyla gone and me standing in a place that wasn’t ours but perhaps used to be.
It looked like the Evergorne I knew, distorted by smeared glass.
Trees bent at odd angles. Buildings around the castle leaning too low or sunk halfway into the ground.
The sky overhead bled in strange hues, lavender with streaks of red, silver curling along the edges of the clouds.
Wildfire loved the stars, but none existed in this place. They hid or had been stolen.
I turned in a circle, the ground crunching beneath me, then realized I stood on shards.
Thousands of pieces of mirrored glass spread around me like rocks on a shore, thick and glittering.
Every one of them had snagged her reflection.
One flashed bright to my left, caught in the light of the strange, wounded sun.
I stepped over to it, crouched, and touched it.
The world shifted around me as I dropped into one of her memories.
She was younger here, barely more than a child.
She sat alone on a wide set of stone steps mounted on the front of a huge, grim stone building, her arms wrapped tight around her knees.
Her boots looked too big for her small frame.
Her sleeves hung past her hands. She stared at the ground, her face turned enough for me to see the uneven cut of her hair, hacked short and jagged, like someone had done it for her without caring how it looked.
The stone beneath her was wet and the gray clouds overhead threatened rain. A pale smear of blood trailed from the corner of her mouth to her chin.
A heavy door creaked open in the building behind her.
“Get up,” a woman snapped, standing in the doorway’s shadows. “You’re not broken. Not if you can still sit.”
Reyla sucked in a breath but didn’t flinch. She pulled her knees in tighter.
“I said up.” The broad-shouldered woman dressed in dark leathers bristling with weapons came into view. “Beasts don’t wait for little girls to feel better.”
Still, Reyla didn’t move.
A long sigh bled out of the woman. “I get it. It’s hard.
Well, it’s hard for all of us. Do you think I’m any different than you?
I once sat on those steps, feeling beaten down, scared.
But you know what I did? I turned those feelings into strength, and I used them to survive.
Because cowering will kill you when lifting your fist and scorning the world could very well save your life.
Up, girl. I’m saying it for the last time.
If you can walk, you can train. And if you can ride, you can fight.
If you can’t do either, you’re no use to anyone.
It’s that simple.” Her voice didn’t sound cruel, just tired.
She went back inside without another word, closing the door with a shuddering boom.
Reyla stayed frozen. Her lips moved, but no sound came out.
The scent in the air shifted to damp stone, iron, old fear.
I could almost feel the cold of the fortress walls, the weight of silence pressing down like armor too big to wear.
A stable hand passed by in the open courtyard in front of her and paused.
He looked at her like he wanted to say something but didn’t. Just nodded and kept walking.
When she finally stood it was slow. Her legs shook, and she nearly fell backward, only avoiding hitting the stone steps by grabbing onto the rail to steady herself.
Without wiping the blood from her face or looking back at the door, she took the stairs to the bottom and started across the dirt-strewn courtyard, aiming for the aerie beyond.
She never stopped shaking, but she didn’t let it show. Not when she passed others. Not when she reached the aerie and stepped inside.
I’d bet anything that was the last time my wildfire had revealed this side of herself where someone might see.
Jerked back into the present, I reeled, nearly falling onto the jumble beneath my feet.
“She was a child,” I whispered, my voice breaking. “Just a child, and that woman walked away.” My chest burned with helpless rage. “No one was there for her. Not the way she needed.”
When she'd told me about training dragons, I'd pictured careful lessons under watchful eyes, not this brutal forge of abandonment where children learned that survival only came with silence.
If only I could reach through time and pull that broken child into my arms, tell her she was already enough. She should’ve had someone fighting for her, not teaching her that love could only be earned through suffering.
Another fragment caught my eye, jutting up from the path, light dappling unevenly across its surface. Stooping down, I ran my fingertip across the smooth surface, and I was sucked away.
In this memory, Reyla was fully grown. As lithe and strong as she was today. She stood in a smoldering village, dressed in black leathers and adorned with weapons. She held the sword Kinart gave her, and her arms were braced, her face slicked with sweat and dirt, her mouth open in a silent shout.
A hiss rattled through the air, and a monstrous creature with a thick hide, glistening fangs, and claws longer than her forearm lunged at her.
She fought with only the sword. No magic, just metal and muscle and raw tenacity.
As always, her form was flawless, every movement guided by years of training.
I’d known she could fight. But I’d never seen what it cost her to learn.
I knew this woman almost as well as I knew myself. She fought perfectly because any slip could not only kill her but reveal that inside, she wasn’t as strong as she appeared. That need for perfection came from a place of deep fear.
She worried she’d be seen as expendable.
The dreg struck out, and she ducked, but its claw caught her shoulder. Blood flew, too red, too fast. She didn’t stop or even wince. Only twisted, slammed her sword up through its throat with a scream wrenched from deep inside her body. Another slash across its neck, and the beast toppled.
She staggered but caught herself before her knees buckled. Her hands trembled badly, but she glanced around, her jaw tight, before quickly wiping them on her leathers and adjusting her grip on the hilt of her blade. She checked her stance. Squared her shoulders. Lifted her chin.
She wasn’t only fighting the beast. She was fighting the quake in her own limbs, the need to look invincible.
Another rider approached from behind, also wearing leathers and soot covered. He stopped beside her and grunted. “Good. You’re standing. Almost time to move out. Clean your blade.”
That was all. No checking her for wounds. No pausing to ask if she was alright, if she needed anything.
Reyla nodded and tugged a cloth from her pocket, swiping the blood and grime from her blade.
Why did no one teach her that survival should come with rest, comfort?
She turned toward the wreckage of the village, moving slowly between the scorched huts, her eyes darting, scanning the ground. A hand lifted to one collapsed roof as if she could will it back into place. Her lips moved.
That’s when I realized that instead of celebrating their victory, she was counting the dead, taking on that burden along with everything else.
When she finally stopped on the edge of the square, she turned her back to her friends and pressed a fist to her chest. Only her shoulders slumped before she tightened her spine and her expression.
Her lower lip quivered.
The rest of her stayed perfectly still, like if she allowed herself to show any hint of vulnerability, she’d break.
When the shard released me, I staggered back, rising to my feet again.
“Not one of them checked on you.” My raw voice broke through the empty air. “You were bleeding, shaking, and like that woman, they walked away.”
I turned in a slow circle, taking in the fractured landscape around me. “How many times did you stand alone like that, counting bodies while your own wounds went ignored?”
I ground my teeth together. “They saw you bleed and expected you to clean your blade and march on. As if you weren't…” I swallowed hard. “As if you weren't worth checking on.”
The realization hit like a punch to the gut. “That's why you flinch when someone reaches for you. Why you always say you're fine even when I can see the pain in your eyes.” My voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “You learned that showing weakness meant being abandoned.”
I stared at the shard in my palm, seeing her face again, one so carefully controlled, so strong. “That’s why you looked so surprised the first time I asked how you were feeling after training. When I held you just to hold you, not because you'd earned it by bleeding.”
My voice cracked. “You don’t have to do this alone. Not anymore.”
Another mirror flashed to my right, telling me we weren’t through with this lesson I now had to learn.
I strode over and lifted the shard.
In this one, Reyla worked in an open-air, fenced-in training ring with a young sky-blue dragon still growing into its wings.
She crouched beside it, lifting one claw and coating it with oil, rubbing gently at the joints.
The dragon shifted, its nostrils flaring.
It gave a low, warning growl and jerked, one wing flaring.
Reyla didn’t flinch. She pressed a steady palm to its shoulder and whispered something too soft to hear. The tension in the dragon bled away. It blinked slowly, almost sleepy now, and let her finish her work.
She moved with quiet skill, methodical and careful.
This wasn’t a performance. There was no audience.
It was her and the creature. A regular day for her at the fortress she grew up in.
When she talked about dragons, I assumed it was a casual thing.
But my love had bonded with them. Not in the magical sense but in friendship.
Tempest was her best friend, but I suspected she only ever fully trusted dragons.
She tapped its front leg, and it dropped to its belly. She clambered up its foreleg with the saddle slung over her shoulder that she gently placed on its spine. On the ground again, she secured the straps before returning to the dragon’s back and dropping into the leather.
Wings snapping open, the dragon exploded from the ground, slicing upward toward the net spread over the arena. Reyla leaned into the motion, guiding it with her body. But when the dragon twisted, she slipped.
And fell.
Her body hit the sand-strewn ground with a sound I felt in my teeth.
A sick thud. I cursed under my breath, but no one in the shard moved.
Except one man, standing at the edge of the pen with his arms crossed on his chest and a blank face.
He watched her fall and turned, striding away without first ensuring she wasn’t hurt.
Reyla rolled to her side, pressed one palm to the ground, and pushed herself up. Her right leg gave a little, but she breathed through it.
After brushing herself off and running a hand over her ribs, she checked the straps securing the saddle and limped to the dragon’s side, where she stroked its snout, reassuring it that things were fine.
That fall could not have been the first. I saw it now in the way her movements were too practiced, the way she covered any bruises with a shaky smile. She wasn’t afraid to slam on the ground.
But she’d stopped expecting anyone to catch her. Lift her to her feet. Hold her.
I pressed my palms against my temples, the weight of understanding crashing down on me. “Dragons,” I breathed, staring at the fractured ground beneath my feet. “Of course you trust them more than people. I see why.”
Tipping my head back, I looked up at the bleeding sky.
“They stayed when you fell. That dragon didn't walk away like that bastard did.” I kicked a rock, sending it skittering across the glass-strewn earth.
“Animals don't lie about caring. They don't pretend to give a damn and then abandon you when it matters.”
I sank to my knees, my chest spasming. “How many times have I asked you to trust me?” The question tore from my throat.
“And here you are, believing that if you're not perfect, I'll leave too.
But I'm not them, love. I won't turn my back when you fall.” I lifted my head, speaking to the fractured world that held her memories.
“I'll be the one who stays. Who asks if you're hurt. Who doesn't walk away.”
The wind whistled through the broken landscape, carrying the echo of my promise.
She didn’t need to roar to be strong.
She only needed someone to see her when no one else cared enough to look.
Fates help me, but I saw my wildfire now.