Chapter 25 #2
“I felt the truth of it,” he continues, his voice dropping to a rough whisper.
“When you called the wind. It merged with mine, becoming something stronger, something I could not control alone. It was like...” He searches for words, frustration creasing his brow.
“Like the air itself recognized what I was too blind to see.”
I resume cleaning his wounds, needing the distraction of movement, of purpose. “And what were you too blind to see?”
“That we were never meant to be apart.” His hand lifts, gentler now, catching the loose strand of my hair and tucking it behind my ear, his fingers lingering as though memorizing the feel of me.
His gaze holds mine, steady and unguarded.
“I told myself I had to keep a distance between us. That denying you would protect my kind.
His voice lowers, rough with something deeper than regret. “But I was wrong. It took our threads a hundred years to find each other… and I nearly turned away from the one thing I was meant to keep.”
I work in silence, absorbing his words. Part of me wants to reject them, to protect myself from hoping again.
But I had felt it too, that moment on the battlefield when my desperate call to the wind had somehow amplified his power, when I‘d felt connected to him across the chaos of battle as if by an invisible thread.
When I finally speak, my voice is hardly more than a whisper. “Say it again.”
Lurok looks confused. “That I was wrong about the prophecy. That the Season—”
“No.” I cut him off, my fingers stilling on his chest. “What you said to me in the middle of the battle.”
Understanding dawns in his eyes. His expression is open and vulnerable, something I’ve never seen on his fierce face before.
Lurok’s hands rise to cup my face, his touch so gentle it makes my heart clench.
Around us, the Flame room continues its frantic rhythm of healing and pain, but in this small space between us, time seems suspended, waiting.
His pale eyes hold mine with an intensity that anchors in the chaos around us.
“I love you,” he says, the words clear and deliberate.
No hesitation, no qualification. Just three simple words that I never expected to hear from him.
“I have loved you from the first moment I laid eyes on you, when you looked back at me without fear and saw through the monster to what I truly am.”
His thumbs brush my cheekbones with a reverence that makes me shiver. The fierce warrior who at first terrified me now touches me like I’m something precious, something he fears might shatter.
“You are everything to me,” he continues, his voice dropping lower so that only I can hear. “My bloodmate. My heart. The missing part of myself I was too frightened and too stubborn to claim.”
Bloodmate. I’ve heard Varok use it with Leira, seen the way it makes her eyes soften each time. To hear it from Lurok now, after everything, sends a tremor through me that I can’t hide.
“In the battle, when our elements joined,” he says, “it was like the air itself knew what I had been denying. You make me stronger, Serin. You make me... whole.”
My eyes fill with tears that I don’t try to blink away.
They gather and spill, tracking warm paths down my cheeks, over his fingers.
I want so badly to simply fall into this moment, to accept his words as the balm my heart has craved.
But the memory of his rejection still stings beneath the surface.
“I believe you,” I whisper, and I do. The truth rings in his voice, shines in his eyes. “But Lurok, you hurt me. Deeply. You made me feel like I was nothing. Like what we shared meant nothing.”
“I know, and I was wrong,” His jaw tightens, regret darkening his expression. “I will spend the rest of my life making it right,” he vows, his voice thick with emotion. “However long it takes. I will never deny you again, Serin. Never deny what you are to me.”
The solemnity in his tone, the oath-like quality of his words, strikes me to the core. Lurok offers this to me freely, his eyes never leaving mine.
“I do not deserve your forgiveness,” he continues when I remain silent. “But I ask for the chance to earn it.”
Inside, I feel a wall crumbling, a door opening. The hurt is still there, but alongside it now blooms something warmer, something that feels like possibility.
I lift my hand to cover his, where it rests against my cheek. His scales are smooth beneath my palm, warmer than human skin, alive with the slight tremor of suppressed emotion.
“You promise?” I ask in a tearful whisper.
“I promise,” he says firmly. “And a Talon always keeps his word.”
I absorb all he’s said and lean into his touch. His eyes widen slightly, a flash of disbelief quickly replaced by something that looks painfully like hope. I close the distance between us and press my lips to his.
The kiss is nothing like our desperate embraces in the grotto, fueled by need and forbidden desire.
This is slower, deeper, weighted with everything we’ve both been holding back.
His hands slide from my face to cradle the back of my head, fingers threading through my hair with careful restraint.
I can feel him holding back, letting me set the pace, afraid of frightening me away.
I press closer, my hands finding his shoulders, mindful of his wounds but needing him to know I’m not afraid. Not anymore. The kiss deepens, and I pour everything into it: my lingering hurt, my fragile hope, all the love I have for me.
When we finally part, both breathless, his forehead rests against mine. A new beginning has been written in the narrow space between our bodies, in the mingled rhythm of our breathing.
Our moment is shattered when the Flame room erupts with new urgency. I pull away, startled by the sudden commotion, to see Sareth and a squad of Talons bursting through the entrance.
In Sareth’s massive arms lies a tiny, limp form. It’s a youngling with iridescent scales of a soft lavender. Blood smears her side, and her small face is contorted with pain. Lurok’s hand tightens on my shoulder as we both turn to witness the chaos unfolding.
“Sovereign!” Sareth’s voice cuts through the room, his usual stoicism fractured by urgency. He moves directly toward Varok, who straightens immediately, his golden eyes narrowing at the sight of the injured young.
“We found this little one,” Sareth reports, looking down at the small form in his arms, “locked in an underground cell. She is the seer Thorne spoke of.”
“Bring her here,” Varok commands, gesturing to an empty cot near the sacred flame, then bellows, “We need a healer!”
As Sareth lays the youngling down, I catch a clearer glimpse of her face, and my heart stutters.
For a disorienting moment, I think it‘s Zara—the same delicate features, the same pale iridescent scales that shift between pearl-white and soft lavender. But that’s impossible.
Zara has been here in the temple with us, helping the healers.
“Her scales,” I whisper to Lurok. “They’re just like—”
Before I can finish, Zara herself hurries in from the adjoining chamber, a fresh basket of bandages in her small hands. She freezes at the threshold, her eyes wide and fixed on the newcomer. The basket slips from her fingers, bandages scattering across the stone floor.
The room seems to hold its breath. Then the wounded youngling stirs, her eyes fluttering open; the same impossible violet as Zara’s. She spots Zara across the room and reaches out a weak, trembling hand.
“Sister,” she whispers, the word barely audible yet somehow filling the entire chamber.
Zara doesn’t move. Her small frame seems rooted to the spot, her face a portrait of shock and disbelief. Then something shifts in her expression, recognition flooding in like a rising tide.
“Zela,” she breathes, the name emerging like a forgotten prayer suddenly remembered.
And then she’s moving, darting between healers and wounded warriors with preternatural grace until she reaches the cot.
The two younglings stare at each other, mirror images separated by years of unknown suffering.
Zara’s hand rises, trembling, to touch the other female’s face, hesitant, as if afraid she might be dreaming.
“I remember now,” Zara says, her voice small but clear. “I do not know why I forgot. You were taken by the humans when the hatchery was destroyed.”
“I remembered you,” whispers back. “Every day. I hoped to see you again.”
Tears spill down Zara’s cheeks as she climbs onto the cot, careful not to disturb her sister’s wounds. Their foreheads touch, and a soft keening sound rises from both their throats. It’s a sound of mourning and recognition that tears at my heart.
Lurok rises from the cot beside me, his wounds temporarily forgotten as we approach the reunited twins. Drawn by the raw emotion emanating from the small forms huddled together on the cot.
“We found her in the Blackwood Forest, in the humans’ hidden camp,” Sareth explains to Varok, his voice lowering as he moves away from the reunited twins. “We were staking out their position for days, hoping to find some trace of Malikor.”
We move closer, drawn by the gravity in Sareth’s tone. Lurok’s hand rests protectively at the small of my back.
“We were waiting for an opening to sneak inside. Then suddenly, they all left. It was strange, like they received orders to abandon the camp immediately.”
“They were called into battle by Halvane,” Varok hisses.
“We seized the opportunity,” Sareth continues. “We found her locked in an underground chamber. There were... instruments. Tools.” His massive hands clench into fists. “They were taking samples of her scales, her blood. There were notes, drawings of her anatomy.”
“Did you bring back any of the humans’ notes?” Varok asks, “Maybe there is something in them that could help us find Malikor.”
Sareth nods. “We took everything. Scrolls, maps, strange devices. Traven is taking it all to the war chamber now.”
“And Malikor?” Varok presses, though his eyes have darkened with fury at Sareth’s report.
Sareth shakes his massive head. “No sign of him, Sovereign. We searched every inch of that camp. If he was there, they moved him before they abandoned it.”
“Or he is already dead,” Lurok says quietly beside me.
I place my hand over his, feeling the tension in his body. Malikor was a fellow Talon. “We don’t know that,” I whisper, though the words feel hollow even to me.
Varok turns his attention back to the twins. “Did she say anything? About where they might have taken him?”
“Nothing,” Sareth admits. “She knows nothing of a Talon being held captive.”
“I want to see what you found,” Varok says. “If they were studying Zela, maybe they are doing the same to Malikor. There might be clues.”
“Yes, Sovereign.” Sareth takes in the many wounded. “What of the battle?”
“We were victorious thanks to Leira and Serin,” Varok says, his golden eyes gleaming with pride. “If it were not for their willingness to join us, we would have lost Vessan-Kar to Halvane.”
“Halvane is dead. I saw his body myself,” Lurok sneers, the words dripping with cold satisfaction. “But no sign of Thorne.”
I watch as Eira carefully cleans Zela’s wounds, the ancient temple guardian’s face tight with concentration. Zara hasn’t left her sister’s side, their small hands intertwined as if afraid they might be separated again.
“I lied to him,” Zela blurts. “I told him the child of flesh the prophecy speaks of would bring only destruction to the naga.”
“To Lord Valen,” I state. “You lied to him, knowing he would send one of his daughters to the naga.”
“Yes. I foresaw both his daughters crossing the gate and the sky healing above the Ashlands.” Zela’s eyes briefly drift closed with exhaustion before blinking back open. “Did I miss the ceremony?”
“Ceremony?” Zara tilts her head.
“Their Crimson Bond Ceremony,” she looks directly at Lurok and me, her gaze suddenly old and knowing in her young face. “My visions only show faces but no names. You are to bond soon after this battle. Did I miss it?”
The room seems to still around us. I feel heat rise to my cheeks as I turn to look at Lurok. His expression is unreadable for a moment, those colorless eyes fixed on the twin seers with a mixture of awe. Then his gaze shifts to meet mine, and something in it softens.
“If the seer herself saw our bonding ceremony,” he grins, “then who am I to argue with prophecy?”
The words land like stones in a still pond, rippling through me.
A Crimson Bond Ceremony. The sacred ritual that joined Leira and Varok, which would mark us as mates in the eyes of both our peoples.
It’s too soon, too sudden. Yet something in me recognizes the rightness of it, as if the path has been laid before us all along.
“Lurok…,” I begin, not even sure what I want to say. “A ceremony,” I repeat, testing the weight of the idea.
“If you will claim me as your bloodmate?” his voice is steady, but I can see the vulnerability in his eyes, the fear that I might reject him.
“Yes, Lurok,” I say simply. “I will claim you as mine.”