Chapter 16
ELARA
Iwas drowning.
Not in water. In ice.
It filled my mouth and lungs and skull, crawling through me from the inside out. I stood in the crypt again, stone walls slick with frost, the air ringing with screams that never quite finished forming. Aeliana stood before me, her face wrong. Too still. Too knowing.
“You took my place,” she said, though her lips never moved. “Now give it back.”
Her hand closed around my wrist, bone cold, fingers tightening until pain exploded up my arm. The crypt shuddered. Bodies shifted in their frozen tombs. Ice split the stone like veins cracking under skin.
I tried to pull away. I tried to scream.
Instead, my mouth opened and frost poured out.
I woke gasping, jerking upright as sound tore from my throat.
It shattered against ice.
The room had frozen while I slept.
Frost sheeted the walls and climbed over furniture, crystallizing the world mid-motion. A tapestry hung stiff as glass. The basin by the hearth was sealed over, rim to center.
For a heartbeat, I couldn’t move. I couldn’t decide if I was still dreaming or if I had dragged the crypt into Ashenveil with me like a curse I couldn’t set down.
Valen stood in the corner. Half in shadow, half caught by firelight. The ice closest to him had thinned, not melting so much as retreating, inch by reluctant inch, as if it recognized him and chose obedience over defiance.
His arms were crossed, and his posture was calm in a way that felt practiced.
My throat scraped when I swallowed.
“Rhydian,” I said.
The name came out like a reflex. Like a prayer my mouth had learned in panic.
Valen’s eyes flicked to mine.
“Where is he?” I asked.
“You were calling his name,” Valen replied.
“That isn’t an answer.”
His gaze drifted upward to the ceiling where ice webbed across the stone. His jaw tightened, small and controlled, like even he disliked being reminded I could do this.
“Not here,” he said.
The words landed in my chest like a blow. I hated that they hurt. I hated that the absence felt physical. I dragged my eyes back down to my hands, to the frost clinging to my knuckles like proof I couldn’t scrub away.
“Something is wrong with me,” I said.
“Yes,” Valen replied, as if he were confirming the weather.
No hesitation. No comfort.
The certainty steadied me more than gentleness would have. If I was breaking, at least he could see the fracture too. At least I wasn’t alone in it.
Valen moved.
His boots cracked thin ice with each step as he crossed the room. Heat followed him in a slow, controlled wave, pressing the cold back without chasing it. When he stopped, he was close enough that warmth reached my skin.
He didn’t touch me.
He didn’t need to.
“She is restless,” he said.
My pulse tripped. “Who?”
Valen’s gaze held mine like a hand around my throat. “Aeliana.”
The name cut straight through me.
“No,” I said too fast. “She’s dead.”
“She died,” Valen agreed. “That does not mean she is gone.”
“What are you saying?” I demanded. “Say it clearly.”
Valen’s expression didn’t change. If anything, he looked tired, like this conversation had been waiting in the corner of the room longer than I had.
“You want it plain?” he asked. “Fine.” He shifted closer, boots scraping softly over frost-slick stone, closing the last inches between us. “Aeliana’s essence is bound to you,” Valen said. “She is in your body. Not as a memory. Not as grief.”
My breath became shallow. “That’s impossible.”
“My power is essencelinking, Elara,” he said.
The word landed like a sentence.
I swallowed hard. “Explain it.”
“I bind essence,” Valen said. “Soul to soul. Death to life.”
A beat of silence, heavy as stone.
“And I can bind creature to creature. Blood to blood,” he continued, voice lowering, turning lethal in its intimacy. “Lover to lover.”
Something inside me tightened painfully, like a wire being pulled taut.
My hands started shaking. Frost prickled along my fingertips, eager, listening.
“You put my dead best friend’s soul inside my body?” I whispered, horrified.
“Yes,” Valen replied. “I did.”
My voice dropped. “That’s why I’m dreaming of her.”
“Yes.”
“And the cryomancy,” I said, my throat tight. “That’s why it keeps coming without warning.”
“Aeliana is surfacing.”
My stomach turned. “What does that mean?”
“You are not linking correctly,” he said.
I blinked at him, once. Slowly. “Of course I’m not doing it correctly.”
My voice was brittle with disbelief. “I didn’t even know I was linked. I didn’t know there was a proper way to do this. Forgive me for not treating unexpected soul invasion like a skill I could practice in front of a mirror.”
“With some work, we can fix this,” Valen said softly.
“Fix it?” The word tore out of me like a laugh that had forgotten how to be kind. “I don’t need you to fix it. I need you to undo it.”
My throat burned, grief and fury tangling until I could barely breathe around them.
“Everything that is happening to me leads back to you. Because you killed her. And… apparently because you took what was left of her and forced it into me like that was mercy.” My hands shook as I gestured to my own chest, to the place that felt too crowded.
“You stitched her to me and then looked at me like I was the monster. Your people condemned me for cryomancy you put inside of me.” My voice broke.
“Do you even understand what you did?” I asked.
“I understand sharing a body,” he said.
I stared at him. “What?”
His voice dropped. “I’m essencelinked to my dragon.”
The air shifted with the words. Heat pressed closer, instinctive and immediate, as if something beneath his skin had lifted its head to listen.
I blinked, trying to make it fit. “That’s why you bled when I stabbed your dragon.”
“Yes. And why I am… forced into impossible situations. I understand the burden of my power more than most.”
My pulse hammered, hard and wild. “Then you know what you’ve done to me, and yet you still did it.”
Valen’s mouth tightened, and for a heartbeat he looked almost angry at himself.
“I didn’t want to,” he said.
I scoffed. “But you did.”
“Yes,” Valen said. “Because my dragon’s instincts took over. I don’t know why. He saw a weak woman and decided to make her thrive. He decided to turn you into everything we stand against, and it’s killing me.”
My stomach dropped. “Stop.”
He leaned in a fraction. His voice roughened.
“I saw you in the crypt,” Valen said. “Half-starved. Shaking with grief and rage and fear. A weak girl with no power.”
My throat burned. “You hated me.”
“No,” he said immediately. “I hated how easy it would be to kill you.”
Silence snapped tight between us.
“His fire didn’t burn you,” Valen said. “It moved around you. Like it recognized you.”
My hands clenched. “Recognized?”
“That is what it felt like,” Valen said. “And mate bonds are not common.”
I blinked, thrown. “What?”
Valen’s voice didn’t change, steady as stone.
“There isn’t much written about dragons,” he said. “There hasn’t been one in a millennium. Scholars argue over myths and ashes and half-remembered prayers, and call it research.”
His eyes held mine, unforgiving.
“But I know what he is,” Valen continued.
“I know what he demands. A dragon doesn’t need love,” he said.
“He needs a mate.” His mouth curved, cold and cruel.
“It’s not romance or comfort. It’s instinct.
Something… like fate.” The heat in the room tightened like a grip.
“A dragon does not choose often. Nor do they choose wrongly. He chose you.” Another breath.
“And because I am bound to him,” Valen finished, voice lowering into something inevitable, “that makes you mine, too.”
My breath caught. “A dragon fell in love with me? That’s absurd.”
“Do not insult him with human language.” His eyes held mine, unblinking. Unforgiving. “For reasons I don’t pretend to understand,” he continued, voice low, “you are the only soul my dragon half recognized as worth serving. You are his queen.”
The room seemed to tilt. My skin prickled, anger flaring hot beneath something far more dangerous.
“I’m not some destined mate,” I snapped. “Not to a monster.”
Valen’s mouth curved, faint and merciless. “You keep calling him a beast like he’s separate from me.”
He breathed once, slow, like he was restraining something that wanted to surge forward.
“I am the dragon,” Valen said. “Not a rider. Not a handler. Him and me. One thing with two instincts.”
My pulse tripped, traitorous.
“You think I wanted that?” he asked quietly. “You think I wanted impulse deciding who I protect? Who I would die for? Who I would ruin myself to keep breathing?”
His eyes held mine, steady and merciless, and for the first time I understood something sickening.
This was compulsion with teeth.
“I looked at you,” Valen said, voice dropping lower, “and I felt him choose.”
I swallowed hard. “So you bound me to Aeliana to make me useful.”
Valen’s jaw flexed. “I bound you to Aeliana because you were not going to survive being a dragon’s queen without something inside you that could bite back.
Aeliana’s essence was a convenient well of power right there.
The dragon forced me to tether you, to give you a fighting chance at being the queen he chose.
He wants to make you a fighter, for reasons I don’t yet understand.
He sees the strongest version of you, and instinct”—he gritted, like the words pained him—“is forcing me to sharpen you like a blade for him.”
“And now you’re telling me because I’m breaking,” I said.
“I’m telling you because essencelinking comes in many forms. Some souls cohabitate. Sometimes, one soul seeks dominance.”
The room felt too small. “Aeliana is fighting within me.”
“She is,” he said, and the words landed like a hand bracing my spine.
For a moment, I hated him so much I could barely see straight.
“Fuck you,” I hissed. “And fuck your dragon. I refuse to be?—”
“You can’t refuse, Elara,” he cut in. “It’s already done.”
The words should have made me collapse.
Instead, my mind did what it always did when panic tried to swallow me.
It reached for sequence. For cause. For the shape of the trap.
A dragon chose me.
His fire had not burned me in the crypt.
And Aeliana was in my dreams like she had been waiting for me to weaken.
This wasn’t random.
This wasn’t an accident.
This was another royal making decisions with my body.
Valen watched it click into place behind my eyes. He didn’t look away.
“I had to make you dangerous,” he said quietly.
“I didn’t do it because I wanted you obedient.
I did it because my dragon counterpart wanted you alive.
” Valen’s eyes burned, gold-edged and unforgiving.
“You can hate me,” he said. “You should. But you will not pretend you’re still the girl the world could break. ”
My hands trembled again. Frost crawled along my forearms despite the heat pressing in around us, a living thing that wanted out.
He didn’t step back.
If anything, he leaned closer, heat pressing into the cold clinging to my skin like he meant to test which of us would flinch first. His eyes stayed on my face, not my magic.
Me.
“Tell me something,” he said softly.
His voice was too calm. Too measured.
“The Warden Lord you reach for,” Valen continued. “Is it you who wants him?”
My breath caught.
“Or is it Aeliana?” he asked.
The question split me down the middle.
I opened my mouth. Closed it.
Nothing came out.
Not because I didn’t want to answer, but because the answer slid away the moment I tried to grasp it. Rhydian’s steady hands guiding mine. His voice saying my name like it anchored him. The warmth of his presence when the world was cold.
And layered over it, was the echo of Aeliana’s grief.
Her possessiveness.
Her fury.
Valen watched the conflict flicker across my face like he was reading a battlefield.
“You don’t know,” he said softly.
My jaw tightened. “Please stop. This is too much to take in.”
His mouth curved faintly. Almost satisfied.
“That hesitation,” he said, “tells me everything.”
Something inside me surged forward, cold and furious, and for a heartbeat I couldn’t tell if the anger was mine or hers.
I snapped my hand up before I could think. “You did this to me. You murdered her, then gave me this… curse. You hypocrite!”
Ice surged from my palm and wrapped around Valen’s wrist in a violent crack, crystallizing skin and armor in jagged frost.
“You have to breathe, Elara. I can help you.”
“You cannot help what you destroyed!” I screamed. “You are the reason for everything.”
Valen didn’t cry out.
He didn’t even flinch.
He held my gaze, fire blazing behind his eyes, breath steady, as the ice crept higher, biting into him with enough force to make my bones ache in sympathy.
“You feel her now,” he said calmly. “Don’t you?”
I was shaking. Not from fear.
From fury.
“She is mine,” I snarled, and I didn’t know which of us had said it.
Cold surged again, eager, starving, answering something ancient inside me.
Valen’s mouth was inches from mine now, heat and ice colliding between us so violently it made my teeth ache.
His voice dropped into something meant only for me.
“Coexist,” Valen murmured. “Or she will take you.”
Something inside me snapped.
I drove the ice deeper, freezing him solid from the shoulders down in a violent, uncontrolled surge. Power tore out of me like a scream. The room flashed white. Cold swallowed sound and heat and reason whole.
And just before everything went still, before the darkness rushed in and claimed me, I knew it with terrifying certainty.
Aeliana was no longer content to share.
She was ready to fight.