Chapter 20 The Third Rider #3
Ingamar hummed, almost like a purring, and put his head down again.
“You think that’s funny? I would’ve died had it not been for the elven magic imbued in that chest, you know the one I’m talking about.”
Ingamar shifted, his muscles relaxing.
“Zorjan told me to follow the fire fae. You led me to her. After I found the fae, I just followed her,” he said, nodding toward Lark’s still body beneath Ingamar’s wing.
“Had I known that she had the Hyalite, we could’ve avoided that mess with the Nordraven orcs in Astral City.
You could’ve helped me had you revealed yourself back at Fletcher’s Passage. ”
Ingamar sighed, blinking lazily.
“Do you think she was the third dragonrider that day?”
Ingamar’s gaze drifted away from Venrick. He lowered his head, peeking at Lark under his wing.
You do, don’t you, Venrick thought.
“It makes sense. She had the Hyalite. She doesn’t have her dragon anymore.
She can wield magic. I’ve never heard of a rider being able to use magic once their dragon has been killed but maybe she’s formed a new bond…
I mean, you were vulnerable from having just lost Tel and she was in a similar position having lost her dragon.
I wouldn’t blame you if you two,” he suggested, meshing his fingers together.
Ingamar’s tail whipped through the air like a golden lance, striking the earth between them with enough force to leave an impression in the soil. His growl resonated through the clearing, teeth bared on display, their razor edges flashing in the darkness.
“I take it that’s a hard no,” Venrick said, understanding in his voice. “I guess you’re right. You didn’t form a bond with her, intentionally.”
Before Ingamar could summon another vengeful fireball, rustling under his wing caught their attention.
Two delicate hands emerged from beneath the membrane, pushing the light golden barrier aside with surprising strength.
Venrick’s breath caught in his chest as he set eyes on her perfect features.
Her face held a symmetry that seemed almost carved rather than born.
Her face was framed by reddish-brown hair that fell in waves.
But it was her eyes that truly captured him.
Those sharp green irises that hinted at distant elven ancestry held wisdom even as they blinked in confusion.
She moved carefully, like someone waking from a deep sleep, as she took in her surroundings.
Her realization seemed to arrive in stages.
First, her eyes took in the scaled tail stretched across the grass, then the wing she had just pushed aside.
Her gaze traveled upward until she met Ingamar’s large head directly above her, his golden eyes now fixed intently on her face.
“Ah!” she shouted, springing out from Ingamar’s warmth.
“Calm down. You don’t want to startle him and get on his bad side, trust me,” Venrick said, rising beside his nearby fire.
“What the? You!” she said as she adopted a defensive fighting stance.
Venrick placed his hands on his hips, trying to project an air of calm despite the magnetic pull of her presence.
Each movement he made was conscious, slow, like someone approaching a spooked horse.
“Relax, I’m not trying to kill you. I just saved your life, well, I tried and then he did ultimately.
” He gestured toward Ingamar with a slight tilt of his head.
“I more or less gave you time to get through that portal. Ingamar was the one who carried us here. Despite his wishes, I hopped on for the ride.”
Even as she fixed him with a gaze sharp enough to cut glass, her hand hovering near the dagger at her belt, Venrick couldn’t look away.
Her beauty was unparalleled, wild, and natural.
Questions burned in his mind like embers.
Who was she really? Why had Tel’s dragon chosen to protect her?
What power lay behind those forest-green eyes that seemed to hold compounding secrets?
How was she not severely crippled after the beating she took from those orcs?
But he swallowed them all back, sensing that one wrong word might send her fleeing, or worse, drive her to violence.
The tension between them was palpable, waiting to see whether it would loosen or slowly ease to resting.
“Where the ash did you take me?” she said, her fists clenched tight.
“Not me, Ingamar. I merely hitched a ride to escape with you. Ingamar is too pleased that I jumped on his back and tagged along, aren’t you, buddy?”
Ingamar snorted, thumping his tail hard enough to send a tremor through the ground in warning.
“You two were following me,” Lark said, her bright green eyes moving from Ingamar to Venrick and lingering on him before they examined the burnt ground around his fire. “I lost it, the thing you were hunting, so there’s no reason why you should’ve saved me.”
“Why didn’t you take it to the Keep right away? You don’t work for the Northern Kings, do you?” Venrick asked.
“I would never. They took everything from me and burned it to ash. They separated me from those who actually wanted to help me. No, I hate the North,” she said.
“We have that in common then. But you should’ve picked up on that when I risked my life to help you escape those orcs.”
“You could’ve called your dragon sooner,” she replied.
“I didn’t call Ingamar down, he did that all on his own.”
“Ingamar, that’s his name?”
Ingamar purred at the sound of Lark’s honey voice saying his name.
“He took us to one of Tel’s safety zones near the heart of the Everburning Forest. This place is protected with wards, hidden from the rest of the world by magic. We should be safe here, for now.”
Lark relaxed slightly, letting her hand come away from the daggers on her belt. She measured Venrick with judging eyes. “Why did you so willingly jump into a fight at my side?”
“You were being attacked. I couldn’t stand by and let it happen without helping. That goes against the Paragon’s code.”
“But you’re not a Paragon. Ezra told us about you.”
“No, not a Paragon or a Knight.”
“But you have a dragon?”
“I already explained it. Ingamar is not my dragon, he was Tel’s,” Venrick said.
“You’re serious? You don’t have any influence on him?”
“No. Ingamar doesn’t care for me.”
“So that burn patch near you, and your distance, it’s not just an argument, he genuinely wants you gone?” Lark said.
“Ingamar, for whatever reason, found you after, let’s call it our event, and was following you. I only caught on around Fletcher’s Passage. He decided to break all kinds of laws and tear that building apart in Astral City to get to you.”
“And he wasn’t there for the Hyalite?”
“Apparently not. You must’ve imparted something on him from before, because that spell you cast was—”
“I cast a spell,” she said, seeming to remember as she said it.
“An extremely powerful one. It nearly devoured you. If your fire fae hadn’t given you the words to end it, both of you would’ve died.”
“You know about Nix?”
“That fae who appears to you as the small flaming woman in the red dress?”
She nodded.
“Yes, I’m half elf,” he said, narrowing his eyes.
And a dragonrider like yourself should know that, he thought.
“It caught me off guard at first,” Venrick continued. “I’d never met a human who had bonded with a fire fae before, but now… considering what happened with our event, it makes more sense.”
She scrunched up her face at him, “Sasja escaped through the portal.”
“That’s her name, the blonde girl who stole our Hyalite?”
“Our?”
He nodded slowly. “You do know who I am, right?”
“Tel Roan’s Squire,” she said.
“Yes. And yes, she escaped with that Morsythian sorcerer, which is odd in more ways than one. I wouldn’t have expected one to be this far south at all.
And until the other week, Morsythians didn’t show any signs of ever wanting to use dark magic to create a portal.
For centuries they’ve been opposed to using magic at all.
And it’s strange that they’ve picked now to suddenly be working with Nordraven. ”
Lark’s brows pinched together, and she looked down.
“Are you feeling okay after what’ s happened? I mean, you took quite a beating and then cast a spell that drained your energy so much you passed out, hard.”
“I have to get that Hyalite back,” Lark said.
“Trust me, I know the feeling.”
She frowned at him.
“We could work together. I used to help Tel with this kind of thing. You and Ingamar have something going already, I can lend a hand.”
“Why do want to help me?”
“I’ll tell you if you tell me why you need that Hyalite back,” he said, hoping she wouldn’t make him lie to keep his life.
“I just— I just do, okay? It’s important to me. At least I think it’s important to me.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I,” she groaned in frustration. “I don’t know who I am.”
Venrick met her eyes. Those beautiful, bright, dazzling eyes, and couldn’t find a hint of deceit in them. “You’re being serious.”
She nodded.
“Your name is Lark, Hardin told me.”
“That’s the name Paq gave me,” she said, taking a seat in the charred grass near his fire.
“Paq, as in, the god of air?” Venrick asked, cautiously sitting down near her. He glanced at Ingamar, checking to see if the dragon would object to his being closer. Ingamar’s eyes followed him, but the dragon didn’t object.
“No, not that Paq. It’s a long story…”
“Tell me about it. We don’t have anywhere to be and we definitely can’t leave here anytime soon.”
“You already know about the Hyalite, Nix, and the dragon. I guess there’s nothing left for me to hide.”
The firelight flickered across Lark’s face as she unraveled her tale.
Her voice grew quiet when she spoke of the village and her friend, Paq, of the fire wheat harvest and of the mystical fire fae.
A shadow crossed her features as she recounted the Nordraven attack.
Guilt etched lines around her eyes despite the lives she’d helped to save.
The Hyalite’s presence weighed on her as she described Nix’s insistence that she keep it, her journey to Astral City, and the fateful meetings with Ingamar, Ezra, and Hardin.
“And after Ingamar saved me on the way to Fletcher’s Passage, you’ll know everything from then on.” Her silence stretched into the night.
“You really can’t remember how you got the Hyalite?” Venrick leaned forward, the fire warming his cheeks.
“No. Clearly it has something to do with the Northern Kings, and now apparently Tel Roan’s death if his dragon’s been following me this whole time.”
Beneath his armor, the amulet pressed against Venrick’s chest felt icy cold.
The weight of the cursed metal had never been so uncomfortable.
The truth clawed at his throat, desperate to escape, but he knew the price he would pay.
Instead, he watched her across the flames, his mind racing for ways to help her remember without triggering the curse that would end his life.
Because of the conditions of my curse, I must be careful of what I say. I can’t tell her exactly what happened or I’ll die, but maybe I can help her remember, he thought.
“Venrick, do you understand the connection between me, the Hyalite, and Ingamar?” she asked, picking up on the unspoken words he couldn’t offer.
“How much about Tel’s death do you know?” he said, testing the waters.
“Hardin read a news article aloud to me about it as we traveled with the caravan. A rider, Marcel Heartfell, attacked Tel. Another Paragon from the Vermillion Keep was there to help. Tel was slain by Marcel, Marcel’s dragon was wounded and eventually recovered by Nordraven, but the third rider’s dragon was killed.
Both surviving riders have been missing ever since. ”
“The thing is,” Venrick began, choosing each word with painful precision, “the Vermillion Keep didn’t send another Paragon there.
They hadn’t commissioned another dragonrider anywhere near the area where Tel was slain.
” The firelight caught the tension in his jaw as he continued.
“I remember Tel being worried about the upcoming contract renewal. Something to do with the Magi Order becoming involved. When we went out for that storm, Tel was the only dragonrider anywhere near the Vermillion Keep.”
“One of the other riders couldn’t have shown up?”
“All the riders from the Vermillion Keep were accounted for on that day. None were close enough to get involved.” He leaned forward, shadows deepening around his eyes.
“Regardless, nobody knows where this rider came from or where he or she went after their dragon was killed. They would’ve had to be very strong to have prevented Marcel from taking the Hyalite.
Something no dragonrider of Lamar has ever done. ”
Understanding crossed her face. “He or she... you don’t think that I?”
Venrick nodded slowly. “You can spellcast, you’re bonded with a fire fae, you had a Hyalite on you, and Ingamar broke all ties with the Keep to save you.”
“What are you saying?”
“Lark, I think you’re the third dragonrider.”