Chapter 9 #2
“Are we lying low?” She looked at me closely—too close for comfort.
I thought about the moment she’d sat down beside me.
What I’d just been doing. Transforming. “Is that what we’re doing?
I mean, I’m clearly not the only one stirring shit up.
” She laughed loudly enough that Professor Vane paused his scritch-scratching and turned to glare at her.
Visha held up her hands and stayed silent until he turned around again.
She lowered her voice. “I mean, look at your fucking face.”
“What about it?”
“Where did you get the wounds, Blake? Who gave them to you?”
“I got in a fight,” I said tersely. “I’ll tell you more when the time is right.”
“Sure.” She rubbed her chin. “Let me ask you something. Has Viktor ever used thrallweave on Pendragon?”
She’d caught me off guard. “Yes, he has. But why does it matter?”
“Did she give way?”
“No,” I replied. “Rodriguez had been teaching her to shield herself. Headmaster Kim had approved her to learn thrallguard. She was able to resist. She’s impressively strong.”
“Right.” Visha folded her arms over her chest, looking smug. “Thought so.”
“What?” I demanded.
“Have you ever heard of such a thing in your life? A blightborn—even if she is a rider—who was able to resist thrallweave when it was wielded by arguably the most powerful vampire alive?”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
Visha shook her head. “A few lessons in thrallguard and you think Medra’s, what, a prodigy? Does that make sense to you? She couldn’t even resist Regan, for fuck’s sake.”
“She hadn’t started her lessons back then,” I protested. But now that I thought about it, it didn’t make sense. It had always seemed too good to be true, but I’d simply been grateful Pendragon had been able to keep Viktor out of her fucking head. Now I wondered what Visha was getting at exactly.
Professor Vane was starting his lecture, but Visha seemed intent on continuing her train of thought. “You can worry about me if you want to, Blake. But I’d be more concerned about yourself if I were you, House Leader. And I mean that genuinely.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” I hissed. “Is that some kind of a threat?”
She shook her head and turned to her notebook. “Not a threat, a warning. You know exactly what I mean. You need to get a handle on your shit, Blake, before it handles you.”
By some miracle of the Bloodmaiden, I made it through the rest of Vane’s class without incident.
It was a near miss, though. The whole time I could feel Visha next to me, alarm bells were going off in my head.
She knew. She didn’t even have to say it out loud.
The way she’d looked at me was enough. She knew what I was.
What I was becoming. Soon someone else would figure it out.
Maybe someone I couldn’t afford to lose. Pendragon.
The thought of Pendragon seeing me as a scaled red monster, seeing the beast I was turning into …
Iron bands seemed to tighten around my ribs.
I wasn’t Nyxaris. I wasn’t some wise old dragon.
Pendragon would look at me the way she looked at Viktor, like I was a freak.
A monster. Because it was true. That’s what I was.
I shoved my way out into the hall the moment the bell rang, not waiting for Vane to dismiss us.
I didn’t stop moving. I kept my head down, dodging and weaving through groups of students, then climbing staircase after staircase until I was almost dizzy.
All of the fear, all of the anxiety, I hadn’t kept it in check.
Couldn’t control it. And now it was happening again.
I could feel the shift in my bones, the itch under my skin.
With every step I took, the dragon was trying to claw its way out of me.
I needed space. I needed air.
I stumbled into the classroom, the one I’d walked Pendragon to once for her lesson with Professor Hassan.
The room was in a wing of the school few people visited.
I’d noticed the room was built right into the cliffside, overlooking the ocean, opening out onto a wide stone landing that must have been used as a dragon perch back in the old days, when Bloodwing had been able to boast about having more than one dragon. Now it was mostly forgotten.
Thank the Bloodmaiden, Hassan wasn’t there and neither was Pendragon.
I slammed the door shut behind me, hoping and praying I could turn the tide. But it was too late. The change ripped through me.
I gasped, dropping to my knees, body buckling under the pressure.
How could this be natural? There was nothing natural-feeling about it.
I fought the dragon at every step. Skin splitting, crimson scales forcing their way up to the surface, gleaming in the sunlight.
My fingers twisted, contorting. Bones lengthened, thickened.
Nails sharpened into wicked black claws.
And then my shoulders burst open, wings unfurling, vast and sinewy, scraping the rough stone ceiling as they stretched outward.
I fell onto my hands. No, not hands—talons.
The floor gave a shudder at the sudden increase in my weight.
A guttural noise tore from my throat. I barely recognized myself.
My body was alien. Too big, I was too big.
The classroom was too small. The walls were pressing in on me.
The ceiling suddenly became too low, too close.
I staggered towards the edge of the room and out onto the landing.
My wings brushed against the walls as I went, scales scraping, knocking pieces of stone down in a hailstorm.
I tried to breathe, tried to get control.
But there wasn’t time—it was too late. There was no room. No space. I had no choice.
I squeezed my eye shut. And jumped.
Birds pushed their young from their nest when they were ready to fly, didn’t they?
But I wasn’t a fucking bird. And I wasn’t flying.
I was falling. I laughed—or tried to. The sound stuck in my throat.
I couldn’t even laugh as I died. I supposed that was ironic.
I was going to die because I was too stupid to fly.
Because I wasn’t made for this, wasn’t meant to be this thing.
Then instinct took over. Ancient. Undeniable.
My wings snapped open with a crack, catching the air.
Pain lanced through my back as my muscles adjusted.
I pitched forward, then up, wings carrying me higher.
I didn’t even dare open my eye. I just …
felt it. The air rushing over my scales.
The power in the beat of my wings. Open space around me.
Freedom.
Slowly, I cracked my eye open.
I was flying. I was fucking flying.
The sea stretched out below me, glinting so brilliantly in the sunlight it was blinding.
Behind me lay Bloodwing. I beat my wings, self-preservation kicking in, knowing I had to get away from the school and out of sight as fast as possible.
With the glare from the sun, if anyone had happened to see me, chances were good they’d assume I was just Nyxaris.
Black scales might look red in the sun, right?
I tilted my head upwards and spotted a cluster of clouds.
I nearly crowed. Looked like Bloodwing was in for a storm, and the timing couldn’t have been better.
I flew straight towards the cloud clusters.
Instinct—it was all I had, and thank fuck it was enough.
I angled my wings, banking into the approaching storm front.
The clouds swallowed me whole. For a moment, I breathed easy; it was peaceful within the swirling gray and white.
The world dropped away. Nothing but mist and the muted sound of my own wings as they cut through the damp air.
The vapor was so dense I couldn’t see more than a few feet in any direction.
Like being inside a gray cocoon. The perfect hiding place.
I was safe. I’d done it—I’d flown. I’d stay under cover until nightfall, then turn back to Bloodwing.
Hopefully once the beast in me had gotten nice and tuckered out, I’d be able to land and force myself back into my human form.
I tried hard to ignore the part of me screaming for blood. Not Pendragon’s blood—for once. No, the dragon didn’t have good taste. Right now, it craved flesh. Meat. A fresh kill. It wanted to hunt.
Feed, the voice in my head snarled, now that it was fully free and had me flesh and bone. Tear. Rip. Kill. The whispers had been in the back of my mind for months, but now things felt truly out of control. I could hear it, hear the dragon inside of me screaming. Kill. Hunt. Feed. Weak. Prey.
But I wasn’t giving in. Not now. Not ever.
I could feel the dragon pulling. Where instinct had just saved me, now it tried to drag me down—back to the earth, to where the dragon knew it would find warm flesh and blood.
Prey below. Spill their blood. Rip and tear.
The hunger was frantic, desperate, but also gleeful.
That’s what scared me the most—the excitement at the thought of killing.
I’d never known anything like it before.
I’d never relished acts of violence. Whatever I’d done, I’d always done out of necessity.
Or, on rare occasions, anger. But this went beyond any of that.
I squeezed my eye shut as I flew, forcing my mind away. Tried to think of anything else. My classes. Visha. My house. Theo. I latched on to Pendragon. Her face. The freckles on the curve of her hip. The smell of her hair. The sound of her voice as she’d gasped my name the last time we’d …
Movement. I sensed it. Warning flashing inside me just before I saw it. A flash of darkness, cutting through the mist to my right. I turned my head, hoping I’d been wrong, every muscle in my body tensing up. Something massive moved through the cloudbank. Not a storm, not a shadow.
Nyxaris.
The older dragon’s head came into view as he sliced through the clouds, trying to pull alongside me.
My heart hammered. The voice in my head had thankfully shut up.
Maybe just as intimidated by Nyxaris as I was.
Was I really doing this? Was I really flying alongside a fucking dragon?
I pushed the thought away. Every-thing about the scenario should have been impossible. But it wasn’t.
You fly very poorly.
I jerked, wings nearly seizing up from the shock. The voice was in my mind. But this was different from the beast’s demands for blood. Was this what Pendragon could hear?
Who are you? Nyxaris’s voice was cold.
My thrallguard training leaped into action. My mind clamping down, slamming up mental shields I’d spent years perfecting.
Why do you hide, cousin of scales? Nyxaris murmured in my head.
Cousin. Good, he had no clue who I really was.
Or is it that you’ve forgotten how to speak? The black dragon’s voice was sharper. Vorago? Is it you? He veered closer, skimming through the clouds.
I panicked. Wings folding, I dropped altitude in a sickening plunge. Air whipped past me, cold and stinging, burning my eyes.
Vorago. The word was a command. It was easy now to imagine Nyxaris as he’d once been. A leader of dragons. A terror in battle. You will answer me. That is an order.
I flew harder, flapping my wings, staying in the cloud cover but flying low, closer to the roiling sea below. But it wasn’t enough. It was my first fucking flight. I was a novice; Nyxaris was an expert. I could hear him behind me, wings beating. He was catching up.
Then … pain. Stabbing through my head. Screeching like a crow.
The screeching was real, I realized. The pain and the screeching were one and the same. I tried to shut it out, but it was no use. I couldn’t cover my ears, couldn’t close out the sound. It pierced through my mind as easily as Nyxaris’s had. The screeching faded. A word took shape. One single word.
Nyxaris, it called to me. The voice was plaintive. Keening. Unnatural.
A chill went through me. Fuck. I knew who this was. What this was: Molindra.
Nyxaris, answer me.
Not Nyxaris, I grunted, pushing the words out of my mind.
Behind me, the sound of Nyxaris’s wings were fading. Was he feeling this pain, too? I hoped so. I beat my wings faster. He was distracted. This was my chance. After a few moments of silence, I risked a glance back. Nothing. Nyxaris had been swallowed up in the clouds.
He’d either lost me or changed direction. Or been in too much pain to continue his pursuit.
I flew on, already exhausted, wishing my first flight was at an end. But there were hours to go before nightfall. And when I got back to Bloodwing, simply shedding this body wasn’t going to be enough. I couldn’t just keep hiding, not when I knew this could happen again.
Not when there was no safe place to go. Not within Blood-wing’s walls or outside of them where Nyxaris could find me. I had to deal with this—whatever it was. I had bury it so deep no one could ever find it.
And I knew where I had to start.