Chapter 28
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
Ilunged with my sword but Seraveth smiled and extended her arm. A pulse of lightning erupted from her fingers and slammed into my chest. My entire body tingled, and it felt like my limbs were numb.
The second burst of magic hit me like a bolt of ice crashing down my spine.
I didn’t understand what she had done at first, just felt the air tighten, the static pulse of something dark pressing against my chest, and then everything stopped. My limbs locked, nerves flared with fire, and the short sword slipped from my fingers, hitting the forest floor with a dull thud.
I dropped to my knees.
My breath caught, shallow and ragged. I could feel her magic slithering just under my skin, pinning me, paralyzing me from the inside out.
Seraveth stepped out from the shadows with a predator’s grace, calm and unhurried, her boots silent on the moss. She didn’t need to run. I wasn’t going anywhere.
I didn’t call for Kaelith.
There was no point.
She wouldn’t come.
And even if she did… if I let my magic loose now, truly loose, I might not be able to stop it. I could scorch the trees. The guards. My squad. Zander.
Everyone I cared about.
Seraveth circled me slowly, her fingers trailing lazily across the air as if tracing invisible lines only she could see.
“It hurts,” she said softly. “But it won’t kill you. I need you alive, Storm-born.”
My fingers twitched, useless against the weight anchoring me in place.
“You wield unimaginable power,” she continued, stopping in front of me. Her voice turned reverent, hungry. “But we all have our specialties. Mine is precision. Yours—yours is unique due to your connection with your dragon. But it’s unstable. Untethered. Because of her.”
I looked up, barely able to raise my chin.
Seraveth’s eyes gleamed. “To reach your full potential… all we have to do is kill her.”
The words sliced through me worse than any blade.
Kaelith.
Her voice had gone silent for days—but the bond still pulsed faintly. Weak, distant, but alive.
I shook my head, breath catching.
“No,” I whispered.
But Seraveth just smiled.
“Then you’ll never be more than half of what you’re meant to be.”
I gritted my teeth against the searing pain of her spell, forcing my trembling hands to brace against the forest floor. My voice cracked, but I spoke anyway.
“Then kill me,” I rasped. “I’d rather be dead than a pawn of the Blood King.”
Seraveth didn’t flinch.
Instead, she tilted her head, a strand of pale hair falling over her cheek like snow sliding from a ledge. “You say that now,” she murmured, circling again. “But you don’t know the truth. Not really.”
I looked up, my vision blurred at the edges. “Enlighten me.”
She stopped behind me, her voice low, dangerous.
“The Light Fae started this war,” she said. “We just finished it.”
My breath hitched. “What are you talking about?”
Seraveth came into view again, her steps slow, calculated. “The dragons had nothing to do with the initial blow. It was never their war, not at first. The battle between the fae factions began long before the humans even noticed. Before the first tower fell. Before the throne fractured.”
I blinked. “You’re saying this wasn’t about dragons?”
“No,” she said softly. “It became about dragons. About power. Territory. Mortal allies. But it started… with the Light Fae.”
She crouched beside me, brushing her fingers against the dirt inches from my hand.
“You are blood-bound to the most powerful fae to ever live.”
I knew the name before she said it, and still… it felt like poison on her tongue.
“The Blood King.”
I sneered, heart pounding. “I’d rather die.”
She smiled faintly. “Yes. You are his granddaughter.”
My stomach lurched.
“What?”
“Your mother,” she said, her eyes glittering. “She wouldn’t turn. She refused to serve him. She tried to hide from him. But you… you will. In time.”
The ground seemed to tilt beneath me. “My… mother?”
“She vanished after the fall of the fifth court,” Seraveth continued. “We didn’t know where she’d gone. We thought she’d died in one of the prisons. But now we know. She escaped. And she ran.”
She leaned in close, her breath as cold as the steel at my side.
“She took a human lover. It was smart. Veralin would have sensed a full-blooded heir. But you… you slipped beneath the cracks.”
“Veralin?” I whispered, the name tasting foreign and ancient on my tongue.
Seraveth’s smile stretched wider. “Yes. That is your grandfather’s name.
But whisper it in that halfling court of yours…
and they’ll know. They’ll know you’ve conspired with us.
His name has been erased from your world.
His history scorched from your books. He is legend only to those who still fear him. ”
I couldn’t breathe.
“Keep this conversation between us,” she warned, rising to her full height, shadow falling over me. “Or you will die by their hands. The moment they know you carry his Fae Blood in your heart, they will carve it from you.”
Her gaze narrowed.
“Even that prince who covets you will not be able to save you.”
My throat clenched.
Zander.
I didn’t say his name.
I didn’t have to.
She already knew. And she laughed as if reading my mind.
The pain rippled through me like splintered glass pressed into every nerve. It wasn’t just from Seraveth’s magic anymore, it was in my chest, deep and cold, a truth that burned worse than any flame.
His granddaughter.
The Blood King’s blood ran in my veins.
My stomach turned, bile thick at the back of my throat. How could I be his? The most despised fae in all of history, the killer of kingdoms, the distorter of magic, the corruptor of everything he touched.
Veralin.
Even the name felt wrong in my mind. Like I was choking on it just by thinking it.
I believed her.
Gods help me, I believed her.
The noble courts would kill me if they knew. No trial. No mercy. Just execution, quick and quiet, before the blood in my veins could reach my bones. Before Kaelith could rise to defend me. Before Zander could even speak my name.
Did Cordelle know?
The thought speared through me, sharp and sudden. He had warned me, hadn’t he? So many times. With too much care. Too much secrecy. The way he looked at me when the other riders weren’t watching, like I was walking a ledge he couldn’t pull me back from.
He knew.
Maybe not everything. But enough.
My vision swam.
My heartbeat thudded in my ears, echoing through the pain in my limbs. My skin felt tight, stretched thin over a storm trying to break free.
And I couldn’t keep it in.
I looked up at Seraveth, chest heaving. The dirt pressed against my knees, damp with moss and shame, but my voice didn’t shake when I said it.
“Go ahead and kill me.”
Her face didn’t change. Not even a flicker of emotion passed through her eyes.
But the air between us stilled.
I lifted my chin. “If you’re so sure I’ll turn, if I’m meant to follow him, then end it now. Better to die as me than live as his.”
Seraveth tilted her head, just slightly. “You say that now,” she whispered. “But pain makes prophets of us all.”
“I will never hurt her,” I hissed, dragging each word through the fire of my lungs. “I’ll die to protect Kaelith.”
Seraveth tilted her head back and laughed.
The sound was too light for the forest, too delicate for the weight of her words, like poison slipped into honey.
“She doesn’t even want you,” she said, stepping closer, her boots silent against the moss as her magic still pulsed under my skin. “If she had truly bonded you, I wouldn’t have been able to incapacitate you this easily.”
The words hit harder than her magic ever could.
I wanted to scream. To deny it.
But it was true.
Kaelith hadn’t come.
Not when I fell. Not when I was dragged from the sky. Not when Seraveth’s spell locked me in place like a broken thing.
Pain twisted through me, cruel and deep, not just from the magic holding me down, but from the emptiness inside me where her voice should have been.
Where her fire once lived.
But it didn’t change anything.
“No,” I whispered, voice rough and cracked.
Seraveth crouched in front of me now, eye level, her face softer than it had any right to be.
“You don’t understand yet,” she said gently. “Your blood… it changes everything. It’s not just a tie to Veralin. It’s a key. Your blood allows fully grown dragons to bond with the fae again. True bonding, not the fractured, temporary things the royals have built with pendants and magic chains.”
She smiled like she was offering a gift, not a curse.
“You could be the bridge between blood and flame. We could reshape this world.”
I forced myself to lift my head, to meet her eyes even as tears threatened behind mine.
“You’re offering me power,” I said bitterly.
“No,” she replied. “I’m offering you family. Belonging. A place where no one looks at your blood like a death sentence. All you have to do…”
She reached out, brushing a hand lightly against my cheek, cold and terrifyingly tender.
“…is say yes.”
I met Seraveth’s gaze through the pain, through the pulsing throb of her magic still crawling under my skin. Her offer hung in the air like rot wrapped in silk.
Belonging. Family. Power.
All I had to do was surrender everything I was.
I bared my teeth through the ache, through the betrayal still burning in my chest where Kaelith’s silence screamed the loudest.
“You can go to hell,” I spat.
Her smile didn’t falter.
She simply rose, slow and graceful, brushing off invisible dust from her cloak like my defiance had barely grazed her.
“It’s too soon,” she said softly, her eyes gleaming with something cold. “You still have hope. Still think she’ll come for you. But that will change.”
I didn’t speak. I couldn’t.
“You’ll remember this moment,” she continued, “when you’re bleeding out on some battlefield, screaming for your dragon… and she doesn’t come.”
My throat clenched.
“And then,” Seraveth said, stepping back into the shadows, “you’ll understand what it means to be alone.”
The trees swallowed her like fog.
She didn’t run.
She didn’t need to.
And I stayed there on the forest floor, heart pounding, pain humming through every limb, my bond with Kaelith as cold and silent as it had ever been.
The moment Seraveth disappeared, I collapsed to the forest floor, arms trembling as the last pulse of her magic released its hold. My breath came in ragged gasps, my blade forgotten in the dirt, and the silence that followed was so heavy it felt like the trees themselves were holding their breath.
I reached for Kaelith.
Kaelith, I whispered through the bond, voice fraying at the edges. Please. I need you.
The silence stretched long and piercing.
She said… I swallowed hard. She said I’m the Blood King’s granddaughter. That my blood could bond dragons to the fae again. That I’m the key.
Nothing.
I closed my eyes, biting back the tears, shame and dread knotting together in my throat.
Is that why you never wanted me? I asked her. Did you know?
Finally, her presence stirred at the edge of my consciousness, like a distant ember flickering in a dark cave.
I knew you carried power, Kaelith replied slowly, voice as distant as it was cold. I felt it the moment you entered the barracks. But I did not know… who spawned you.
The word spawned hit like a lash.
Now I do.
And? I pressed, voice cracking. What does that mean?
Her silence was answer enough.
Then finally, I cannot trust you, knowing what sleeps in your blood.
My heart fractured.
So that’s it? I whispered. You’ll just leave me to die?
The connection shuddered as she cut contact. It wasn’t broken but it was as flimsy as a spider’s web.
She left me.
Truly, fully, left me.
I didn’t feel betrayed by my dragon.
I felt abandoned by my only hope.
A single tear slipped down my cheek, trailing through the grime and sweat like a crack in the mask I’d tried so hard to keep together. My fists dug into the forest floor, knuckles white, nails biting into my palms, but it didn’t stop the ache swelling behind my ribs.
Kaelith had left me.
Not in anger. Not in silence.
In judgment.
And then, like a warm breeze against cold skin, another presence stirred, familiar, steady, threaded with quiet strength.
Siergen.
You don’t understand, his voice drifted through my mind, smoother than smoke, and that’s not your fault. Seraveth only told you what she wanted, just enough to sway you, to make you doubt. She gave you the parts of the truth that served her.
My throat tightened.
But Kaelith knew, I whispered. She knew something. And she didn’t tell me.
Because she’s afraid, Siergen said gently. Not of you. Of what trusting you could cost her. Dragons don’t bond lightly, and they don’t risk easily. Not when the last time they trusted a bloodline like yours, entire skies burned.
My heart cracked again.
Tell me the truth, I begged. The whole truth. Please.
There was a pause.
Then, It’s not my story to tell.
I sucked in a breath, hating how the silence between me and Kaelith felt like suffocating.
Will she ever tell me?
Give Kaelith time, Siergen said. You are not what Seraveth says. Not to those of us who see you as you truly are.
I closed my eyes. The words fell from me before I could stop them.
I wish you were mine.
There was a beat. And then his voice, softer than I’d ever heard it—
I wish I could shoulder this burden for Kaelith.
I’m a burden?