Chapter 14
Chapter
Fourteen
Zander rose slowly, still favoring his shoulder though the wound had vanished completely. He glanced toward the cliffs, where Hein paced, tail twitching and wings half-furled.
“Hein wishes a word,” he said with a sigh.
“You in trouble?” I asked, quirking a brow.
He grinned, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Aren’t I always?”
I watched him walk away, still dripping seawater and blood, and yet, more alive than I’d ever seen him. The wind caught his cloak as he moved, casting him in silhouette against the sun.
I turned to head toward Kaelith, but Remy stepped into my path like a wall made of regret and fury.
“He’s not the one for you,” he said, quiet but sharp.
I stopped, every muscle in my body tightening. “Don’t do this.”
His jaw worked, words fighting to break loose. “You don’t know what you’re getting into. That bond—Ashlyn, it’s not just some emotional tie. It’s dangerous. Especially for someone like you.”
“We don’t even know if it is a bond,” I snapped, keeping my voice low even as it burned. “And even if it is, it saved him.”
Around us, the other riders moved with exaggerated nonchalance, pretending to busy themselves with gear or dragons or anything except listening to a royal fight unfold in real time.
Remy stepped closer. “A blood bond links more than life and death. It changes how you feel. You’ll start to question which emotions are real and which ones are bleeding through from him.”
“I’m not a child,” I hissed. “And I’m not yours to protect anymore.”
He flinched, and for a second, the anger faltered. “You don’t understand what it means to be tied to someone like that. If one of you dies, you both die. You think Zander’s ready for that kind of burden? You think you are?”
My fists clenched at my sides, nails digging into my still-healing palm. “I didn’t take his blood. Besides, I didn’t ask for this.”
“But you accepted it,” he whispered. “That’s the part that scares me.”
Something in my chest cracked. The vulnerability in his voice was real, but so was the control laced beneath it. The way he was always trying to steer me, to guard me, even from myself.
“I need a break,” I said, stepping around him. “From this. From you.”
I didn’t wait for his response.
Kaelith’s eyes met mine across the sand, a steady flame in a world unraveling.
And for now… that was all I needed.
I walked away from the dragons and the arguing voices, the burden of it all pressing against my shoulders like a storm that refused to pass.
The beach curved ahead, scattered with jagged stone outcroppings, and I made for the largest one, needing space, needing quiet, needing anything that wasn’t Remy’s voice in my ears or the ache of Zander’s almost-death clawing at my heart.
I rounded the stone, and almost slammed straight into her.
Seraveth stood like a shadow stitched from night and ruin, her crimson eyes glowing faintly beneath the hood of her dark cloak. Her smile was slow and curved like a dagger’s edge.
My heart punched against my ribs. “How—”
She lifted a hand, lazy and elegant, and with a flick of her fingers a miniature cyclone burst to life between us. Sand spiraled into the air in a dancing column of controlled destruction before vanishing as suddenly as it appeared.
“I have many gifts,” she purred. “Ones I could teach you… if you allow me.”
“You’re insane if you think I’d join you,” I snapped, taking a step back.
Seraveth chuckled, the sound low and warm and utterly devoid of light. “So much spirit. I imagine I was the same once. But that was a long time ago.”
“You could still come back,” I said, quieter now, searching her face for something, anything, human. “To the Light. There has to be a way.”
That earned a laugh, sharp but hushed. “That is the funniest thing I’ve heard in a long time,” she said. “You’re deluded. But I’ll admit… entertaining.”
“I’m sure—”
“Enough,” she said, her voice cutting through the air like a blade.
The cyclone of sand swirled again, faster this time, and I felt the tug of her magic like a thread coiling around my ribs.
“You will come with me, Ashlyn. Whether now or later. You know it. Feel it.” Her eyes glowed brighter, the red bleeding into the whites like a fire consuming a dying star. “We are your true family. It’s time to stop playing pet to dragons and kings.”
She stepped closer, her magic brushing against mine like the edge of a promise.
“It’s time to claim your power.”
“No,” I said, my voice like steel sharpened in my chest. I drew my blade, the hum of its edge comforting in my grip. “You don’t get to decide my path.”
Seraveth’s smile curved like a hook. “So dramatic,” she whispered as she unsheathed her sword, the dark blade gleaming with a faint crimson hue that pulsed with something ancient. “Very well. Let’s see how far that spirit of yours goes.”
She lunged.
I met her head-on.
Steel clashed against steel, the sound sharp and bright against the crash of waves beyond the stone wall behind us. Her strikes were quick, fluid, like water sliding across a battlefield, but I was faster than she expected. I blocked, twisted, slashed low, making her dance back across the sand.
She didn’t call on her magic. Not fully.
She wanted it quiet.
She was alone, and she knew magic would alert the others.
Kaelith! I screamed in my mind, reaching desperately for the bond.
Seraveth’s blade scraped past mine, close enough I felt the cold aura radiating from it. Her movements were precise, but I saw it, the way she glanced past me, eyes narrowing.
A second later, his voice cut the air.
“Ashlyn!”
Remy.
Seraveth smirked, pulling away. “Another rider with a hero complex,” she murmured. “How predictable.”
The air around her shimmered like heat rolling off scorched stone. A ripple of warping space curved around her body—
And then she was gone.
Not a step. Not a run.
Just… vanished.
Remy rounded the rock wall just as the last whisper of magic dissipated.
“What’s going on?” he asked, eyes scanning the spot where she’d stood, his hand already reaching for his sword.
I was still breathing hard, blade trembling faintly in my grip.
“I don’t know,” I lied. “She was just… gone.”
His eyes locked onto mine, intense and searching. “Ashlyn, please. You have to trust me.”
I stared at him, heart pounding, blood still humming with adrenaline.
“I can’t,” I whispered. “Not ever again.”
He looked like I’d struck him with something deeper than a blade.
He didn’t say anything at first, just stood beside me, close enough that I could feel the warmth of him, close enough to remember what it felt like to be wrapped in his arms and believe it meant something.
“I’ll wait,” he said finally, voice low. Calm. “Forever, if that’s what it takes.”
I didn’t turn. The ocean wind tangled through my hair, the scent of salt and dragon fire clinging to the air between us.
“You don’t have to,” I murmured.
“I do,” he replied, and this time, I did look at him.
His eyes were tired, softer than I’d seen them since his return. Not the soldier. Not the liar. Just… Remy.
“I know I had no business being with you,” he said. “What we had, it wasn’t supposed to happen. You were never the mission.”
I scoffed, crossing my arms. “Then what was the mission?”
He swallowed, gaze dropping. “To infiltrate the Order. To gain intelligence. To track the Blood Fae’s interest in halfbloods.” He looked back at me. “I took something I had no right to take.”
“My virginity,” I said, the words flat but burning.
He flinched, but shook his head. “No. I mean your heart.”
Silence stretched like a blade between us.
“I took it under false pretenses,” he said, quieter now. “With a false name, a false life. But when I proposed… that was real, Ashlyn. I meant every word of it. I was going to come back for you.”
“When it was safe,” I echoed bitterly.
He nodded. “I thought I could protect you better by staying away. I had no idea you’d end up in the guild. Let alone a dragon rider.” His mouth twisted. “You weren’t supposed to be part of this.”
“But I am,” I said. “You don’t get to rewrite the story now just because it hurts.”
“I’m not trying to rewrite it.” His voice cracked. “I’m trying to be in it again. If you’ll let me.”
I looked at him, truly looked, and for a second, I saw the man I loved behind the one who lied.
But love wasn’t always enough.
Not when the truth came too late.
I took a deep breath, watching the horizon where the sun dipped into the sea like it, too, was trying to escape this mess. My heart ached with the weight of too many truths and not enough time to carry them all.
“I’ll trust you as a rider,” I said finally, turning toward Remy. “You’ve earned that...”
He nodded slowly, his eyes not leaving mine.
“But not with my heart,” I finished, firm. “Not again.”
Something in him cracked, but to his credit, he didn’t flinch away this time.
“Then I’ll earn the other,” he said. “No more lies.”
I stared at him for a long beat, and when I spoke again, my voice was lower, cautious. “There’s something else you need to know. We visited the fae prisoner. The one being kept beneath the castle.”
His brows lifted. “You went into the dungeon?”
I gave him a pointed look. “You look surprised.”
He huffed a half-laugh, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
“I know of him,” he admitted. “But I’ve never met him. Rumors say he’s been kept there since the Unification. Some say he helped form the first treaties. Others… that he committed atrocities no one’s allowed to speak of.”
“He doesn’t seem dangerous,” I said, thinking back to Alahathrial’s calm presence, his ageless gaze. “He knew my mother.”
That made Remy blink. “Your mother?”
“He claims she was royalty. That she disappeared into the human world before I was born. He said my bloodline is older than his.”
Remy’s lips thinned, his expression shadowed. “If that’s true, it would make you…”
“A threat,” came Zander’s voice behind us.
We both turned as he approached, his cloak dark with sea mist, his presence as commanding as ever despite the faint weariness still visible in his face.
“A threat,” Zander repeated. “Or a weapon. Depends on who’s using you.”
I crossed my arms. “I’m no one’s weapon.”
“I know,” he said softly, stepping closer. “But someone wants you to be.”