Chapter 19
Chapter
Nineteen
brENTON
The world below us was wrong.
From Hoshiko’s back, I could see the large dragons’ bodies scattered like broken scales across the ground on Vistos. It wasn’t like the sickly rise and fall of shallow breath that had taken the dragas. But stillness. Silence. Death.
Dragons and their riders were on the ground, lifeless, probably killed or severely injured from the impact after falling from the sky. How?
Finley sat rigid against me. I wrapped my arms tighter around her, as if I could hold her together by sheer force of will. She felt fragile in my grasp, breakable in a way I’d never witnessed before.
But just before the sky went white, I’d felt something.
A surge. As fierce and defiant as Finley.
It had wrapped around me, around Hoshiko, like a pulse of iron beneath silk.
Instinctive. Protective. Claiming.
I hadn’t understood it then. There hadn’t been time to. Only the crushing finality that swept through the air when the male dragons had fallen. An ending so absolute it reverberated in my hollow chest.
I had braced for Hoshiko to fall. Failing to find a way to carry the impact for Finley.
Instead, he’d remained steady beneath me, his wings cutting through the sky.
Finley. She’d been in agony. Lost in a storm only she felt.
And still . . .
Somehow . . .
She had reached for us. For him.
I tilted my face to the wind, searching for the scent of her tears. None came. Instead, I heard the rasp of her breath, rough and ragged as if each inhale cut her from the inside.
My chest tightened to the point I could barely draw a breath. These weren’t hatchlings or younglings or even dragas. These were full-grown males. Some Elders. All of them dead, fallen in an instant.
Something low and mournful sounded from Hoshiko’s throat as we descended, the sound reverberating from his body to mine. I pressed a hand to his side.
“I feel it too,” I told him. “You’re not alone in this.”
The bond between us tightened, our grief threading us as one.
Hoshiko dipped lower, wings angling toward the cavern mouth where a small group of dragons stood. Their silence struck as the ground rushed us, and Hoshiko landed. Kassidy’s scream split the stillness. Raw and manic.
“Do something!” Kassidy shouted before either Finley or me could swing down.
She fell to her knees beside a motionless body.
Her hands slapped the scales as if she could force a dragon twice her size back to life.
Blood streaked her arms. Her voice cracked.
“Don’t just stand there.” She peered up at us, her eyes wide and wild. “Help me. Bring them back.”
Quietly, I urged Finley off Hoshiko, helping her when her knees buckled from the impact.
Solana lay curled protectively around the dead male, her massive body pressed against his, and her head across his unmoving chest. Her wings trembled while her eyes looked hollow. Her sounds were soft while Kassidy frantically shoved against the male’s chest, willing his lungs to rise.
Willow knelt beside her sister, her face pale and palms against the dragon. A thread of magic spread from the dragon behind her and toward the large male on the ground. Long beats passed. Nothing. The faint shimmer of her binding flickered before she dropped it away.
Her shoulders sagged. “Kass . . .” Her name broke across Willow’s lips. “There is nothing I can do. Nothing Finley can do. We can mend wounds and heal the sick, but once life is gone . . .” She swallowed hard before looking back at Finley. “We cannot call it back.”
Kassidy’s head snapped up, her grief shaping into something hotter, crueler. Her hardened gaze, wild and rimmed in red, fixed on Finley.
“You said you’d go to the dragons. You said you’d help. Instead, you wasted time training.” Her voice cracked into a sob that hardened further into fury. “Because of you, hundreds are dead.”
I waited for Finley to reply so I wouldn’t overstep as I’d done this morning. But she stood rigid, her silence heavier than the grief surrounding us.
My jaw tightened, and I stepped forward. “That’s enough, Kassidy. Don’t lay their death on—”
“If you must cast blame, then blame the one who created the Orb of Sacrifice.” Alastor emerged from the cave with Javier and Everly behind him.
He didn’t look at Kassidy, or Finley, or me, but to the dead.
A muscle twitched beneath his eye before his gaze landed on Finley.
“You were correct in what you sensed.” His tone softened, his attention shifting to me when Finley stared at the ground.
I ran my knuckles across the back of her hand. She neither reached for me nor flinched away, so I closed my fingers over hers, cold and stiff, and gave her a gentle squeeze. Although she didn’t react, I held on tight.
“Several thousand years ago, before mages were massacred in our realm, a daughter born from both a mage and a god created the Orb of Sacrifice and gifted it to the mages,” Alastor said, his tone heavy.
“The orb was designed to siphon magic so its master could wield it at will. Whoever is attacking your dragons is feeding their magic into it.”
“Do you mean the orb is here?” Kassidy asked, her palm still pressed against the dead dragon.
“Yes,” Alastor answered. “And so is the one who wields its power.”
“Is it the dead mage then?” Callan asked, kneeling beside his sister. When he set his hand on her shoulder, she leaned into him. Grief broke through her features in a way that twisted my stomach.
Alastor’s shadows slithered from his feet, slashing at the ground several times before he called them back. His face remained impassive, though I saw the anger and grief brewing behind his darkening eyes. “It feels similar to my sister’s magic, but not the same.”
Kassidy stood, exhaustion making her shoulders drop although she narrowed her eyes at Alastor. “Your sister?”
“My sister, Leanora.” He dipped his head in a nod, not offering anything more. “This time, the orb feels hungrier. Stronger. I do not yet know the wielder’s purpose, but if they continue, they will keep taking until nothing is left.”
I shivered at the implication while my mind ran through his words.
Through Finley’s words about the daughter of the gods who’d helped her, who’d spoken to her about teaching her, who’d given Finley the choice of relinquishing her magic.
All to free souls trapped, whose magic had been stored in the very same orb Alastor now spoke about.
While I knew Finley, knew her heart and her desire to fix the imbalance the orb had created, to renew the fae’s failing magic, to save the dragons dying in Vistos, it was too much of a coincidence.
There was a reason Zaicha started visiting Finley just before our trip to Vistos. A reason she wanted Finley’s magic.
I didn’t speak it aloud, not wanting to betray Finley’s trust.
“The orb siphons magic,” I said slowly, piecing together both the words Alastor spoke and those he left unsaid. The ones I knew because Teddy had told me about the orb’s origin. My attention went to Finley, to the way she continued to stare at the ground and the rigid set of her shoulders.
My mind replayed the moment she’d screamed in agony, her body bowing as if she were trying to hold her magic inside. But it hadn’t erupted outward the way I’d seen before. It had burst into the air, pulled from her. Controlled. Directed.
Cold realization thrashed through me. Whoever held the orb wasn’t just stealing the dragons’ magic.
“My magic killed these dragons.” Finley’s words came out dull, her eyes fixed on her boots. “The orb’s wielder used me as a conduit.”
“That is correct.” Alastor’s gaze swept across the fallen dragons. “Whoever holds the orb was able to channel through you. That is why the deaths came at once. Why the male dragons were the sole targets.”
Finley’s shoulders hunched, shrinking into herself. Gods, her power had been used against her will again. How would she recover from that? How could I help her from . . . slipping away again?