Chapter 35
Chapter
Thirty-Five
FINLEY
The world was quiet. Too quiet.
Not the serene quiet that soothed, but the kind that came after being stripped bare, where nothing remained to fill the hollow spaces.
My throat burned, raw from screaming until my voice no longer came. My eyes ached from crying, my lids heavy and swollen. Every breath felt like it was dragging through my ribs. My body was lead, pulled down by exhaustion, but my mind . . .
My mind was mercifully, frighteningly still.
It didn’t replay the look of fury and betrayal on Brenton’s face when he’d been forced to stop me from burning him out.
It no longer replayed the moment Brenton’s magic surged through our bond. The way his smoke had wrapped around mine like a fist.
It stopped replaying the exact heartbeat the young boy’s light flickered and then . . . stopped.
It was too tired for torment. Too tired for grief.
There was only stillness and the soft snip of the scissors Everly used to even out the ends of my hair—what was left of it after Kassidy had wrapped her fist around my hair and I’d severed it mid-fight.
Everly’s voice drifted toward me, as gentle as the breeze that swept from the open sea. But none of her words made it past the heavy numbness in my chest. The fire she’d built barely touched the bone-deep cold that had claimed me.
My fingers curled in my lap, my nails digging into my palms, reminding me I was still capable of hurting.
Ashara lay curled at my feet, her small, scaled body rising and falling with steady breaths.
Her scales were a soft gray, like the sky before a storm, broken only by the thin white lines that shimmered faintly like spheres of fae light.
Asleep, her wings were tucked close, the tips twitching every now and then.
I stared at her, at the way her tail curled over her feet, at the faint huff of breath, and the tension in me eased. Not healed. Not even close. But as if my soul recognized that at least one thing in this world wasn’t broken.
The bond between Ashara and me hummed, new and fragile but quiet and content.
When I’d made it back to camp, she’d been waiting for me by my tent as she’d promised.
When I lingered by Everly’s instead, she’d limped toward me, her eyes warm yet cautious.
As if I might’ve changed my mind and would now turn her away.
When her presence was the only thing keeping me tethered.
Which was more mercy than I deserved.
Because as much as Brenton had betrayed me, I’d betrayed him first.
I’d stood in that cave, ready to burn everything out. My magic. Zaicha’s. But also Brenton’s. I hadn’t thought about what it would do to him, how every pulse of magic was woven through our bond. Whatever I did to my magic, I did to his.
But as I reached deeper, both in the cave and again at the square, and Brenton’s smoke had torn through everything, I’d felt it.
The sharp edge of his fury.
The hollow echo of my own betrayal.
And now, here I sat, with his best friend cutting my hair and my dragon at my feet. Too tired to hate him, but not tired enough to mourn the fissure that existed between us.
Ashara shifted in her sleep, pressing her muzzle against my boot, but then her head snapped up, her focus on Brenton’s approaching silhouette. Her eyes caught on the campfire’s light with quiet warning. She didn’t growl, but her tail flicked in agitation.
Brenton froze a few paces from where I sat. His hair was a mess, his shirt disheveled and streaked with dirt and sand. His eyes found mine, hesitating before turning his attention to our tent.
His tent.
Hoshiko landed just behind the small firepit, folding his wings in a smooth sweep.
Ashara jerked her head toward Hoshiko, uncertainty flashing across her bright eyes.
She peered up at me as if asking for permission she didn’t need.
She pushed herself up, her limp more pronounced than earlier, but her chin lifted all the same.
My willful, defiant little Ashara. She seemed to preen at my internal praise. She walked past Brenton with a quick flick of her tail that hit Brenton’s boot and made her way to Hoshiko, who snarled in warning.
“No.” Brenton turned toward his dragon. “A bonded dragon protects their rider as much as a rider protects their dragon.”
When Hoshiko lowered his head to Ashara, she answered with a soft rumble.
“Thank you for saving her and giving her a name,” Hoshiko said.
I didn’t reply. Didn’t have the words to.
Brenton’s gaze lingered on Ashara for long beats before he shifted his attention to me. His throat bobbed when he swallowed, and I hated that I noticed it.
“Leave it to you to come to the realm of dragons and find yourself bound to the most precious one,” Brenton said, eyes on my boots before he looked at me, his attention sweeping over my face.
He dragged a hand over the back of his neck before he dropped it to his side.
“Have the tent,” he said. His voice wasn’t sharp, but it wasn’t soft either. Careful, maybe. “I’ll sleep outside.”
“No.” With my throat scraped raw, the words came out rough. “I’m staying with Everly. I can’t sleep in a tent where your scent lingers on everything.”
He flinched, cupping his jaw that tensed the longer he watched me. He didn’t know I’d snuck in earlier to pull out the same shirt and shorts I’d been wearing every night. I was so angry when I remembered I’d washed it only this morning, and his scent was no longer as strong.
Brenton shifted on his feet, scuffing the dirt with the bottom of his boot. “Lolli . . .”
My heart stumbled. I should’ve turned away. Should’ve shut him down from ever calling me that again.
But neither of us moved.
He huffed, defeat laced in his breath and across his features.
“Fine,” he said, watching the way I ran my fingers over the small crystals on my bracelet. I forced my hands to still, to fall to my sides. “I’ll take the tent.”
“Good,” I said, although nothing about this felt good.
We each stared at the other, two people bound by magic and fate that used to feel like belonging but now trembled, tattered with bruises.
He finally turned and ducked into the tent without looking back. And even though I tried to pretend I didn’t care, the sound of the fabric rustling as he moved wrapped around my lungs until I couldn’t breathe.
Because the one person who could hurt me this deeply was still here. And I still wanted him.
Everly stepped around to face me, and as absorbed as I was in my own misery, I’d forgotten about her. Her lips pressed in a soft, tired smile. “Short hair fits you,” she said lightly, as if my world hadn’t just shattered around me.
I didn’t answer.
Everly’s hand settled on my shoulder, giving me a quick squeeze that didn’t ask anything of me.
“Do you want me to stay out here with you?” she asked.
I blinked back the tears that rose suddenly and managed to shake my head. “I’ll go to bed later.”
She left. I didn’t watch Ashara rise to follow Hoshiko back to their cave. The emptiness they left in their wake made my heart squeeze.
I sat there long after the fire burned down to embers. Long after the camp stilled into an uneasy quiet. My body felt both heavy and weightless. As if the day’s events had weighed me into the ground but left my soul adrift.
When everything around me fell silent, I rose and walked to the spot where Brenton had stood. His boot prints were pressed into the dirt and grass. I knelt beside them and pressed my fingers against the print.
I stayed there, tracing it for a long time before I turned my attention to my bracelet.
Running my fingers over the smooth crystal beads, I stared at the pretty, dried flowers that lived inside each one.
Maybe hours passed. I wasn’t sure. Time had become meaningless after the boy had taken his final breath.
A soft snap broke the silence, and the cord that held my bracelet together came undone between my fingers. Vith.
The crystals spilled onto the ground, scattering across the dirt like fragments I couldn’t piece back together.
And didn’t that fit my fractured state right now?
I didn’t cry. I didn’t have a single tear left in me to give.
My hands trembled as I picked them up, one by one, holding the crystals in my shaking palm as if they were fragile pieces of a world where I no longer belonged.
A world where I still believed in healing.
In hope. In us. I tucked them carefully into the pocket of my pants, staring at my naked wrist. It looked wrong.
Eventually, with quiet steps, I went to Brenton’s tent.
I didn’t open the flap but walked to the side where I knew he slept.
I sank onto the earth close enough that I picked up his scent that hung to the canvas, where I could hear his uneven breathing and the spike of his pulse.
Close enough to feel him without being able to reach him.
I closed my eyes and pressed the back of my head against my arm.
Even if he was the one who broke me, I needed to be near him.
Because being close hurt less than being away.
Inside, he shifted to face me. Because although our bond may be tattered, it still knew.
His voice came through the tent wall. “I can’t apologize.” He took a shuddering breath. “I can’t apologize because I’d do it again.”
Something inside me cracked. It wasn’t the loud, savage break from earlier. It was the kind that collapsed inward, silent and final.
I curled my hands into the dirt, the rhythm from the earth that once soothed only seemed to scrape against my nerves.
“I get to choose,” I whispered. “I get to choose how I live my life.”
There was a beat of silence as he moved closer to the tent wall. So close I could feel the heat from his body and wished I could nestle against his chest.
“But you weren’t choosing to live, Finley. You were choosing death.”
Tears burned the corners of my eyes. “All this time, I’ve been worried you’d regret binding our magic to our bond.” My throat tightened. “But it’s me who regrets it.”
The silence that followed was heavy. Suffocating.
I rolled onto my side to face the tent wall that separated us. And on the other side, he didn’t move away but closer. Which somehow made it worse.