Chapter 30
Aimee
Nothing I’ve ever experienced in my life can hold a candle to the exhilarating feeling of being high in the skies, weightless like a feather on K’haram’s back.
We pierce the empyrean like a spear thrown with no apparent target; the winds biting into my skin and throwing my curls every which way.
I should be freezing in my skimpy attire, but K’haram’s blazing heat seeps into my bones, a warm fuzzy feeling coiling around my limbs.
A distant part of me—remnants of my previous life—tries to break free, and I scream into the heavens.
Not out of sorrow or despair.
No.
Out of unadulterated joy.
It’s not so much a memory as it’s a feeling. Of completion. Having Killian and K’haram in my life, I finally feel whole, no part of me missing or hiding.
I’ve always thought I was missing something.
That I was made of little broken pieces, shattered into a million specks of dust at the cruel hands of my own blood.
And no matter how much I rearranged those jagged shards into a functioning being, something was always left askew.
An emptiness I couldn’t name, only taste.
Now I know my soul was longing for both of them.
My soulmate and my soulbound.
“You’ve always relished tremendously our flights, Omri,” K’haram chuckles. “You used to say there is no greater freedom than being untethered, soaring the skies. That in the calm proximity of the heavens, you would forget the barbarity of the grounds below.”
It’s true. From up here, Imiryion is only beauty, no teeth. A wide expanse of shorelines and mountains, of hoarfrosted plains and peaks covered in flurries of white. A picture of purity and raw nature, speckled from time to time by the presence of living creatures.
There’s no brewing war up here, no impending sense of doom.
Just the heightened awareness of being one with the elements.
From magical dust we emerge, and to magical dust we return; our existence is just a ripple in the fabric of eternity.
“He sounds as if he were wise. And troubled.”
“You were,” K’haram gently corrects me.
“Will you tell me about him—about myself?”
“I will always tell you everything you want to know, Omri.”
K’haram plunges into a loop toward the ground, and my stomach lurches, my heart in my throat.
“You used to love flying close to the mountains, to touch the tips of the highest trees with your fingertips. To watch the sun dip below the horizon and the stars blink into existence from my back.”
I extend my hand as we plow through fluffy white clouds like blooms of cotton flowers, not grasping anything palpable.
“How did you, uhm, how did you bind your soul to me?”
“A dragon knows when his Omri is born.”
His voice is a quiet rumble in my head, and I lean in closer to his body, caressing his midnight black scales, soft like feathers, yet sharp like blades.
“Before you were born, I was forcefully bound by dark magic to your father. For hundreds of years, I was nothing but a puppet in the blood-stained hands of the worst creature this realm has ever seen.”
A quiet gasp escapes my lips, but I say nothing. I just wait for K’haram to reveal the darkest parts of his tale.
“He found me when I was nothing but a hatchling. Stole me from the nest. I knew the bond he thrust upon me was not the real thing; it felt vile—an abomination, a mockery of the sanctity of what a soul bond is. But his dark magic caged me, forcing me to carry his disastrous will.”
He huffs, puffs of steam forming in the frigid air as a gravel-like sound reverberates from his ribcage under my thighs. A deep shame that is not my own coats the edges of my conscience, the taste in my mouth turning acrid with timeworn regret.
“I did unspeakable things, Omri. No amount of penance could wash away my sins. All the good I have done since then, I can still do, will not grant me a place in Eimirya.”
“Eimirya?” I ask, confused.
“The afterlife, Omri. The mirror of our realm, but better, softer. Unpolluted by greed, hatred, terror, or fear. What do you call it now?”
“I don’t call it anything, K’haram. Heavens, I guess, but it’s more of a concept than an actual place. I don’t—”
I choke on the words, unsure of how to let him down gently.
“I don’t think such a higher plane exists, K’haram.”
“You will one day reach it, Omri, regardless if you believe in it or not,” he says in that deep, baritone voice of his that swirls inside my head.
“Then so shall you, dear friend.”
Who am I to refute his faith? We all deserve our sliver of hope, no matter the shape it comes in.
“No, Omri. The gates of Eimirya are sealed off for me, and I have made my peace with that. I have slaughtered thousands of souls at his command, scorched these very lands below us at his behest. I have not earned my afterlife.”
“We are not what others make of us, K’haram. I am not my sister’s abuse, and you are not Arwan’s ruination. But we will be their downfall.”
“Always a dreamer at heart,” K’haram chuckles. “It’s one thing I’ve loved about you so dearly.”
We’re reaching the edge of Wrahta now, the frozen lands giving way to the vastness of the sea.
As far as I can see, it stretches with no end, just an obscure canvas of undulating waves and hidden depths.
K’haram plunges deep, like an arrowhead spearing toward the waters, and I squeal in exhilaration.
He brushes the tips of his wings in the waves, disrupting their predetermined motion and flicks the icy water at me.
Droplets land on my fevered flesh, their iciness a stark contrast to the flames that gauze me where my limbs curl around his gargantuan torso.
“When you were born, I felt your soul’s calling from half a realm away. It tore through the shackles wrapped around my being as if they were nothing, just flimsy threads of yarn. Centuries of oppressive blood magic dissolved into air, finally giving me freedom.”
My fingers brush against the scales at the base of his neck, scratching the hardened skin between the blades of flesh.
He purrs like a contented feline, and I can’t help but giggle at the image that flashes through my mind, that of his majestic dragon form rolling around in the grass, expecting belly rubs and uprooting tree trunks with the excited flick of his tail.
A glimpse of Chip’s joyful puppy face pops before my mind’s eye, and I sigh, thinking of the friend I lost so many years ago.
If Eimirya does exist, I hope he’s eternally chasing sticks and getting all the love I did not have the chance to give him.
“But even my freedom came with a cost, Omri. That of my kin. Another stain upon my heavy soul. An enraged Arwan made it his mission to hunt down every dragon down to the last one. He didn’t want another weapon of mass destruction.
It was punishment for my disobeyance. He bathed Imiryion in the blood of my ilk, leaving me alive on purpose.
To roam these lands alone. A reminder of the consequences of my rebellion against him. ”
I can’t fathom how that must feel. To be the last one left standing. The guilt of surviving your entire species, decimated because you stood up to your abuser.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I say in a meek voice.
“It wasn’t, yet it was, Omri. It was my freedom against the lives of many.”
“You didn’t know, K’haram. And nobody should ever have to make such a choice.” A shadow of familiarity edges closer to the forefront of my brain. We’ve had this conversation before. Many times over.
“So you keep saying, Omri,” K’haram answers, confirming my suspicions. The finality in his tone is heartbreaking. I won’t convince him otherwise. I was not able back then, as Aeon, and I won’t succeed now either. So I change the subject.
“Tell me about myself. What kind of person was I? How was I as a little boy?”
“I didn’t present myself to you as a child, Omri.
I was afraid to attract Arwan’s rage upon another innocent soul.
I watched over you from afar, talking to you through the soul bond.
I was your imaginary friend. The soothing voice you needed when the world was too rough, when the monsters were too real. ”
A memory swims just below the surface, of a bright little boy with dark coppery curls and hazel eyes, brave and wild, running free in the heart of a dark forest and mock-fighting fictional foes with a sword carved from old wood.
“Life was not kind to you. You didn’t escape the curse of this realm either. Your mother loved you very much, but you lost her way too soon. Killed at the hands of petty thieves that stumbled one night into your small house at the edge of the village where she had found a haven.”
Phantom limbs of fear curl under my chest, the sheer terror and despair of a child hugging the lifeless body of his mother, his little fingers clinging helplessly to scraps of clothing spattered in blood.
“They found you after days, half dead from starvation, still clutching her decaying body. Xeys took you in—the blacksmith of the village and the one male that truly loved your mother, even after her death.”
A lone tear wets my cheek, and I catch it at the edge of my chin.
“That’s when I first spoke to you, you know. Gently coaxed you into hanging on, into surviving. I should have come for you then, I know I should have, but I feared Arwan finding you through me too greatly,” he sighs.
“By then I was the last dragon left. A vestige of a once-revered race. It was out of selfishness that I stayed away. Your safety meant I still had one connection left in this world.”
“When did you meet Aeon in person, then?” I ask in an attempt to steer him out of his guilt-infused spiral.
No being should carry that much remorse, not one as inherently good as K’haram.
He might not be faultless, but who ever is?
We all dabble between the lines, forever dancing back and forth between our morality and sins.
Granted, there are many monsters in Imiryion, but my dragon is not one of them.
“Upon your coming of age. You were already a troublesome young male, banding your group of rebels and delivering your own brand of justice. Targeting thieves and murderers, descending upon them like chimeras in the dead of night. Taking back what was stolen from the unfortunate.”
A layer of pride softens the edges of his voice as he soars up high, leaving the sea at our backs, taking the flight back to Sangeries.
“You were practically joined at the hip with Kreyos, that exasperating boy, your best friend. Llyr, Dhabvar, and Alektriona were there too, wreaking havoc alongside you.”
I still find it shocking to hear the names of beings I have cursed all my life—wrongly accusing them of being unfeeling deities when all they were was other victims of deceit.
They were never the villains I believed them to be.
Just normal people making the ultimate sacrifice.
Everything I ever thought I knew in this existence has turned on its head.
And a dormant part of me, quietly awakening, feels a terrible sense of loss and longing for their presence.
“You threatened to turn turtle the whole of Imiryion looking for me, and I–I finally relented. Was already worried that your vigilante ways would attract the wrong kind of attention. Arwan’s. But they didn’t. No, that happened much later. When she came into our midst.”
“You don’t like Killian, uhm, Akaori, I mean,” I say with a soft realization.
“I did not care for the vampire, no. And she did not care for me either. But there was mutual respect, even if hidden underneath thinly veiled threats.”
“So not much has changed,” I laugh out loud, the sound carrying on the wind.
“She was a force to be reckoned with, and reckon you did. I knew what was coming even before you realized it. Felt the way your heart would speed up at the mere mention of her name. You desired her so badly and yet despised that desire with absurd intensity. Many thought you’d kill each other, but the line between hate and love is so precarious, its edges so blurred, sometimes what burns inside oneself so ragefully is the mirror image of what they think it is. ”
His words bring forth memories of when I met Killian—the self-imposed hatred and the confusing attraction—and I chuckle. History tends to repeat itself, after all.
“The night you sent me away, she begged you to reconsider. It was the one singular time we were wholly on the same side. But you were immovable. You couldn’t see reason.
I should have been a weapon in your hands.
Instead, you made me swear on our soul bond that I would vanish and only return after the battle. ”
His mournful exhale sends ardent puffs of steam into the morning sky, the clouds parting like melting snow. Below I can see the dark crenels and twisting spires of Sangeries.
“I am a creature of many mistakes, Omri, but that was my gravest one yet.”
“You can’t possibly fault yourself for what transpired in that battle,” I say, although I already know deep in my gut his answer.
“Oh, but I can, Omri. And I do. This time, with my last dying breath, I will ensure you and Akaori get your ever after. That Imiryion is rid of the Dark Lord, once and for all.”
“K’haram, you will do no such thing,” I say out loud, my voice above a whisper. “We shall restore the balance together, and we shall live together in this new world that so many sacrificed their fucking lives to bring to fruition. I will not have it any other way.”
“Mmm,” is his only response as he severs our mental connection, plunging suddenly to the ground in a spectacular whirlwind of flapping wings. I grab his neck with all my might, holding on for dear life, all further arguments dissolving into the rush of an impending collision that I know won’t come.
This conversation is not over, though.
I will not let another soul die because of my sister.
Aeon’s father.
Whatever the hell this despicable creature is.
This time around, we are the ones making the story, and it won’t end in anyone’s death but Aurora’s.
I vow it to myself.
To Killian.
To K’haram, and to Imiryion itself.