Chapter 30 Skylar
At first light, Skylar slips outside and heads across the grounds.
She doesn’t know if everyone will know by now what she is—but it won’t be long, will it?
And she’s not ready for it—the fear and disgust she’ll find among the nobles.
She wonders what Cam would think if he knew.
She’ll get the chance to tell him, she vows.
And I won’t think any differently of you, Lar Lar. You know that.
She does. If there is one person she can trust to stand by her, no matter what, it’s him.
She passes the temple before settling at the cliff edge.
It’s the farthest she can get from the castle, given she can’t scale the walls.
She sits with her legs dangling over the cliff, staring down at the white froth of the waves.
She can feel the low hum of the temple wards behind her, can hear the buzzing of insect life nearby.
Could she pull it all into her—drain the nearby life, if she wanted to?
She thinks of the executioner. She wonders what it must be like to kill, repeatedly—to drain person after person, until they are nothing more than husks. She hates that part of her doesn’t recoil at the thought—that part of her craves the power that would come by doing it.
There’s the sound of footsteps behind her, an earthy scent carried on the wind.
“Come to pray to the dragon god?”
She glances up at Axel. “No point anymore, is there?”
To her surprise, he sits next to her, his own legs dangling into nothingness.
“I’ve been chatting to Zryan about your training from now on.”
She sighs. “Great.”
“We have a few things to prepare for, too.”
“Fabulous.”
She sees his mouth quirk at the corners, a subtle smile. “We’ve got the Masked Ball next week.”
“If you tell me I have to learn to dance…”
He laughs a little, shakes his head. “Not that kind of ball—on the whole anyway. It’s more in case you want to go through who will be there, who you want to make time to talk to.”
“Yeah—I won’t be doing that.”
He considers her for a moment. She wonders if he’ll push her, give her another lecture on this being bigger than just her. Instead he nods. “Fair enough. After that, the week before the duel, we have the Measuring.”
Skylar narrows her eyes. “Just what, exactly, are you planning to measure?”
“I’m not the one doing the measuring, sadly. But this is where your outfit for the duel will be fit for size.”
“Seriously? A whole ceremony just for outfits?”
He pauses, his gaze darting to hers, then away again. “Yes,” he says eventually. “A ceremony for outfits. So it’s worth having a think about what you want that to be.”
She briefly wonders whether to press him on the clear evasion. Then again, maybe she doesn’t care right now. “I get to decide?”
“Of course. You’re the one fighting in it. We have some designers on hand to discuss, of course—but ultimately it will be down to you.”
She nods slowly. She gets to decide the outfit she’ll have to fight to the death in. Aren’t they kind?
She rubs her hands over her face. “Why are you telling me all this?”
“You’re back from the island,” he says after a beat. “Our priorities are different now.”
Right. Back from the island—and not dead, as some of them might have hoped. She thinks of the king in his office yesterday. Of how he told her what he’d done to her mother, tried to do to her. All for the sake of a rumor. A rumor that turned out to be true, but still.
“Are you okay?” Axel asks.
She realizes that at her sides her hands have clenched into fists, nails biting palms. It’s a strong reason to want to win this duel—so that she can kill the king, after.
But on that note… “I don’t know what the point of any of this is,” she says bitterly, choosing to ignore Axel’s question. “For three weeks you’ve been telling me that if I don’t get a dragon, I’m screwed. Well…” She opens her hands wide.
“Okay, so you don’t have a dragon.” Skylar snorts at that. “But you’re not defenseless, Skylar.” His voice changes, a lower, smoother sound. She can’t help remembering how he looked at her after he pulled her out of the ocean. Not fear. Awe.
He hesitates. Then, “That’s quite some power you’ve been hiding.” There is no judgment—just cold, hard fact.
“Can you blame me?” she whispers. “For hiding it?”
“I think I can understand,” Axel says slowly, “why you kept it secret.”
“If I wasn’t the heir, I’d be executed right now,” she says bluntly.
He levels a look at her, his eyes glinting in the sunlight. “But you are the heir.”
“I don’t know what to do,” she mutters. She hates admitting that sort of vulnerability. Doesn’t know why she is letting him glimpse it. Only, he set foot onto dragon soil for her. She can’t forget that.
“Yes, you do.” His voice is fierce. “You train. You keep fighting. You decide you’re going to win this, Skylar.” Their gazes meet, hold. Something deep within her tightens. “And when you win, you use that power to do whatever in Vaar’s name you want.”
She thinks of Cam, of how she’d have the power to save him, if she won.
He’s right. It’s a voice like thunder, rumbling through her mind. She lets out a soft exhale of relief, at the fact that he is still talking to her. It isn’t over, Death Bringer.
She grimaces. Don’t call me that.
Why shy away from what you are? Maybe it was that which the dragons on the island saw. Maybe it was that which made you unworthy—dragons do not shy away from our true nature.
I think it was more about what I saw.
It’s not a question, but she manages to convey it as one in her mind. There’s a hesitation, but she can still feel his presence, and imagines a swish of his tail as he thinks.
There are some secrets we do not share, he says eventually. Even with our riders.
Which confirms, doesn’t it, that there is a secret to know. But—I’m not a rider.
Yes, you are. I would not have protected you if you were not. You need to remember what I said. There is a dragon out there whose soul sings to yours. You only need to find it.
I didn’t feel anything like that on the island.
Then maybe, Death Bringer, you were looking in the wrong place.
She feels Mjolnir’s mind pull away as Axel gets to his feet next to her.
He holds out a hand for her to take. She hesitates for a beat before taking it.
His long fingers entwine with hers, and he pulls her up with a strength she already knows he has.
For a moment, he doesn’t let go, and she looks down at their joined hands, wondering why she doesn’t recoil at his touch, knowing what he does, who he serves.
Wondering why, instead, her skin prickles at the contact.
There’s the sound of footsteps behind them and Axel looks over her shoulder, dropping her hand and raising his own in greeting.
Skylar glances back to see Zryan heading toward them—no doubt to offer some thoughts on her training.
She can see Astrid, too, on a training run with her friend/bodyguard, and coming this way.
“We should go,” Axel says, jerking his head in the direction of the training grounds. She nods and goes to follow him. Then she pauses.
She can still feel it, she realizes. The pulsing from the temple. But she doesn’t think that’s the wards she can feel.
Find the one who calls to you.
Trapped. Just like her. Taken. Just like her.
She steps toward the temple.
“Skylar, what are you…?”
But she ignores Axel. Because her skin is prickling and there is a distant ringing in her ears as she moves toward the stone steps that lead to Arach’s house. No, she realizes. Not ringing. Roaring. The roaring of fire.
She can hear another voice calling her now—Zryan, maybe. A warning, not to go through the wards. Axel reaches out a hand to stop her, but she slips away from him easily.
She feels the wards as she steps through the door—of course she does.
Like a scorching under her skin. But she can feel more than just their burning.
She can feel their power—their energy. And without really understanding it, she is pulling.
Drawing the magic in, faster and faster, the scorching within her subsiding, as energy thrums. Because magic is life, isn’t it?
And if she can drain life, she can drain magic.
She feels the static in the air that lets her know Zryan is there, in the temple with her, but she doesn’t look at him. She can’t; something too powerful is urging her on, toward the center of the room, where it sits on the dais—waiting for her.
Her gaze settles on the egg, bright and bronze and beautiful, sunset-red tip seeming to flicker. She feels it like always, that pulse of life from it.
“I’m here,” she murmurs quietly as she crosses to it.
“I don’t want you to be trapped anymore.
” Her hands are shaking as she places both of them on the shell.
She can feel its power humming, but she doesn’t try to draw it in—she doesn’t want to steal it.
Instead she tries to push the energy from the wards back out.
Tries to let the egg know that it is safe, that she understands.
That she’s sorry it’s taken her so long to figure it out.
She can hear heavy footsteps behind her, can hear voices nearby, Vatran and Arturean mixed.
There is a collective intake of breath.
Then, the sound of cracking, a line appearing down the egg, spiderwebbing outward. Skylar brings her hands back toward her.
And flame erupts.