Chapter 39
Serafina
I didn’t realize such places still existed in Velegoria, an area seemingly untouched by the disease that torments our planet.
Stepping off Nyxa, I stumble before catching myself.
A fucking dragon.
I turn to face her, and she bows her head. My fingers glide along the scales just beneath her eye, an eye filled with a million tiny, glorious embers.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Just as I knew you were human, I assumed you knew I was dragon.”
Liar.
She chuckles.
“Thank you,” I tell her, and she releases a puff of smoke through her nostrils.
“You can thank me by allowing him—” she nods in Char’s direction, and his entire body trembles— “to be my next meal.”
“I’ll consider it.” I force a laugh because this is far too surreal.
Dragons are supposed to be extinct. Over one hundred years ago, the species died out. But here she is, standing before me after saving our lives.
“I’ve waited a very long time to meet you, Serafina,” she says, and my fingers glide over her scales again. “Longer than you know.”
I tilt my head, unable to grasp what it is she’s trying to say.
“You could feel me even before my flames emerged?”
She huffs. “Long before that.”
I shake my hands because none of this seems possible, feels possible, but it is.
“You are the first of your kind in over a century,” she says, and my mouth falls open.
The first Pyroflame in over a century…how is that possible? How is that something I didn’t know?
“Since the Pyro King?”
She huffs again, but this time, there’s an edge to it, an undeniable anger.
“He was no true Fire Wielder. Not like you or I.”
Impure.
That’s what the king had written over and over and over again in his journal. The dragons said he was impure, and Nyxa seems to know why.
But wait…if I’m the first Pyroflame in over a hundred years…then why did Nyxa insist on teaching me how to shield my mind? What would be the point if no others like me exist?
“There is much I know, and much you do not. Much I must teach you, but right now, I think you need to get answers from someone else.” Her gaze falls behind me, to where I’m sure Ryjax stands.
I nod at her, and then I turn to face him.
His onyx hair sticks to his forehead, clinging to his skin and mixing with blood that I know is not his. I want so badly to push the strands from his face, but my fingers remain at my sides.
He’s a beautiful, glorious mess.
“You owe me a truth,” I say, and Theo moves to the stream a few feet away, almost out of earshot, but not quite. He crouches down, grabbing rocks before skipping them across the water’s surface.
Char, on the other hand, doesn’t move a muscle, locked in a staring contest with Nyxa. His skin is paler than I’ve ever seen, and I don’t think he’s breathing.
Nyxa, however, looks like she’s smiling. She bares her teeth, releasing a low growl, and I won’t be surprised if he pisses himself.
“I do,” Ryjax says, stepping toward me with a look on his face that makes me want to ask him not to tell me.
But whatever it is, I know I need to hear it. So many died today. A number far higher than necessary, and I need to know why.
“I’m listening.”
His jaw tightens, and he inhales a deep breath through his nose.
“The world is not dying.”
The world is not—What? My chest squeezes. No…that doesn’t make any sense…
“Eleclestial is not dying,” he says again, his words even slower this time.
“One hundred and twenty-one years ago, there was a rebellion.” He steps closer, but I take a step away, needing space, needing distance, otherwise I’ll never be able to process his words.
His brows crease, but he doesn’t take another step.
“The trials only exist so the Elite can keep the population in each village at manageable levels, to ensure another rebellion can never again occur. They blocked the rivers. Drained most of the reservoirs. Poisoned the fields. Every sign of a dying world was manufactured by them nearly a century ago.”
My eyes fall to the ground, my breathing damn near uncontrollable.
The world is not dying.
The world is not dying.
There was a rebellion…my sisters are dead because—
“But the earthquakes…the volcano that just destroyed Village 50. You’re saying the Elite manufactured those as well?”
He shakes his head. “No, they don’t have that kind of power. But the disruptions in the ground, the tremors, they only started twenty-one years ago, when the Great Chasm emerged.”
My jaw drops. The Great Chasm…it formed the night I was born.
I look back at Nyxa, and her eyes are pinned on me.
She knows something.
Whatever’s happening to Eleclestial…Nyxa knows the truth. The real truth.
“Ajja and I have been looking into it.” He runs his hand through his black strands. “We’ve been trying to figure out what changed, and we think my father might be involved. But even so…the trials…they weren’t started to save the planet. The people of Velegoria have been lied to for over a century.”
“The night I was dragged before your parents, is this what you were going to tell me?” I ask—no, I demand. When our lips had been so close, when I could nearly taste him, the man I desired more than anything, the man I now want to slap in the face.
“Yes,” he says, his voice raw, thick, and pained.
“Why didn’t you say anything after I was released?”
“I promised my father I wouldn’t. He threatened to kill you if you ever learned the truth. And I suppose he didn’t take me at my word, considering what just happened in that arena.”
I fall to the ground, my knees slamming against the grass as my fingers dig into the soil.
Calm down.
I need to calm down. I breathe through my nose, pushing away the flames that are begging to be set free, focusing on the dirt on my hands and the sound of the flowing stream.
“There’s more,” he says, nearly choking on the words, and my gaze locks on those golden eyes of his.
“More?” I want to scream because how could there possibly be more?
My fists tighten, and Ryjax swallows.
“Those who fail the trials, those who don’t die during the trials…they aren’t killed. They aren’t dead.”
What?
I’m on my feet in a second, toe to toe with him.
He heaves in a heated breath.
“What do you mean,” I seethe, my thoughts running wild, my heart hammering against my rib cage, the sound threatening to drown me, consume me entirely, “they aren’t dead?”
“Your sisters,” he clears his throat, “they’re alive, Serafina.
Those who fail the trials are taken to the Imperial City.
Forced into servitude or made to work in the fields.
But some of them…” His voice fades, and I know what he’s about to say will crush this sliver of hope rising in my chest. So I close my eyes and try to focus on what he has said before I’m forced to hear what’s coming next.
My sisters aren’t dead.
My sisters aren’t dead.
They’re alive.
I choke on a laugh, a euphoric feeling bursting to the surface, uncontrollable and wild.
But then I force myself to settle.
He has more to say.
With my eyes locked on his, I brace myself for whatever it may be.
“Some of them,” he continues, “are sent across the sea. We sell them to—”
“Bragunda,” I finish for him, and I freeze. My brain piecing everything together.
There’s a reason he didn’t want to tell me this very specific thing, there’s a reason he hesitated, and it’s not because it’s awful—which it is—it’s not because selling people as slaves isn’t one of the most vile, horrendous things they could ever possibly do, because it is.
It’s because…
The realization hits me like a punch to the gut, deep and throbbing, and I don’t think the pain will ever leave.
No.
I turn so fast, my gaze only on Theo, and by the look on his face, I know I’m right.
He knew her.
I’m on him in a second, my hands colliding with his shoulders, and I shove him as hard as I can.
Tears form in his eyes right as a sob breaks free.
“Little Flame,” he begins, holding up his hands, his hazel eyes mirroring the pain in mine.
I shove him again.
“It was her, wasn’t it?” My pulse races because please, oh gods, please let me be wrong.
Let me not be right about this. Not this.
“The woman you love is my sister?” My jaw tightens and everything hurts, but when he nods his head a pain like no other stabs at my heart.
“And you let them sell her to Bragunda?” I scream, reaching for my hair as that same scream threatens to destroy me.
The country across the ocean. A place of torture and pain and relentless cruelty.
Drea, Lucia, they may still be alive, but Telfi, Telfi has been sent to a place worse than death itself, and it’s all his fault.
“You fucking asshole,” I grind out, and another tear falls, gliding down his cheek, but he says nothing because he knows I’m right.
Why her?
Why did he have to love her?
I turn away from him, and then my gaze, my rage, falls on Char. Staring at me with wide eyes, surely having heard what Ryjax had just revealed, but I don’t want to deal with him right now.
I can’t.
“And you.” I point my finger at him. “Go set up your camp down the river. As far from me as possible until I can stand to look at you again.”
He opens his mouth as if to say something, but he doesn’t deserve to breathe, let alone speak.
“I said go!”
Nyxa releases a puff of smoke from behind me, and Char stumbles over his feet as he backs away, but then he turns and does exactly as I demanded.
I face the trees, my vision blurring, my anger overwhelming, and flames emerge from my hands.
Feeling someone behind me, knowing exactly who it is, I allow my flames to simmer until they disappear.
“Nova,” he says, his voice dripping with regret, and fear, and utter heartbreak.
“Do not,” I whisper, low and harsh and unforgiving, “call me that.”
“Serafina,” he corrects, the heartbreak in his tone still there, and I want to lean into him. I want to embrace the comfort only he can provide, but I’m so angry I can barely breathe.
This was what he meant when he said not yet. When he stopped us from going any further. He wanted me to know everything.
And now…I do.
“I’m so sor—”
“I don’t need you, Ryjax.” The words pour out of me, thick and unyielding because I mean them, and by the way his entire body stills behind me, how I can feel his muscles tighten and his lungs no longer take in any air…I know he knows it.
“I don’t need you,” I say again, turning as the last word slips from my mouth, facing those golden eyes and seeing for myself what a wreck I have made him. “But I sure as hell want you.”
And I do.
I do still want him, still ache for him. Even after knowing everything, I still want all of him. Just like I told him I would.
“And for me, there’s a big difference between the two. Do you understand?”
His entire body relaxes, as if the biggest weight has been lifted, descending into oblivion.
“But make no mistake. I’m angry.”
He takes a step toward me.
“Furious.” My teeth grind.
But he wanted to tell me.
He wanted to tell me.
Only he couldn’t. Until now.
He takes another step.
“Rightfully so,” he says, dipping his head.
“And I don’t know how long I’ll stay angry.”
“That’s okay.” His gaze flickers to my lips, and then his mouth crashes into mine.
I feel him everywhere. Like a spark turned into a raging fire.
This prince who I should hate.
This prince who I should loathe.
But I want him more than I hate him, and something tells me that will always be the case.
He pulls back just enough for his nose to graze mine, his breath warm and uneven, his eyes searing with a longing so raw it steals the air from my lungs.
“So what’s next?” he asks, and I can’t help the smirk that forms because I know exactly what’s next.
I move away from him.
“We’re going to free my sisters,” I say, releasing the flames I wield, the power I command bursting from my fingers.
“And as for the Elite, it’s time they start watching their backs for a change because the rebellion they’ve been so afraid of for the last one hundred and twenty-one years, it starts today. ”
End of Book 1.