Chapter 15 The Dream
Thalen walked me back to my room, hands deep in his pockets, unhurried. He filled the silence, venting about Lorik Draventh, how Lorik lived to intimidate me, how badly Thalen wanted him gone.
In my head, rage simmered, I wanted to rip that smug Dragontail expression from Lorik’s face. Self-disgust clawed at me for ever trying to be nice, for apologizing, for searching for the best in someone who’d only ever wanted to torment me for my family’s sins. Normally,
Normally, I’d obsessively replay the encounter: every word, every glare, burning it into my memory until I could torture myself over what I should have said.
But for once, I said what burned in my chest and I felt proud. Fiercely and unexpectedly proud of myself.
When we reached my door, Thalen finally stopped talking. He looked at me with eyes I knew too well, dark with want, soft with something closer to longing. He saw me with desire, with that same old fire.
I didn’t say a word. I didn’t have to.
I knew exactly where this was going.
And for one fleeting second, I let myself be in it. I was bone-tired. Drained by the day. Hollowed out by the week. Worn down by the endless cycle of proving myself to people who refused to really see me. I longed to be acknowledged, to feel cherished. Maybe even loved.
Thalen stepped closer. I didn’t move.
I could feel the heat of him, hear the shift in his breath. My pulse spiked. Then, with a gentleness that made it worse somehow, he reached up and brushed my hair behind my ear, leaning close too close.
“Good night, Thea,” he whispered.
Then he kissed me, slowly and deliberate, on the cheek, lips just barely grazing the corner of my mouth. And then, he walked away.
I stood frozen, hand tight on the door, trying to shake off the storm Thalen left in his wake.
I almost let myself slip.
But Thalen knew me too well. If he wanted a second chance, he’d have to earn it. Slowly. Steadily. Because one wrong move, and I’d shut the door on him for good.
I lingered in the silence after Thalen left, the ghost of his almost-kiss still warm on my skin. Then I opened the door and stepped inside.
The room was as quiet as the halls outside.
Even Soehl’s bed sat empty. She was out in Wolventon with the twins, Shakari, and the other first-years, probably laughing over drinks and pretending we didn’t live behind stone and steel.
I hadn’t earned that freedom.
I hadn’t beaten anyone in the Hall of Mirrors. I hadn’t earned the right to leave Elarion’s walls.
I peeled off nothing, not even my uniform, still clinging to my skin with sweat and collapsed onto my bed.
Sleep took me like a tide pulling me under.
And the nightmare, like many that hunt me at night, came fast.
The world was on fire.
Not hearth-fire. Not candlelight.
Real fire. Wild, hungry, and merciless.
Flames leapt from rooftop to rooftop, moving faster, hotter, as if the blaze had intent. It didn’t just spread. It hunted.
The town was small, poor and worn and somewhere I didn’t recognize. Its crooked streets spilled toward a pale curve of sandy soil barely visible through the wall of smoke. The air stank of scorched timber, and something worse, charred flesh.
The wind blew hot enough to blister skin and strip the breath from my lungs. Emberkeep guards moved through the chaos, yanking people from their homes, inspecting them one by one like livestock. Looking for something. Or someone.
Screams tore into the air.
A female’s voice echoed from every direction, begging and sobbing for her child. A man stumbled through the smoke, coughing black ash, dragging the female from a crumbling doorway half-swallowed by flame.
I didn’t know her.
Grief ripped through me, sudden and electric, violent as a lightning strike. I screamed, as if I were losing someone I loved. As if it were my fault.
She was covered in burns.
Still begging, pleading that her child was still inside. Then her voice vanished. She died in his arms.
The male didn’t cry. He made no sound, just held her as the fire consumed her body. His face was shadowed, but I saw his eyes catch the moonlight, shining with something deep and unbearable. Pain beyond language.
Then he screamed.
A roar of fury, hate, and helpless rage that split the sky itself.
And just like that, his eyes stopped shining.
Behind him, a tall figure stepped out of the smoke. An Emberkeep uniform, an Emberkeep guard like those from the Glass Castle.
The grieving man didn’t rise. Didn’t lift his head.
He was buried in his sorrow, holding what remained of her.
And the Emberkeep guard didn’t hesitate.
He raised a hand and hurled a fireball, burning him alive.
Burning them both.
I snapped awake with a scream tearing from my throat, raw, jagged, and unfamiliar in my ears. It took a moment to realize I was back in my room, heart pounding like I’d sprinted through the flames, lungs thick with the taste of smoke.
My vision blurred or maybe it was the dark swallowing the room, confusing my senses. Then I felt it: a hand in mine. Steady. Grounding.
Soehl was already there, crouched at the edge of my bed, her hands firm on my shoulders. “Breathe, Thea. Come on, look at me.”
The room was still lit only by a thin spill of moonlight through the window. But her face was clear, calm, composed. A tether I didn’t know I was reaching for.
I tried to pull air into my lungs. It came too fast, too shallow. My chest jerked with each breath
“It’s over,” she said softly, but with certainty. Like saying it made it true. “You’re safe. Just keep breathing. It was only a dream.”
“I saw…” My voice cracked. My hands wouldn’t stop trembling.
She didn’t press.
She simply moved closer, one hand finding the back of my neck, warm and solid. Her presence pulled me back from the edge.
“It was just a dream,” she murmured again.
Her words took root slowly, each one loosening the knot in my chest.
My breathing slowed. My hands stilled.
But the fire’s heat still clung to my skin, like a ghost refusing to leave.
“It didn’t feel like a dream,” I whispered, voice splintered, fear quaking through me.
“It was terror the Solenharts’ shadow over the kingdom, the fear left bleeding through generations.
I keep promising myself I’m not like them, but it’s in me.
In my blood. If I’m meant to rule, what if I become them? ”
Tears welled. Hot. Heavy. Everything blurred.
Soehl didn’t hesitate. She pulled me into her arms and held me tight.
“You have to stop sabotaging yourself,” she said. “That voice in your head, the one whispering that you’re dangerous, that you’re just like them—it’s lying to you. It will destroy you if you let it.”
I closed my eyes. She kept going.
“You’re Thea Solenhart. Not a shadow of someone else. You’re the first Dragontail Solenhart. That matters. You’re different. You’re meant to be. So stop running from it. Embrace the unknown. Face it.”
I opened my mouth to answer, but nothing came. The words stuck like thorns.
Something inside me shifted, not a break, but a softening.
I hadn’t expected it.
In just a few weeks, I’d come to trust her, not because she tried to fix everything, but because she didn’t run from the weight I carried. She stood beside it. Held some of it.
So, I let the words out.
“The Siren told me… I’m not the first Solenhart in Dragontail. That’s why I keep going back to the library. I need to know the truth. Why has it been buried?”
Soehl didn’t blink. Didn’t flinch.
Her voice was steady, even as concern flickered in her expression.
“You can’t train like your life depends on it and starve yourself chasing secrets. That’ll break you faster than the Dragontail Trials ever will.” She paused. “I’ll help you. I’m Auroric, I can get into the library. I can look where you can’t.”
Her offer hit harder than any oath.
“Why?” I asked, voice low. “Why help me? You barely know me.”
She reached for my hand again, her grip warm and sure.
“Because you’re my friend. And you deserve the truth. That’s it. Now sleep. I’ll be here.”
Exhaustion crashed into me. The fear, heat and words unspoken, leaving me hollow, stripped bare as bone.
All I could manage was a crooked half-smile that was small, but felt real.
She lay beside me, the mattress dipping gently with her weight, grounding me in a way I hadn’t realized I needed.
I stared at the ceiling, the moonlight carving faint lines across the stone. Elarion was reshaping me, breaking me down, piece by piece. Remaking me into someone I didn’t yet recognize.
Elarion would forge my enemies, cruel and unyielding. But maybe my fiercest alliances were also blazing bright in the darkness.
Soehl wasn’t just an ally. She was a friend.
And I hadn’t had many of those. Not real ones.
Not the kind who stood by you when you nearly died.
Not the kind who stayed after you failed.
The twins. Shakari. Even Thalen, in his fractured way.
They were the ones who kept pulling me back together.