30. Jerrid
JERRID
Jerrid tightened his grip on Ava’s arm as she struggled against him, her mutters growing angrier and more desperate by the minute.
She stomped on his foot with the heel of her boot, but Dragon sensed her intentions and had the good-naturedness to coat the top of Jerrid’s foot in a rippling layer of dragon scales mere seconds before her hard sole slammed down upon him.
Instead of breaking his foot, her boot glanced off the scales, slipped sideways, and landed in the grass.
“Ava, stop! Please!”
She wrenched her left elbow out of his hold and shoved hard against his chest, her teeth bared in a way that made her look wild and feral, like a thing born out of the forest and not from the great elf city with its wooden palace and blue fires.
“I can’t,” she snapped, “and you know it! We have to help him. We can’t just let him die. He came here to help us—”
“If you interfere now, you’ll just get yourself killed.”
“And if we don’t interfere, he will be killed…and then he’ll kill the rest of us as he burns!”
Jerrid ground his teeth together and wanted to spit, At least choose the option where you might survive, at her, but he knew she wouldn’t appreciate his candor.
Stop, Dragon whispered, so quietly that Jerrid could barely hear him.
“Stop putting yourself in danger unnecessarily. Let me handle this!”
She jabbed a finger into his chest. “You can’t do this without me, and you know it, Jerrid Chrysalis! You need me. Why is that so difficult for you to accept? You and Dragon are stronger with me than you are without me.”
“I don’t feel stronger,” Jerrid snapped, swatting away her finger when she came at him again. “I feel like I’m fracturing into pieces!”
Please stop. Again, that whisper from the back of his mind, so fragile and weak…
“That’s your own fault.” Ava bounced up on her tiptoes, glaring into his face as if her eyes might burn him if she stared hard enough. “You were ripping yourself apart long before I came along. I’ve been trying to put you back together again.”
“Well, you’ve done a fabulous job of it, let me tell you. Your idea of ‘putting together again’ almost killed me.”
“It did not!” she argued and tried to jab him in the chest again, but he swatted away her finger. “It’s your stubborn refusal to work with Dragon that is killing you. Don’t blame me for that!”
Behind them, Prince Haryk shrieked, a chilling, ear-splitting sound that set Jerrid’s teeth on edge and vibrated through his jaw.
He peered over Ava’s head as the phoenix and shadow continued to spiral and attack one another, the blue blazing more brightly and the shadows growing intensely deeper… infinitely darker.
His mouth went dry, his hand tightening around Ava’s forearm as she too stared at the battle raging behind them, a battle spiraling out of control.
The phoenix and the shadow were both impossible to defeat on their own…but together? Their magic out of control?
No force in Rhuin would stand against them.
He had to intervene. He knew that. He was no fool.
But he wanted Ava to be as far away as possible when he did. And he wanted to be in full control of Dragon. He sent a silent request through his mind, but only silence answered him.
A shiver ran down his spine.
He glanced down at his feet and saw dragon scales retreating, as if they were crawling back up his ankle.
“Dragon?” Ava asked, spinning toward him with a horrified whisper.
Her face went gray, mouth slackening as she also realized that something was very wrong…
Darkness ripped through Jerrid, blinding him. His body went rigid as the fiery energy inside him cooled in a violent rush. It was like someone had thrown a bucket of cold water over him, drowning him from head to foot.
Except it wasn’t water.
It was darkness, nightmare, and shadow.
His muscles spasmed and then went limp, as if he were nothing more than jelly. Ice crawled through his veins, leeching him of warmth. Of life. A deafening roar filled his ears—not the roar of a beast, but more like the steady, unchanging roar of a waterfall.
“Ava, you need to cut the connection with Dragon!” he rasped into the darkness, panic clawing at the back of his throat. “Cut the connection! Now!”
Could she even hear him?
Dragon slipped away from him. The scales across his body vanished more quickly, and the wings on his back drooped and shriveled. This wasn’t a normal shift. This was…
Dying, Dragon whispered faintly, his thoughts a mere breath in the back of Jerrid’s thoughts.
The shadow pulled more from them, stealing Dragon away, using him…
But for what?
Jerrid’s mind thrashed wildly as he tried to break free, even as his body remained frozen in place. A low, taunting laugh coiled through his mind, clawing against his consciousness with talons as jagged as splintered bone. He screamed, but no sound escaped his throat.
The shadow laughed again as he scraped away more of Dragon. Jerrid could feel its thirst…
He peeled his eyelids apart, the world taking shape around him.
But it wasn’t the world he had left. The Shadewood had disappeared, and he found himself standing in a courtyard surrounded by fog.
The air nipped at his skin, icy and fierce.
When he breathed, his breath misted on the air in front of his face.
Cold stone rose behind him, towering over him. When he turned, he had to tip his head all the way back to see the top of the jagged tower silhouetted against a sky devoid of moon or stars, a tower so dark even the empty sky paled in comparison.
Despair seeped into his bones, a tangible thing that writhed out of the poisoned soil beneath his feet and burrowed into his soul. He should give up.
There was no point in fighting anymore.
It was as if he had fallen into Helheim, the realm of mist, cold, and gloom. And the tower that rose before him was the Elvidnir, the Tower of Suffering.
“Can’t hold on much longer.” Dragon’s guttural voice sounded from behind him.
Jerrid tried to spin, but his movements were sluggish, hampered by the mist that clung to his arms and legs. Behind him, a small dragon huddled in the fog, his body drooped and broken. The dragon’s scales, as dark as obsidian, were dull and scuffed.
“Dragon,” he breathed.
Dragon lifted his snout when Jerrid reached out and pressed his hand across the dragon’s nose. He was cold to the touch. When Jerrid withdrew his hand, his palm burned as if he’d pressed his fingers against icy stone.
“It’s eating me,” Dragon whispered, his head collapsing against the ground as he groaned. “Bleeding me dry.”
Jerrid’s heart began to thump loudly in his chest, the only sound in this strange place of mist and shadow and cold. “What do you mean?”
“The shadow.” Dragon coughed, and it was a wet, terrible sound.
A death rattle.
“I’m just food to it. Fodder for the darkness.”
Jerrid flinched at the bitter, guttural laugh that echoed across the dreamscape. Dragon had given up.
This, more than anything, filled him with fear. Dragon had always been the strong one, the fighter. Jerrid had only been along for the ride. And if something were to happen to Dragon now…
Where did that leave him?
“You can’t give up,” he whispered as he crouched in front of Dragon. “We need you to keep fighting. We can’t do this without you.”
Dragon’s eyelids fluttered heavily, his breaths so weak they barely fogged the air.
“Ava needs you,” Jerrid continued as he stroked the Dragon’s head, running his hand along one of the long horns that sprouted above his angular temple. “You’re the only thing protecting her.”
Dragon coughed again. “I know. But there isn’t enough of me left.”
“If you don’t keep fighting, Ava will be next!” Desperation clogged his throat, tears prickling behind his eyes.
Dragon peeled his lids apart and stared up at him, and he saw himself reflected in those reptilian eyes. He saw a battered, broken little boy who had reached the end of a very long path, a road that had always been destined to end in this place.
“I know,” Dragon whispered.
“The only way she survives is if you survive.” Jerrid’s voice hitched, his mind already made up.
“I know,” Dragon repeated, but this time his deep groan was filled with emotion, with regret.
Jerrid could feel them, the emotions mirrored in his own chest. But he knew what he needed to do. Dragon was more important to Ava than he was. They both knew this.
“Give me up,” he whispered to Dragon. “I’ll take your place.”
Dragon mustered the energy to shake his head. “You won’t last. It’s too strong. It’ll devour you in minutes. Maybe seconds.”
Jerrid’s nostrils flared as his heart kicked hard against his ribs. “I can hold out long enough for you to escape. For you to get to Ava. And then…then you need to break the tether to this body. To my body. To me.”
A tear pooled in the corner of Dragon’s eye. It glittered against his black scales.
A bitter laugh tore out of Jerrid’s chest, tearing at his tight throat to escape. How stupid was it that he only now admitted how much he and Dragon needed one another. How much they could have accomplished if they’d worked together instead of fighting against one another all this time.
Only now, when it was too late, did he finally believe that they were stronger together.
They always had been.
But now they never would be.
“I would…make the sacrifice…if I could,” Dragon rasped.
Jerrid stroked his head and smiled. “I know. But you can’t. It has to be me.”
A shudder ran through Dragon’s body, his teeth bared as if he needed to moan in pain but couldn’t get the sound out of his body. They were running out of time.
“You need to go,” Jerrid said, stumbling to his feet and backing up. “Tell Ava…tell her…”
He couldn’t say the words, afraid he’d change his mind if he admitted them out loud. That he would do more than set the world on fire for her.
That he would die for her.
Dragon peeled his eyelids apart again and gave him a knowing look, another tear glistening against his dull, tarnished scales.
“I understand,” he rumbled. “I will see if there is a way for me to let you say goodbye before…before…”
But Jerrid shook his head. “It’s more important that this works. Just tell her for me, okay?”
Jerrid exhaled in relief and backed a safe distance away as the mist and shadows tugged more fiercely at his legs, trying to coil around his wrists as if they knew what was about to happen.
As if they were eager to pull him wholly into their dark embrace, dragging him down to his final resting place.
Pain sliced through Dragon’s chest as he summoned the agonizing strength to shake off the mist and lift his face to the starless sky looming above him.
Heat built in his chest as he summoned the last of his energy, that final ember he’d been guarding so fiercely, that part he’d been saving for the very end.
His heart—the core of his fire.
It should be him. He should be the one staying behind, but there was no other way to save Ava. And if Jerrid could make the sacrifice to stay behind…he would just have to be strong enough to leave.
With a roar of rage and regret, he released the heat, the pain, and set the night ablaze, breaking free of the chains that held him down. And as Dragon took to the sky, to freedom…
Jerrid tumbled into the darkness.