Chapter Twenty-Eight #3
Desperately, I kick my legs against the solid trunk, but his arm jerks, pinning me back harder.
“And with all that magic...” His focus drops to my fingers, where my erratic Threads spark and flicker uselessly. “But Outerlanders don’t have magic. Well, not that much, and an Innerlander wouldn't be all the way out here... especially not alone. So what are you?”
Choking now, I try to spit something back, but nothing makes it past the rising pressure around my neck. My eyes bulge and my vision blurs at the edges.
Taking a step closer, his head moves as though he’s examining me, close enough that the shadows beneath his hood shift, and the scars across his face pull into view, raised and uneven, slicing through his otherwise youthful features.
He can’t be much older than Talen. And his robes are just as pristine, just as white as the ones I’ve seen Serrane wear. The ones worn by his Inner Circle initiates. But as he moves in, my gaze finally catches on his eyes, narrow and curious as they roam over me, shining a bright, pale blue.
Not black.
Lifting his hand, he slowly reaches for my face.
I twist away, turning my cheek from him, my whole body fighting against the hold keeping me pinned, but the second his fingers touch my skin, he jerks his hand back and his eyes flare wide.
“Threadweaver!” he gasps.
Stumbling back a step, his Threads falter and suddenly the pressure around my throat vanishes all at once, and I hit the ground hard, my knees cracking against the earth before my palms catch me.
Coughing, I bring a trembling hand to my bruised throat and force my head up to face him. The shock is still there, written across his scarred features, but it doesn’t last. It twists into something worse. Something sicker.
“Oh, he’s been looking for you.” A satisfied smirk spreads across his mouth, and my gut turns.
Still unable to speak, I shove a hand into the dirt, trying to push myself up, trying to gather my magic, but there still isn’t enough air in me. My arm buckles, and I hit the ground again, useless and shaking.
“I should thank you...” His voice rings strangely in my ears, warped beneath the rough drag of my own breathing as I force my lungs open, pulling in one thin inhale, then another.
A few more. That’s all I need. A few more, and I can stand.
“He will be so pleased with me,” he chuckles. “So very pleased. He wil—”
“Run!” The command blasts through my mind—unfamiliar and yet somehow known—hard enough to make my teeth clamp together and my hands fly to my ears. “Run. NOW!”
I don't question it. Don't even think.
The figure in white stands right in front of me, his dragon off to one side. Running is suicide, but something in the voice sends my legs moving. Pouring every scrap of strength I have into them, I dive to the left just as flames detonate across the ground where I'd been lying.
The blast catches me anyway, throwing me through the air before I crash back to the earth hard enough to drive the remaining air from my lungs.
With stinging palms and knees scraped raw, I twist around, scrambling backwards as the green dragon in the sky circles back overhead with a deafening roar.
Shit!
Its massive jaws part and another jet of fire streaks across the space between me and the white-robed figure.
Wrenching my focus away from the curtain of flames before I combust from pure panic, I barely have time to register the shadow descending before Ahria's monstrous form hammers into the earth beside me.
She’s here. She’s really here.
“What are you waiting for?” she snarls, her violet gaze blazing on me as the heavy thump of wings echoes across the camp—the other dragon gathering itself for flight.
Refocusing, every muscle screaming beneath me, I race toward her. Ahria drops low enough for me to grab onto her scales. I've done it enough times with JC that my body knows what to do, but she doesn’t wait for me to find the grooves where I’m supposed to sit.
Her muscles bunch beneath me, all heat and lethal force, and before I can settle properly, she coils and launches. With my nails biting into her scales, I cling on, swinging my legs into place just as her wings snap wide and one powerful downstroke sends us soaring skyward.
Flattening myself against her warmth, I stay low, trying to shield myself from the wind tearing past as the air grows colder and colder with every beat of her wings.
“Release now,” she roars as we start to level off.
“What?”
“Release them now!” she repeats, frustration—or maybe fury—laced through her tone. I can’t tell. “Your Threads. Release them!”
Locking my legs around her, my shoulder still hurting like hell, I spread my arms wide and let go.
Magic explodes through me.
Not mine, hers.
Ahria’s Threads race through my bones, my skin, my hands, spilling into the sky, reaching out in every direction until my arms lock beneath the force of it and my eyes slam shut.
Beneath me, she roars again, but this time there’s something else in it.
Satisfaction.
The feeling reverberates through her body and into mine, fierce and bright enough that, despite everything, a smile spreads across my face, and when I open my eyes, the ground beneath us has disappeared behind a thick mist that only deepens as my magic continues spreading outwards.
They pour from me in an endless stream, catching on the moisture in the air and pulling it closer. Droplets gather beneath the pressure, thickening until the mist becomes cloud, folding around us, swallowing Ahria’s wings, the sky, everything beyond her scales.
Soon there’s nothing but white, so dense I can’t see where it ends.
And with the world hidden away, everything else simply slips from my mind. No pain. No fear of the height. No hesitation.
All that’s left is us.
Is her.
But it only lasts less than a second before reality comes crashing back.
“We have to go back,” I yell over the roar of the wind, dropping my arms as my Threads recoil inward. The backlash jolts through my shoulder enough to make me wince. “We have to go back. Talen's still there. We have to help him.”
“I can’t reach Calyxar, but Jhaecyrianthos has taken after the other dragon. Shanwyn is there now too. They can take care of it.” She snaps back. “And you don't need to yell at me. You can communicate through the bond.”
My brows pinch as I secure my hold on her hot scales.
Jhaecyrianthos? Oh right, that’s JC. But I stay frowning, as how the hell did Shanwyn and Reya get there so quickly?
Unless Reya was already on her way to see Lucien...
but he didn't seem like he was expecting company considering how much tea he drank.
“No, we still need to go back.” I yell again, completely failing to use the connection between us. “Talen’s hurt, I... I think I took his Threads.”
Ahria grumbles beneath me. “You’re barely controlling my magic as it is. You are in no position to help anyone at the moment. I’m taking you back to camp, Threadweaver.”
“Threadweaver?” Blinking through the fog I’ve wrapped around us, I squint into the endless mist. I hope she can see where she's going because I can't see a thing. “Why did you call me that?”
“I heard the one in white say it, and it sounded good.” A hint of amusement hums through our connection. “Would you rather I call you Freckles?”
“Fuck no,” I think back at her.
“Exactly.” Her tone more pleased now I'm using the bond.
“Do you know what it means?” I ask. “Threadweaver?”
“No.”
Moisture from the clouds surrounding us starts seeping into my clothes, stealing what little warmth I have left, so I lower myself again against Ahria’s body and let her warmth absorb into me.
Relief follows, sudden and overwhelming.
That missing part of me, the hollow space I’ve carried since the dreams began at the Citadel, is gone.
Ahria is here.
Not in a dream. Not waiting somewhere beyond reach.
Here.
Beneath me.
Bonded to me.
God, I thought she was never going to choose me. I didn't think the bond would seal. I thought she hated me—
“What made you think I hated you?” she demands and I jump.
Okay. Clearly, I need to figure this communication thing out.
“And yes,” Ahria adds flatly, “you do not have to send me everything you are thinking. In fact, I would rather you do not.”
Forcing out a heavy breath, I try to aim my words properly this time as Ahria’s wings slow into a steady glide, carrying us deeper through the mist I’ve wrapped around us.
“Well, you did try to burn me when we first met...” I send back. “And you haven’t exactly been warm and friendly since. Then after the Blood Moon, after I completely lost my shit, you just flew off.”
“I’m a dragon, not a dog,” she huffs, rolling her muscles beneath me. “How do you expect me to act? And anyway, I returned to the ceremony. Those two dragons killed your friend. I intended to find them.”
“Why?”
“To claw their eyes out and eat their hearts.”
The blunt coldness in her growl makes me shiver.
She would kill her own kind? Why would she do that?
“You judge me when your species does the same."
Fair point. But still—why?
“Because I needed them to pay for taking her from you.” Her wings snap hard in the mist. “And please get control over this connection.”
“Shit, sorry,” I think—or say. Or maybe both. Honestly, who knows at this point. “But I yelled at you. I completely lost it. Why did you seal the bond?”
She doesn't answer straight away, and I wait long enough that I start to wonder if I used the connection wrong again. I'm just about to try a second time when her voice cuts through.
“Why did you run to try and save her?” she asks. “Surely your human brain is large enough to know it was pointless.”
The question squeezes around my chest, and I swallow hard against the tears threatening to spill. “It wasn't my brain that made me do it,” I swallow once. “It was my heart.”
Silence greets me for a beat, broken only by the steady rhythm of her wings carrying us through the clouds.
“Then that is my answer also—.”