13. Saving Her Dragon
Saving Her Dragon
Sydney closed her eyes. Inhaling deeply, she held her breath to the count of three, then slowly exhaled.
She prepared herself for a violent descent. She expected a blinding flash of agony, the sensation of falling into a bottomless chasm, or the sudden, suffocating pressure of Dark Sorcery tearing at her soul.
Instead, she felt Garrett.
The immediate reality of him rushed over her senses like a warm wave.
The familiar scent of leather, pine, and summer rain filled her lungs.
His deep heartbeat reverberated against her palm, and the Mating Bond wrapped around her consciousness with an intense, physical weight.
It no longer felt like an abstract spiritual link.
It felt like living armor, bright and unyielding.
Right beside her, the primal presence of Drakara, one of the Original Dragon Queen Twins, flared to life. Kara’s voice was a steady, golden echo in the dark. “Stay with me, my girl.”
“Always,” Sydney whispered back.
The bedroom faded away.
The transition wasn't cinematic or loud. One breath, Sydney was sitting on the cotton mattress, her forehead pressed against her Mate's skin. The next, the air turned freezing, heavy, and thick with the ageless smell of old earth and stagnant water.
The soft sheets beneath her knees were replaced by jagged, uneven stone. There was no bright sun shining through freshly laundered curtains. Everything was dark and dank and disgusting.
Opening her eyes, Sydney drew in a sharp pocket of air as she got to her feet and her boots settled onto the freezing ground. She had officially breached the Threshold. For the first time, she was staring directly at the architecture they had tracked through Han’s fractured memories.
The space was immense, an endless cavern of absolute, velvety shadow where the sky should have been. A ring of five massive, towering pillars of ancient, weathered stone rose from the damp earth. They looked like prehistoric monoliths, their surfaces scarred by centuries of teeth and claws.
Bathed in the silver, spectral glow of an unseen moon, the five points of light burned brilliantly around the perimeter. They cast long, skeletal shadows across the chamber like fingers forever reaching for something just out of reach.
The Silk Blue: Pulsing with a sharp, electric intensity that vibrated against her own skin.
The Red-Gold: A heavy, molten heat radiating from Alastair's line.
The Black-and-Silver: A deep, shadow-like flame anchored to Ginnie's necromancy.
The Brass–Gold: A steady, solid light reflecting Grey’s bloodline.
The Lavender-White: A low, frantic pulse humming in perfect rhythm with Garrett's heart.
Directly in the center of the ring stood the destination. An enormous, monolithic stone door. Its surface seamless and dark as obsidian, the structure dominated the landscape like a tombstone.
Sydney’s tactical awareness picked up on the anomaly instantly.
Garrett wasn't there.
Turning her head, her eyes scanned the empty spaces between the pillars.
Behind her, she could still feel the external parameters of the world.
The lifeline tether Ginnie had meticulously anchored to her physical ankle was a thin, warm, golden thread stretching back into the Darkness– alive and intact.
She could feel the heat of Kara’s Dragon Fire humming behind her ribs.
But… the space where her Mate should have been standing within the circle was a complete, terrifying void. A cold spike of panic hit her stomach, sharper than any Demonic malice.
"Garrett?" she called out, her voice sounding small and flat against the heavy stone.
There was no answer. Only the hollow echo of her own ragged breathing.
“Do not call with your voice, my girl,” Kara commanded softly, her golden eyes flashing within their shared consciousness. “A thief does not answer to a shout. Use the blood. Use the bond.”
Taking a deep, steadying breath, Sydney closed her eyes as she shut out the towering stones. Gathering her awareness, she reached past the architecture and threw her energy down the oldest, deepest channel she possessed… Garrett.
Deep behind the obsidian stone of the door, a faint, erratic pulse responded. A weak, desperate tremor of lavender-white light reached for her... Garrett.
Opening her eyes, Sydney marched directly toward the monolithic door.
As she moved, the five pillars reacted violently to her presence.
The red, black, and brass flames flickered, but the blue stone erupted.
The silky-blue fire shot upward, a brilliant, blinding geyser of power that illuminated the entire cavern in a cold, electric hue.
Kara’s wizened voice narrowed into a dangerous rumble. “The bastard likes our Magic far too much.”
Sydney clenched her jaw. Her White Dragon Magic thrummed beneath her skin, ready to tear the ceiling down. It was now or never. “Then let's make him choke on it,” she hissed.
Stepping up to the obsidian structure, she raised her palms and pressed them flat against the freezing, smooth surface of the stone.
“Welcome, Special One.”
The voice didn't echo from the cavern walls. Rather, it drifted through the stone itself, smooth and perfectly fluid, dripping with an elegant, triumphant amusement.
Sydney didn't flinch. Leviathan wasn't attacking. That bothered her more than if he'd thrown everything he had straight at her.
He wanted her here.
She didn't know why. She didn't know what the brighter blue anchor meant or what Leviathan intended to do with her once she crossed the threshold.
But she'd had some damn good teachers over the years, and every instinct she possessed screamed the same warning: It was a trap.
Fine. She hadn't come all this way expecting an invitation to tea.
The monolithic stone door swung wide open, sliding into the earth with a heavy, grinding roar.
Behind the seal lay no ordinary room. It was a warped, claustrophobic nightmare.
A shifting reconstruction of Garrett’s years in captivity designed for pure shock value.
The walls were a jagged mix of subterranean stone and rusted sheet metal, thick with the oily, green smoke of chemical sedatives.
Overlapping each other in a sickening, non-Euclidean geometry were fragments of the torture chambers, the broken chains, and the harsh fluorescent lights of the Leviathan laboratory.
Then, resting in the absolute center of the horror was Garrett.
Sydney's heart completely stopped in her chest.
It wasn't the present-day Garrett who had thrown pinecones at his brother on the porch or analyzed patrol maps with Carrick.
It was the version Leviathan wanted her to see.
He was starved, his ribcage prominent beneath his torn, blood-stained clothes.
Deep, jagged lacerations marred his skin, and heavy silver and iron chains bound his wrists and ankles to a cold, rusted metal restraint table.
His head hung low, his dark hair matted with blood.
He looked entirely broken, exactly as the Demon Lord had held him in the dark.
"Garrett," Sydney whispered, a devastating ache tearing through her soul.
Slowly, painfully, his head rose. His eyes opened, the iris a weak, flickering lavender, but they were entirely hollow. He looked right at her, but there was no recognition. No warmth. Only an endless, bottomless abyss of pure, suffocating shame.
Realization hit Sydney like a physical blow. It wasn't simply another reconstruction of Garrett's captivity. Leviathan wanted her to see him this way.
Starved. Chained. Bleeding. Powerless.
The version of himself Garrett still feared lived somewhere beneath all the healing. Leviathan hadn't created her Mate's fear or guilt, but he knew exactly where those wounds were. He'd spent years carving them deeper.
And he was putting every one of them on display.
Waiting. Watching her.
Sydney didn't know exactly what Leviathan expected her reaction to accomplish. But she knew what he wanted to see.
Horror. Pity. Doubt.
He wasn't getting a damned one of them.
A shadow coalesced in the green smoke beside the table. A tall, elegant figure with eyes like burning emerald fire and a sickening, triumphant smile that gave an aura of narcissism and rotting flesh.
"You wanted your Dragon back, Special One," Leviathan purred, his long, black-glass nails tapping rhythmically against the rusted iron of the table. "Here he is. This is the man beneath all that borrowed courage. This is the hollow shell you choose to anchor your soul to."
Sydney looked at the chained, bleeding form of her Mate. She looked at the emerald fire of the Demon Lord.
And… She laughed.
The clear, sharp sound echoed off the rusted metal and stone. It sliced through the room's heavy, oppressive malice like a silver blade. It was the perfect ‘slap to the face’ Sydney had hoped it would be.
Leviathan’s smooth amusement instantly faded. His emerald eyes narrowed into a cold, dangerous slit. “You find his suffering amusing, girl?”
"No," Sydney said, stepping across the threshold into the room, her boots steady against the concrete.
Her White Dragon Magic flared around her hands, not in a defensive shield, but in a blinding, aggressive aura of absolute certainty.
"I find you hilarious. You spent years torturing him, analyzing his biology, building a road through his mind...
and you really don't understand him at all. "
She didn't look at the chains, and she didn't look at the blood. She walked directly toward the restraint table. Her eyes locked entirely on the flickering lavender of her Mate's gaze and nowhere else.
"Syd," Garrett choked out, his cracked lips barely moving as he stared at her through the green smoke. The hollow look in his eyes fractured, replaced by a sudden, spiking terror as he truly realized she was standing inside the belly of the beast. "Get out. You have to leave. Now."
"No," Sydney said smoothly, the heels of her boots clicking against the concrete as she closed the distance.