Chapter 20 Vaelrik
TWENTY
VAELRIK
Water dripped down Vaelrik’s skin as he helped Serenya step out of the shower, his hands steady on her waist as she found her footing on the heated stone floor.
He could hardly believe she’d been ready—truly ready—to accept his full mate mark.
His Obsidian sigil now burned complete across her heart, wings and thorns etched in permanent possession, and his dragon hummed with satisfaction deep in his chest.
Mine. Finally, completely mine.
He reached for a towel, wrapping it around her shoulders with a reverence that bordered on worship, then grabbed another for himself.
As he dried the water from his chest, muscle memory kicked in—that old reflex he’d been performing for over a century, the cautious testing of his restraint to his shadowfire.
The curse’s power rose in his chest without conscious thought.
And stopped him cold.
It wasn’t frantic. Wasn’t hungry. No desperate clawing at his ribs demanding more, more, more. The shadowfire simply... was. Sharp, balanced, responsive. Waiting for his intent like a blade perfectly weighted in his hand.
“Vaelrik?” Serenya’s voice cut through his shock. “What is it?”
He pressed a hand to his sternum, his eyes wide with disbelief. “The curse.” His voice came out rough, barely a whisper. “It’s different.”
She stepped closer, her green eyes searching his face. “What do you mean?”
“Not the cold dragonfire—that’s still mine. But the chaotic element, the hunger...” He tested the curse’s power again, feeling it rise clean and controlled. “My dragon is balanced. Sharper than before. No more haze, no more constant need for restraint.”
The completed mate bond hummed, pulsing with her heartbeat, and that’s when he felt it—strength flowing through him like he hadn’t experienced since before the Siege of Vornak. Before the Shadow Sovereign’s fragment had lodged itself in his soul like a parasite.
The Shadowbinder cannot bend me again, he realized with crystalline certainty. And that changed everything.
“We need to move,” Serenya said, already reaching for her clothes, her curse scholar’s mind clearly spinning with implications. “If you’re free of the curse’s hold, if the Shadowbinder lost his grip on you—”
“He’ll be desperate,” Vaelrik finished, pulling on his trousers with predatory efficiency. “Desperate creatures make mistakes.”
They dressed quickly, the urgency of the moment sharpening their movements. Serenya’s full mate mark glowed faintly through the thin fabric of her shirt, and Vaelrik couldn’t resist the possessive satisfaction that sight brought him.
She was his. Marked. Claimed. And powerful enough to stand beside him in whatever came next.
“Where are Kyr and Tamsin?” Serenya asked, braiding her dark red hair with practiced speed.
“His quarters, I’m sure of it. Let’s go.”
They soon found Kyr sitting at his small table with little Tamsin perched on his knee, the child’s flaxen hair catching the lamplight as she traced patterns on a piece of parchment.
The girl looked up when they entered, her gray-blue eyes bright and knowing in a way that caused Vaelrik’s chest to tighten.
“You fixed him,” Tamsin said simply, looking at Serenya with complete certainty. “The cold fire doesn’t hurt him anymore.”
Kyr’s slate-gray eyes flicked between them, taking in their changed appearance—the way they moved in sync now.
His scarred mouth quirked slightly. “I take it the mating went well?”
“The curse is finally balanced,” Vaelrik said without preamble, settling into the chair across from his second.
Kyr went very still. “Impossible.”
“The completed mate bond rewrote his dragonfire,” Serenya explained, moving to stand behind Vaelrik’s chair, her hand finding his shoulder in an unconscious gesture of connection. “His dragon accepted my light and used it to burn out the corruption.”
“Which means,” Vaelrik continued, his voice taking on the tone of command Kyr knew well, “the Shadowbinder’s lost his primary weapon. He can’t use me against the realm anymore.”
Kyr’s eyes sharpened with understanding. “So we strike now. Before he regroups.”
“Exactly.” Vaelrik leaned forward, every inch the warlord he’d been born to be. “We return to the Gloam today. Before the Shadow Sovereign can rebuild his foothold.”
Tamsin’s small voice cut through their planning. “I have to come too.”
The three adults went silent. The child’s expression was serene, but there was steel underneath—the kind of quiet determination that reminded Vaelrik uncomfortably of Serenya.
“Absolutely not,” Kyr said immediately. “You’re a child—”
“I’m the song,” Tamsin interrupted, her voice carrying an odd resonance that made the air shimmer slightly. “The one that makes the shadows stop. You need me.”
Serenya crouched beside the girl, her expression gentle but serious. “Tamsin, it’s going to be very dangerous—”
“More dangerous if I stay here,” the child said with eerie calm. “The bad man knows about me now. He’ll come back for me.”
Vaelrik felt the truth of that settle in his bones. The Shadowbinder had seen what the girl’s corrected lullaby could do to his creatures. He would indeed come for her, and the Citadel couldn’t protect her from something that could tear holes in reality itself.
“She comes,” he decided, ignoring Kyr’s sharp intake of breath. “But she stays with you at all times.”
Kyr’s jaw worked for a moment before he nodded grimly. “Understood.”
Within the hour, they stood outside the Citadel walls under a sky that still bore traces of the morning’s unnatural darkness. The air tasted of ash and possibility, and Vaelrik felt his dragon stirring beneath his skin—not with hunger or desperation, but with purpose.
“Dragon forms,” he said simply. “It’s faster.”
The shift came easier than it had in decades, his bones reshaping without the usual resistance, and his scales erupting in a flood of obsidian brilliance.
When he rose on his hind legs, wings spread wide, he felt the difference immediately.
No fighting for control. No wrestling with competing instincts.
Just power. Clean and absolute.
Kyr shifted beside him—smoky-black scales edged with cobalt, storm-fire crackling along his smaller but more agile frame. He gathered Tamsin carefully in his claws, the child showing no fear as she settled against his scaled chest.
Serenya approached Vaelrik’s lowered neck with easy confidence, swinging up to settle behind his neck ridges. Her hands found purchase on his scales, and the sensation of her touch threaded through his veins like liquid fire.
Ready? he asked through the mate connection only she could hear.
Let’s end this, came her fierce reply.
They launched into the sky as one, Kyr taking point while Vaelrik’s massive wings carved through the clouds like obsidian knives. Serenya’s warmth pressed against his neck ridges, her presence steadying him and keeping his shadowfire perfectly balanced.
And from Kyr’s claws, Tamsin’s pure voice rose in her corrected lullaby—notes that resonated in Vaelrik’s sternum like ancient truth, like salvation made audible. The sound alone convinced him that peace could be restored to the Ashen Realms.
This time, we don’t go to survive, Vaelrik thought as the Gloam’s jagged horizon came into view ahead. We go to end it.
The twisted landscape spread below them like a wound in the world—barren, warped, and pulsing with malevolent energy. But for the very first time since he’d been cursed, Vaelrik felt no answering hunger from within his own chest.
Only fierce determination and the absolute certainty that the Shadowbinder’s reign of terror ended today.
Vaelrik’s massive obsidian wings cut through air that tasted of copper and ancient rot, his dragon form carrying Serenya with predatory grace while Kyr’s smaller but more agile frame cradled Tamsin in protective claws.
The child’s voice rose in her pure lullaby, each note creating ripples of clean sound that made the corrupted atmosphere recoil.
This place remembers pain, Vaelrik thought as they descended.
The Gloam’s rift yawned open like a mouth waiting to swallow them—reality bending in ways that made his dragon’s instincts scream warnings. But his shadowfire remained steady and controlled.
They landed at the rift’s edge with bone-jarring impact. The ground beneath his claws felt wrong—too cold, pulsing with malevolent life. Vaelrik kept his dragon form, knowing they’d need his full power for what waited below.
Tamsin’s small voice carried across the warped air. “The bad man is here. Down in the dark place where the songs get twisted.”
The Shadow Sovereign’s presence pulsed beneath the surface like a buried heart, watching, waiting, hungering. Vaelrik felt the ancient entity’s attention focus on him with predatory interest—testing the edges of his curse, probing for weakness.
You no longer own me, he projected into the void. Then, he turned his massive head toward Kyr.
We do this once, he sent to Kyr through their mental link. We do it right.
Kyr’s storm-fire crackled along his cobalt-streaked scales in acknowledgment. Serenya’s hand pressed against Vaelrik’s neck ridges, her warmth flooding through him like liquid starlight.
Then, they descended into the rift.
Reality warped around them as they navigated the twisted passages—gravity shifting, perspective bending, the very air seeming to fold in on itself.
Vaelrik’s dragon form moved with calculated precision, each step deliberate despite the disorienting magic that tried to confuse his senses.
Serenya’s lumen sigils flared beneath her skin, creating pockets of stable reality that guided their path.
The heart of the rift soon opened before them like a cathedral built from nightmares. Blood-fed curse sigils covered every surface, pulsing with sickly light. Dragon blood channels carved into obsidian stone trembled with contained power, feeding the runes that held reality hostage.