Chapter 7 #4
The knife cuts into my forearm with surgical precision. Pain blooms sharp and immediate, different from any cut I've felt before. It burns as much as it stings, like the blade carries heat that sears the wound even as it opens flesh.
Blood wells from the cut, darker than it should be in the firelight. Mikhail guides my arm over the ritual basin, angling it so gravity pulls the blood downward in a steady drip. Each drop hits the stone with a sound like water on hot metal, hissing and steaming before sinking into the basin.
He murmurs words in a language I don't recognize. The syllables feel wrong, shaped for throats that aren't quite human, carrying harmonics that make my teeth ache.
The symbols around the circle begin to glow. Faint at first, then brighter, pulsing in rhythm with my heartbeat. I can feel it in my chest, the synchronization, like something external is matching the rhythm of my pulse and pulling it into alignment with whatever magic he's invoking.
The air thickens. It's not just metaphor. The atmosphere becomes denser, pressing against my skin with actual physical weight. Breathing takes effort. Each inhale drags something thicker than air into my lungs, something that tastes like copper and ozone and old smoke.
Temperature rises. The cave was cold when I woke, damp stone leaching heat from my body. Now warmth radiates from the carved circle, building with every drop. Sweat beads on my forehead despite the pain, despite the fear.
The blood in the basin isn't pooling. It's disappearing, absorbed into the stone the way Mikhail's blood was absorbed earlier. The symbols grow brighter, like they're being fed, powered, activated by something in my blood specifically.
"He'll feel this." Mikhail's voice carries satisfaction as he watches blood drip into the basin. "The bond will pull him here faster than wings can carry him. He'll sense your pain, your fear, and every protective instinct bred into dragons over eons will drive him straight into my trap."
I want to scream a warning. Want to tell Finn to stay away, that it's a trap, that saving me will cost him everything. But my voice won't work. The air is too thick, something pressing too hard against my chest, stealing breath before words can form.
All I can do is watch my blood disappear into stone while symbols glow brighter and thunder rolls across the sky outside.
"You'll watch him die." Mikhail's eyes burn brighter as the ritual builds momentum. "And in his last moments, he'll understand I was right all along."
"He'll kill you." The words scrape past my throat, defiant despite everything.
"He'll try." Mikhail releases my arm and steps back, watching the ritual circle flare brighter with each drop of blood that falls. "But he's tried before, and I'm still here. Still waiting. Still working toward the moment when he finally understands what I've always known."
Thunder rolls across the sky outside the cave.
Not normal thunder. This sound shakes the stone foundations beneath me, rattles my teeth in their sockets, reverberates through bone with a depth no natural storm could produce.
Wind screams past the entrance, carrying salt spray and the sharp scent of ozone that precedes lightning.
Mikhail's expression changes to something that might be anticipation. His eyes track movement I can't see yet, following something approaching from the storm.
"Right on schedule."
I turn my head toward the cave entrance, ignoring the pain in my arm and the blood still dripping into the basin. Through the opening, storm clouds gather with unnatural speed. They don't roll in from the horizon. They materialize, condensing from clear sky into roiling darkness in seconds.
Lightning cracks across the sky in patterns too regular to be random. Once. Twice. Three times in perfect interval, illuminating something massive diving through the clouds.
Wings. Crimson scales catch lightning like they're made of fire themselves, each bolt highlighting the terrible beauty of a creature that shouldn't exist. The wingspan defies physics, wider than any aircraft I've studied, membrane stretched between bones thick as tree trunks.
Claws extend from massive feet, each talon the length of my arm, designed to rend and tear.
The dragon's head is all sharp angles and predator focus, eyes that glow even from this distance, locked on the cave entrance with single-minded intensity.
Relief floods through me so fierce it's painful. Finn. He came for me. He's going to save me.
Then terror crashes over the relief like a wave.
He's flying straight into a trap. Mikhail planned this, prepared for this, built everything around this exact moment.
The blood in the basin, the symbols glowing brighter with every second, the positioning of the cave—it's all designed to capture a dragon. To drain him. To kill him.
I strain against the ropes, ignoring the pain as they cut deeper into my wrists.
My voice won't work but I try anyway, forcing air past my constricted throat in a soundless scream.
Warning him. Begging him to turn back. Anything to make him understand he can't come here, can't try to rescue me, can't walk into Mikhail's carefully constructed death.
But the dragon doesn't hesitate. Doesn't slow. He folds his wings and dives toward the cave entrance with the inevitability of a storm breaking against the cliffs.
Finn.
The storm isn't approaching—he's bringing it with him.