Chapter 19
ESME
Dayn and I stand perched on a narrow, windswept ridge overlooking a valley that seems carved from a different era.
The village of Oakhaven sits nestled in the center.
It’s rustic. Stone cottages with thatched roofs, smoke curling lazily from chimneys, and narrow cobblestone streets that wind between the buildings.
It looks peaceful, almost aggressively so.
There are no magical wards shimmering in the air, no tension of impending war.
Just the sound of a distant goat-bell and the smell of roasting grain.
“So,” I say, pulling my jacket tighter around my shoulders. We’ve portaled here from Dayn’s library, and the air up here feels even colder than at Sarkusen. “We’re here to get nostalgic about your childhood toys?”
I scan the quaint village below us. It looks utterly mundane, which in my experience usually means there's something deeply unsettling lurking beneath the surface.
Dayn doesn’t look away from the village below, his profile sharp against the biting wind.
“The wooden bird is only half the equation. It’s your anchor, your baseline.
But a bridge requires two supports. To retune your soul to my frequency, I need a tether of my own, something that resonates with the core of me. ”
I shift my weight. “So, what? A favorite blankie? A dragon-scale teddy bear?”
A ghost of a smirk tugs at his mouth. “It’d best be an object from my childhood, held when my fire was still new and my world was small. The retuning ritual requires symmetry. I’m not exactly sure what we’ll find here now, but… unlikely those.”
“Right. Symmetry… Why’s that word familiar?” I let my rhetorical question hang as I look back at the quaint stone cottages. “So this ‘object’ just happens to be hidden in this village? This place looks entirely human.”
His eyes narrow slightly. “Somewhere around it. These mountains were once Draethnar, the famous eastern heart of the dragon kingdom. Where I grew up, before the exodus. I’ve come back a few times since, just to look at it.”
I blink, taking in the scene with new eyes. It's hard to imagine that these rolling hills and charming stone cottages were once the domain of royal fire-breathers.
“The problem is,” Dayn says, turning to me and pinning me with his amber eyes, “when the dragons left, we shifted the mountain’s geography.
We bent the ley lines and folded the stone to hide the entrances to the kingdom.
The landmarks I remember—the jagged peak that pointed to the sun, the river that flowed toward the dawn—they’ve been rearranged.
The mountain has forgotten the shape I knew. ”
I raise an eyebrow. “So, translated into human speech: we’re lost?”
“We aren’t lost. We’re just… looking for a different map,” he counters, stepping closer until his heat buffers the wind.
“The humans who settled here used the stone they found. They didn’t understand the marks carved into the granite, but they liked the symmetry.
We need to find the dragon runes hidden in the town’s architecture.
A lintel over a doorway, a cornerstone of a well—the markers for the entrances will be hiding in plain sight, woven into the village by people who thought they were just using recycled rock. ”
I look at the village again, the analytical part of my brain already beginning to scan the distant shapes. “Runes as masonry. Hidden in the mundane. It’s almost poetic, Dayn. Also, highly annoying.”
“Then it’s a perfect fit for us,” he says. He offers his hand, his eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that makes the ‘numbness’ in my chest throb with a sudden, unwanted life. “Ready for a stroll, witch? I hear the architecture in Oakhaven is to die for.”
“Try not to dismember any architects,” I mutter, as we arrive at the village’s entrance. “I’d prefer to keep the casualties to a minimum this morning.”
He shrugs slightly. “No promises.”
Oakhaven smells like damp wool, baking bread, and the kind of aggressive normalcy that makes my skin itch. After the nightmare of the last forty-eight hours, the sight of a middle-aged man in a flat cap chasing a runaway goose feels like a hallucination.
“Stick to the perimeter of the buildings,” Dayn murmurs, his voice dropping into that low, velvet register that seems to vibrate specifically against my ribcage.
“And keep your eyes on the stone. Look for the Khar-Ryn—the foundational script. It’ll look like three intersecting triangles, likely disguised as a decorative flourish. ”
Right. Thanks for the weirdly specific guidance.
We move into the heart of the village, a pair of strangers who look about as well-integrated as a couple of wolves at a sheepdog show.
Dayn stands feet taller than most of the locals, his predatory demeanor barely contained by his linen tunic, and I’m trailing behind him with my hand perpetually ghosting toward a dagger.
I’ve no guarantee we won’t run into more clearbloods.
“There,” I whisper, nodding toward a small, squat building that looks like a communal laundry. The lintel over the door is made of heavy granite, weathered and gray, but one corner looks too clean, the angle too precise. “That edge. Is that a triangle or just a very specific chip?”
“A chip, dear,” he says, not even bothering to follow my gaze. “A thoroughly mundane, entirely non-magical chip.”
I shove him in the shoulder.
We continue our slow circuit of the village square. A woman hanging laundry over a balcony pauses, her clothespins suspended in mid-air as she watches us. A group of old men sitting on a bench near the village well stop their murmuring, their weathered faces turning in unison.
“Morning!” one of them calls out. “You folks lost? The hiking trail to the summit is two miles back that way.”
“Not lost, according to him,” I tell them, rolling my eyes.
They grin at that. The woman's laugh carries down from her balcony. “Typical. A man never admits he’s lost.”
Especially not this one.
I steal a glance at Dayn and find him already watching me, though it’s not with annoyance. More like… appreciation. I frown, feeling a flush in my cheeks at his attention despite myself.
“What’re you looking at?” I murmur.
“Your expression,” Dayn replies, after a beat. He continues walking. “Stop looking like you’re about to assassinate the baker.”
“I am a Salem, Dayn. This is just my face,” I retort, though I consciously relax my shoulders. “Besides, if I were going to assassinate anyone, it would be the guy over there staring at your boots… I think he’s trying to figure out if they’re made of a protected species.”
Dayn glances down at his dark hide boots—which are I suspect, in fact, made of a species that hasn't existed in the human world for at least three centuries—then back at me. “Why would that make you want to assassinate him?”
I feel the heat of his gaze, sudden and heavy.
I reply with a shrug. “Guess I just don’t like people staring at my assets.”
The words are out before I can reconsider them.
Dayn stops walking, forcing me to stall alongside a stone wall overgrown with thick, ancient ivy.
“Assets?” he echoes. “Is that what I am to you, Esme—an asset? Since when?”
He takes a slow step into my space.
My back presses against the ivy-covered stone, the cool leaves a sharp contrast to the heat of his presence.
I roll my eyes. “It’s a figure of speech, Dayn. You’re a resource. A... highly volatile, occasionally useful tool in the current geopolitical climate.”
“A tool,” he muses. He casually leans one hand against the wall beside my head, trapping me between the mountain’s architecture and his enveloping frame.
Then his voice drops. “You know, you’re much more honest when you dream, Esme.
You didn't seem to think of me as a 'resource' then. You were saying my name like it was the only thing keeping you from shattering. That said… I don’t mind being your tool.”
My breath hitches, my gaze flicking to the hollow of his throat where his pulse beats with a heavy, draconic rhythm. “Dreaming?” I repeat, my brow furrowing. “What do you mean? I haven't had a peaceful night’s sleep since I left for Heathborne.”
Is it possible I’ve been dreaming about him and… saying his name in my sleep?
He doesn't move an inch. He stays anchored in my space, his gaze dropping to my lips with a weight that makes my pulse trip.
“Even with Esther’s block, your body resonates with mine in ways logic can't fathom. Some memories are written in the blood, not the brain, and they need to be rediscovered as such. You'll find them again. Or perhaps, they'll find you.”
I’m frozen in the charged silence that follows his words.
I search his eyes for any hint of joke or taunt, but all I find is that molten, possessive gold.
My skin feels like it's on fire, a localized fever blooming wherever he’s close.
I’m confused, frustrated by the apparent gaps in my memory that he seems to be filling with riddles, but more than that, I’m.
.. more than flustered. My heartbeat is a riotous thing, slamming against my ribs in a rhythm that feels even more violent than the one we shared in the mountain vault.
He suddenly pulls back, the cold mountain air rushing into the space he vacated like a bucket of ice water. I feel suddenly bare, craving his heat again.
“You're watching my every move, worrying about who’s looking at me, and claiming ownership in the middle of a village square.” He tuts, turning back to face the road. “If I didn't know better, I’d say you were finally admitting to wanting me.”
My face flushes hot.
“I want a nap and my own magical soul-frequency,” I can’t help retorting, though my pulse is still trying to exit through my throat. “Anything else is a figment of your… overactive ego.”
“Is it?” I hear the smirk on his lips. “Because your heart, as usual, is telling a very different story against your ribs. And I’ve always been a fan of the truth, even when it’s inconvenient for you.”
He glances back just long enough to catch my gaze, a dark, intent look in his eyes. “We should keep looking for the runes, Esme. But try not to get too distracted by the scenery. I’d hate to think I’m making it impossible for you to focus.”
He turns and continues walking, while I’m left standing there frozen, my lungs burning, and I have to literally force my feet to move.