Chapter Twenty-One
A PAIR OF deep green eyes bore into mine as I open them. Zhoric tenses, his form frozen with his head propped on his fist as he lies in bed beside me, his face awash in the early morning rays of dawn. Dawn? That can’t be right.
“You’re awake,” he says, voice low and gravelly, a hint of surprise buried in his words. I flit my gaze down, noting the smooth plane of his chest and torso, the black god scale glittering in the light. I shoot upright. He rises slowly, as if a sudden movement from him might startle me further.
I chance a look out the windows, the morning’s early light is no mistake, no trick of my eye. If I’m here in this form, then I’m still a dragon back in the Realm. Though I don’t need to wipe sleep from my face in this form, I press my fingers deep into my eye sockets all the same.
“Why haven’t you shifted and left?” he asks.
I drop my hands heavily into my lap and tilt my head, annoyed instantly at his question.
A smile threatens the lines of his mouth. “Not much of a morning person?”
“For someone who hates having questions asked of him, you’re certainly the curious one in the morning.”
He ignores that. “You must be more powerful than I thought to have overcome this aspect of the curse so quickly.”
Immediately the conversation I heard between Kalixta and Thrace comes rushing back to me.
They feared that Zhoric might bond with someone strong if he thought it would help him keep the upper hand against the elites.
Even though it’s precisely what I offered him, it didn’t seem to truly interest him.
Until now. “Does that help in your consideration of my offer?” I hedge.
Zhoric lowers head, like he’s about to let me in on a secret. “Of course it does.”
I clench my teeth and slowly swivel my head away from him so he doesn’t see the panic etched on my face.
“Regretting your little proposal now?” he asks.
“Not if it means I get to be with my sister again.”
His brows twitch together. “You do know you’re risking your life by entering such a bargain. What if I don’t uphold my end of the deal? What if I bond with you, use your power, lock you up, and let you waste away?”
The gallop in my chest begins again and I swallow past it. “You won’t.”
“How do you know?”
I said what I did to throw him off, but deep down, there’s a quiet truth inside that slips out as a whisper. “I know my heart. In this world or any other, it wouldn’t reach out to someone like that.”
Zhoric swallows hard. “I once thought that, too.”
As soon as the words leave his lips, I know what I’ve said to wound him and I regret it immediately. “Zhoric, I didn’t mean—”
He lifts a hand to cut me off and I let him, before any more damning words can leave my mouth, before any more emotions can churn around him and this bond between us. “For all I did after her, I’ve shown the kind of person I truly am.”
I open my mouth to say more, but then I’m lurching backwards, as if pulled on an invisible thread knotted around my middle, and I’m gasping and sputtering water from my mouth, blinking my eyes open.
Sunlight blinds me and I squint and turn away, rolling on the ground, grit sticking to my skin. I lift my head and find Ozias, Atlanta, and Ninon all hovering over me, an empty pail dripping water held loosely in Ninon’s hands.
“What was that for?” I demand.
Ozias kneels in front of me and grasps my arms to help me up. “You weren’t shifting or waking up.”
“You weren’t responding at all,” Atlanta elaborates. “What happened?”
I exchange a quick glance with Ozias. He shakes his head almost imperceptibly. What I learned last night comes barreling back to me. Ozias wants me to keep mind walking to Zhoric from Atlanta, but I don’t know if that’s an option anymore.
I sigh, push myself up, and run my hands up my face and into my hair. “I need a minute.”
Stalking past them, I leave the enclosure and head for my room in the Alcazar. I hear steps behind me, soft and distant, the speed matching mine. When we reach my door, I spin around to face Ninon.
“Was the water your idea?”
She stops, standing as still as a tree. “Less so an idea than an impulse. When they couldn’t wake you, I panicked.”
I purse my lips and she walks past me into my room without further acknowledgement or explanation.
“You haven’t done much in here,” Ninon murmurs, meandering around my space. We haven’t had time to visit each other’s rooms. Something we used to do daily, usually multiple times, at home in Nevoba.
“You’ve decorated yours?”
Ninon runs her fingers along the edge of my bedside table, clear of anything save a candle in its holder. “With a few things.”
I look around, seeing what she does. A room set up exactly the same as the day Atlanta brought me to it. Ninon on the other hand sounds like she’s started to make this her home. I walk over to the dressing table and sit, considering my reflection in the looking glass.
Weariness shadows my eyes, but that familiar spark of outrage is etched everywhere that the shadows don’t touch.
Every choice, from the moment I ran that pin through Alixor’s chest, to agreeing to work with Ozias, to attempting to con the dragon king into bonding with me, makes me feel like I’ve been stuffed into a cave, like a tiny lizard avoiding the scorching sun.
I run my fingers through my hair, long, straight, and unbound, black as the ocean at night.
I grip a lock of it firmly by my collarbone and rummage through the vanity before finding what I seek.
Without another thought, I grab a set of shears and poise it over my throat. From Ninon’s position, it looks as if I’m ready to slice into my skin.
“Kaisa?” she says my name tentatively, standing utterly still as she takes me in.
Keeping my eyes on her, I slice off a chunk of hair above my shoulder.
The freshly cut hair falls to the ground in a tangled heap at my feet.
I grab another section, and cut again, repeating the process until my hair is a jagged, uneven mess.
All the while Ninon watches. My reflection is feral and feverish.
I lower the shears, tears welling in my eyes.
She huffs out a breath and comes to my side. “Let me help you clean it up.”
Ninon does her best to even out the ends. Every so often, she gently runs her fingers down the lengths, soothing my mind with every stroke of her hand.
When she’s done, I shake my head, feeling lighter and, somehow, much more in control.
“Needed a change?” she finally asks.
Frowning I catch her eyes with mine in the looking glass. “I needed to make a decision that doesn’t have my life or the life of those I love hanging in the balance.”
Ninon sets down the shears and feathers off the cut hair from my clothes. “Your burden is a heavy one.”
She knows as well as I do that when I’ve committed to something, I will see it through to the end.
So, she doesn’t make excuses for me. She doesn’t tell me to bow out.
She doesn’t say anything at all, instead she lets me sit with this feeling, allowing it to consume me, with her there as my support.
I lean back against her torso and her arms drape over my shoulders, crossed over my chest.
“Do you think I’ll succeed?” I ask, looking up at her from under the fan of my dark lashes in the mirror’s reflection.
“I know you can do anything. You always have, and you always will.”
“This isn’t like anything I’ve faced before.” I twist in my seat and she loosens her hold on me. “We hardly know the interworking of this world.”
“You feel it though, don’t you?”
I don’t have to ask her to clarify—I know what she means.
I feel the rightness of this world in my very essence.
I nod until my head falls and I’m staring down into my lap, the tiny black hairs from the cut sprinkled across the back of my hands.
“I’ve been seeing Zhoric—the Sar Dyēus—at night,” I admit to her.
Telling Ozias has been helpful, but it hasn’t felt like a weight has truly lifted from my shoulders.
“Mind walking.” She says it like a statement and I feel her gaze hot on the back of my neck.
I nod.
“Are you planning to tell anyone else?” she asks.
“Ozias knows. But otherwise, no.” I life my head, meeting her gaze again. “I offered Zhoric to bond with me. I was afraid of trying to force the bond on him and it not working.”
She’s silent at first, analyzing the risk I’ve put myself in. “And what did he say? To your offer?”
“He’s still considering. But I think if he does…it’s because he plans to use me.”
Ninon is quiet. Not because she has nothing to say, but because she is thinking so deeply for the words to express what she wants, in exactly the right way. “Does that bother you?”
I tip my head until it rests against her.
I close my eyes. “I’m afraid, Ninon. I’m so afraid that all of this will go wrong and that he will have me in his grasp to use my power how he wishes and make everything worse.
I’m frightened that he’ll…” I swallow down the emotion clawing its way up my throat “…that he’ll take being draconem away again and I’ll be imprisoned in the sky kingdom forever. ”
Ninon bends at the waist and wraps her arms tight around me, tucking her face next to mine.
“You have the strength of the Realm behind you. You have the power of our people lying in wait for you to call upon. Don’t let go of that, even if it comes to this.
Even if he seals your draconem, she’s still inside you and a part of you.
He cannot take from you what you already know. ”
I squeeze her arms and hold on until the tension drops from my shoulders and the panic that wound its way around my nerves loosens thread by thread.
“How are you feeling?” I ask her.
Ninon stands and lets her hands slide to my shoulders where she gives me a pat. “Good. I’m going to rest today so we can try flying tonight.”