Chapter 26
AMARIA
Dreadscale had claimed a side vault for our sessions—low-ceilinged, deep enough that the noise from the main chamber dulled to a murmur. A single torch burned in a wall bracket, its flame leaning sideways with the draft, more smoke than light.
I was sprawled on the floor. Flat on my back, breast heaving, sweat dripping into my eyes.
"Get up," Dreadscale said.
"Give me a minute."
"You don't have a minute." His voice scraped like bone on stone. "You have a vault waiting. A Codex that won't care if you're tired."
I wiped blood from my lip with the back of my hand—bit my tongue again, apparently—and glared up at him. "I'm pushing as hard as I can. Any harder and something breaks."
"Something always breaks at nineteen." He stepped closer, his shadow swallowing what little light reached this corner. "Same number. Every time. That's not your limit. That's your choice."
I ground my teeth together.
"I'm not holding back—"
"You are." His dark eyes pinned me. "The moment it starts to hurt, you let it shatter. You'd rather take the backlash than lose control."
"Then we have a problem." I spat red onto the stone. "Because I don't know how not to."
His expression hardened.
"Then I'll show you."
Before I could pull back, his hand locked around my forearm.
The dragon flashed. Ember-orange light erupted across his body, and a tether snagged behind my sternum, locking his Mirrorheart to my marks like a chain I hadn’t asked for.
"What are you—"
"I've linked the resonance." His voice was calm. Too calm. "If you break the fusion this time, the backlash doesn't hit you. It hits me."
My blood dropped ten degrees. "No. Unlink it. Now."
"Begin."
"Dreadscale, I'm unstable—I'll tear you apart—"
"Then don't be unstable." His grip hardened. "You claim you're ready to lead? To heal the Veil? Prove you can hold your power when someone else pays the price."
"This is insane—"
He pulsed his magic.
My marks exploded without permission—Light blazing and Shadow clawing. They collided, wild and jagged because he was in the line of fire and I couldn't—
"Focus."
I scrambled to catch the surge. Don't hurt him. Don't you dare—
One heartbeat. Two. Three.
The fusion caught, but it was rough. Unstable. Fear made everything volatile, harder to hold. My hands shook.
Ten. Eleven. Twelve.
The Shadow bucked against the Light, straining to break free. Usually I'd let it. Take the hit. Walk it off.
Then I saw the blood.
Thin and dark, trickling from Dreadscale's nose in a slow, deliberate line.
Fifteen. Sixteen.
He didn't flinch. Didn't make a sound. But the dragon tattooed across his chest was writhing now, scales lifting and convulsing. He was absorbing it. Every wobble in my control, every slip—he was taking the damage I should be feeling.
Stop. Let it go.
"Hold it." His voice came rough, strained in a way I'd never heard from him.
Nineteen. Twenty.
I pitched forward. The Shadow surged—a tidal wave trying to drown the Light—and Dreadscale hissed, his head snapping back, tendons standing out in his neck like ropes.
I'm killing him.
"Surrender," he wheezed.
The word didn't make sense. Surrender what? The fight? The fusion? My gods-damned pride?
“Stop fighting it."
And then—like a door opening in a room I'd been locked out of—I understood.
It wasn't the Shadow I was fighting. It was the part of me that would rather shatter than let someone else bleed for my failure. Every time I hit nineteen, I chose the hit. Chose to be the one who broke. Because breaking was easier than trusting myself not to destroy the person standing next to me.
Dreadscale's blood was on his lip and his knees were locked and he hadn't moved.
He's not leaving. So stop making him carry what you won't hold.
Twenty. Twenty-one.
The marks didn't wait to be called. They rose together—not Light first, not Shadow first. Both at once, tangled at the root, like they'd always been one thing and I'd been the only one insisting they weren't.
Twenty-five.
Dreadscale's breathing eased. The blood stopped.
Twenty-six. Twenty-seven.
It didn't feel like battle anymore, didn't feel like forcing two halves together until they screamed. It felt like breathing, like my heart finding a rhythm it had been searching for.
Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty.
I held it one second longer. Just to be sure. Just to know I could.
Then I let it unravel and the tether snapped.
I slumped against the wall, gasping, every muscle in my body suddenly made of water. Dreadscale stayed kneeling, head bowed, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
When he looked up, his eyes had softened, just a fraction.
"Thirty," he said.
I couldn't stop looking at the blood on his hand. At the proof of what I'd almost done. My throat closed around words I didn't have.
"You're a lunatic."
"And you—" He rose slowly. "—are ready."
Ready. The word should have felt like victory. Instead, it felt like the air before a storm breaks.
"Tomorrow." He turned toward the tunnel, the dragon on his back already fading back to ink. "Get some rest. You'll need it."
I stayed on the floor, lungs wringing themselves dry. The only way I'd learned to hold my power was by making it someone else's life on the line. That should have horrified me. It just made me tired.