Chapter 16
Everything goes quiet. The air is cold and still around me. I try reaching for the flame in my heart, but something feels off. Disconnected.
“Stop hiding behind your shadows and face me!” I yell into the void.
There’s no answer. No movement. Just silence.
A chill shoots through my body, sending me to my knees. A second later, it feels like my skin is crawling. Every hair on my arms stands up as the feeling grows. It feels foreign, like it doesn’t belong. It feels wrong.
“NO!” I shout as I shoot up from the ground.
I realize now what he’s trying to do, and I won’t allow it. He doesn’t get to use me. He doesn’t get to use my power.
Anger and panic tear through me like a storm blowing through a forest. No thoughts, only emotions come rushing to the surface, bringing my magic along with them. Whatever blockade had been disconnecting me from my flame only moments ago has been completely obliterated.
Now there’s a direct path between me and the power coursing through my veins. The unwelcome feeling crawling under my skin dissipates with each passing second. I won’t be his weapon this time.
Heat rises within me, covering me like a shield of armor. I can feel the king’s magic fighting back, knocking against my mind, looking for a way in. Intense pressure wraps around me as if it’s trying to crush me.
I know what I have to do.
Despite being surrounded by a sea of darkness, I close my eyes, taking myself to the place in my mind I like to keep locked away.
For so long I’ve done everything I possibly can to push the memories and feelings down, but now I need to feel it all.
More than I ever have before. It’s the only way to access the amount of power I need to keep the king from making me a prisoner in my own body.
Slowly, I turn the key in the lock until it clicks. I wait one last second, preparing myself for what pain hides behind this door in my mind. As I reach for the knob, a burst of magic sends the door flying open, and every memory I had kept at bay comes rushing forward.
Blurs of images from my past swirl around me, filling the empty black space. Echoes of cries and screams ring out as the memories begin to slow.
Fragments of my mother’s face appear before me.
She looks so different from the images the Oracle showed me.
Tears roll down her pale, worn face as she presses her cold lips against my small hand.
My father gently strokes her chestnut hair before leaning his forehead on hers as she takes her last breath.
My father’s heartbreaking cries surround me as he buries his face in her hair.
The image fades away like smoke in the wind. Again, the tornado of memories spins around me, slowing with the images of my father being taken by the Royal Guards. Rage instantly flares as I watch his feet drag along the dirt path just outside of the place I once called home.
One by one, visions of Atlas, Meeka, and Agatha flash before me, bringing the pain of their losses with them.
It feels like my heart is shattering into a million pieces as each memory plays back.
The dungeons, the torture, the executions, the bombings, the betrayals, the deaths.
Each one hits me with a force strong enough to send me into oblivion.
The fire inside of me rages wildly, demanding to be unleashed. I cling to each painful memory, each heartbreak, allowing them to consume me. They circle around me, encompassing me as their prisoner. Grief, regret, anger, and hopelessness cut themselves into me.
My power latches onto the emotions, using them as fuel.
Every inch of my body begins to glow with my heat.
As it gets stronger, the orange hue slowly begins to chase away the darkness.
Small flames lick my skin, growing hungry with vengeance.
I’ve only ever released my power when it’s been built up.
There’s no telling what it’s capable of when it’s allowed to run free on its own accord.
The king’s shadows push back, their icy touch slicing through my barrier of heat. They are forceful and demanding, but my power is not for him to take.
The lid holding my flames back rattles as the need for freedom intensifies.
One last image flashes in front of me, but this time, instead of a memory of pain and loss, it’s the reflection of myself on the day of the Final Trial in my first year.
The Reign looking back at me is not the weak, incapable girl who feared failure coming into the Training Sector.
That girl is long gone, and the one that remains is strong and determined.
She’s fiery and relentless. She defies the odds and fights for what is right.
There’s a burning behind her eyes that comes from more than just the fire inside of her.
I am her and she is me.
With the memory vivid in my mind, I release the hold on my power, letting go of the person I once was and embracing the person I have become.
Hot flames lurch into the prison of shadows encompassing me. A torrent of fire bursts around me, ready to claim its first victim. Ribbons of onyx lunge at my flames, trying to snuff them out, but my inferno fights back with its own vigor.
I expected to feel strained and fatigued, but giving myself over to my power feels like breathing. It feels natural and easy, as if fire was always what I was meant to be. The darkness begins to inch back, withdrawing from the fight in defeat.
A violent blast of magic explodes from my chest, and a blanket of glowing, orange heat wraps around me like a cocoon. Peace and tranquility wash over me, covering me in a wave of comfort. It feels like I’m finally home. That is, until I open my eyes.
A hollow pit of despair forms in my stomach as I take in my reality. I’m not sure how I got on the edge of this mountain, but it doesn’t matter. I know what comes next. I’ve seen it in my nightmares a hundred times over. Perhaps this has always been my fate.
King Cimmerian stands in front of me, and the look on his face is just how I imagined. His lingering smoke burns my nostrils as my heartbeat quickens with each passing second. One of his shadows brushes against my cheek, and I instinctively flinch at the cold touch.
Pure evil is all I see when I look into his sunken eyes.
“You’re a traitor, Reign Calloway! Just like your father!”
The words echo as the mountains around us quake with his rage.
Avalanches begin to fall, sending chunks of snow and rock rushing down the sides of the surrounding mountains just like in my dreams. We’re no longer in Strellesia.
Wherever he’s taken me is far away from everyone else.
There’s no one coming to my rescue. Not that it would even matter.
I think part of me always knew this is how I would end up.
“You have betrayed me and the Great Six Realms!” He steps forward, running his talon-like finger under my chin.
“Mercy is a fate you will not know.”The threat might have landed harder if I hadn’t already known it was coming.
Instead, I feel relief. My fight is coming to an end, and there’s peace in knowing I won’t have to endure much more.
What’s done is done, and death is my punishment. Though perhaps it’s more of a gift.
I straighten my spine, staring back at those eyes that resemble death. If I’m going to die today, I want the fire in my eyes and the smile on my face to haunt him until his last day, knowing that he didn’t break me.
“They’re coming for you,” I promise with the same wicked smile I’ve seen in my nightmares. “You’ve lost.”
Kane’s golden dragon head reaches over the king but doesn’t block his view of me.
My heart aches for what he’s going to have to do and what it will be like living with it.
I’m being set free, but Kane is the one who is dying a slow death.
It feels wrong leaving him to continue this fight without me, but perhaps that was never meant to be my path.
The Mother gave me to this world and now she’s ready to take me from it.
It is with that thought that I exhale one final breath, accepting my fate before a ball of dragon fire engulfs me.