CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE #2
“You are wing and scale, wind and starlight. Just as they are. Just as I am. I made a vow to bring you home.” He bridged the distance between us, climbing up the same three steps.
His hand slowly reached to cup the side of my face.
“But I never planned for it to take this long. I can only hope you’ll forgive me, someday.
” My body instinctively melted into his touch.
Even though my mind was reeling. Even though my heart threatened to burst.
“Please,” he begged, pressing his forehead to mine. “Come home.”
I wrenched away from him. Climbed up three more steps. It wasn’t far, and yet, between us split a yawning, vicious chasm.
“You are a liar, Kodhan Dreadmourne,” I whispered, shakily. “A horrible, despicable liar.”
I flung the accusation at him like it burned.
But his expression, crestfallen—like I’d physically slapped him—hurt far worse.
“I’m telling you the truth. No more secrets.” He lifted his hands placatingly, palms up. “They tampered with your soul. Your memories. Your essence. It’s why you can’t remember.”
“The gods tampered with my soul, that much is correct. But my memories are fully intact. You—” Goosebumps covered the length of my body when I remembered what he and Theia had been arguing about. What he’d told me back in the tower.
Wisely, Kodhan stayed put. Watched me piece together the fractured bits of a puzzle I’d never asked for, a flicker of hope shining in his eyes.
My feet were on solid stone, though it felt like I was falling without end. “I am not her.”
“Once more, love. With conviction.” A half-smile. “If you’re going to accuse me of lying, you should do better in making sure I don’t see through yours.”
Anger shook the ice out of my limbs. “I know who and what I am. I am gods-cursed. Powerless. I am no one.” One of the two dragons roared above our heads, raising the hairs on my arms.
They would swoop down at any moment now, I thought. Especially since there were two of us by the temple instead of the usual one.
“That is what they want you to think. The poison they planted in your mind.” Kodhan hissed.
I climbed another step. “This is a waste of time. I’m going back for the vials. Follow me, or don’t. I don’t care.”
He reacted faster than my years of training could prepare me for. Clamped both of my arms to my body in what almost looked like an embrace.
“Why do you think that dragon allowed you to go inside?” He grunted as I pushed forward, forcing him down a step.
“To kill me on the way out,” I spat, and threw my weight backwards. Kodhan scrambled down two more steps to catch me, stopping my fall. Only a few more, and we would be back on solid, even ground. I just had to find a way to keep him there while I went back inside.
“Don’t do that again,” he warned with a snarl.
“Then let go of me,” I snarled back. Then shot a kick to his right ankle.
He swung us around with a force that had my feet scrambling to find purchase. Took the opportunity to lift me to his chest, and brought us back down to the grass.
“Fight me all you want. Gods, please don’t ever stop fighting me.
But at least see the truth. Our powers are unique, essence of stars bestowed upon us by the goddess that gave us life.
It’s why we wield only one specific kind of magic.
The goddess made a deal with them. Deals for each of us.
But then you were stolen.” His voice wavered. It was enough to make me falter.
To hesitate.
Gideon’s first rule, broken by a single word.
Kodhan kept both feet rooted in the grass, but he spun me again, this time bringing my back flush to his front.
“Jareth’s real son is still deep within the mountains with a clean slate of health.
The boy never stepped foot from the estate since he was less than four years old—that’s why Maverick didn’t suspect a single thing where I was concerned.
The goddess whispered to Jareth, asked him to harbor me when I arrived cloaked with enough magic that made me appear human, my magic like everyone else’s, a little over one month ago.
” When Jareth reintroduced him to the heart of the kingdom. “Theia and Brannon arrived much later.”
My head dropped to rest on his chest. My body was spent, still unrecovered from the effects of the glowing liquid. I couldn’t fight him anymore. Not physically.
He took it as a sign to keep going.
“He played his part well. So well that the king sent me and my closest friends into the Starlight Trials as punishment. Which was right where we needed to be if we wanted to help you survive. We only had one chance to retrieve you.”
“Stop. I don’t want to hear any more.”
He did no such thing.
“The cost of bringing us in was too great. She couldn’t bring us out.
Not all of us. At most, two could be pulled out without raising his alarms, leaving the rest of us to leave by his own bidding.
So she pulled Brannon and Theia out from the top of the watchtower, his puppet being a perfect coverup for their disappearance. ”
“Impossible—” I began to argue, but he plowed on.
“They stole you from us. Wiped your memories. Bespelled your magic to make it inaccessible and warped your entire being to begin anew. Call that a curse if you want. But that is what happened to you.” His words were raw, as if he’d been screaming.
His cheek rested on the crown of my head.
“A group obsessed with overthrowing the king, on stealing his power, captured you,” he growled, and his arms tightened around me until I could barely breathe.
“It happened during your last flight around the edges of the Veil. It was all my fault. If I would’ve been with you that day…
I knew I shouldn’t have let you go alone.
But I did, and we all suffered greatly for it.
” His harsh sigh stirred my hair. “They wanted to turn you into their own personal puppet. To aid them in killing the king when the time was right and then use you as they saw fit.”
“Twenty-three years, four months, and eight days. That is how long it’s been since I’ve been able to take a full breath. How long it’s felt like half of my soul has been ripped from me. Everything we’ve done has been for this moment.”
My eyes squeezed shut against the rising torrent that threatened to spill down my cheeks once again. “Prove it. Prove that this isn’t some scheme to lure me somewhere so you can torture or kill me after all. That after everything that’s happened, at least some of it was real.”
Gently, he turned me around. Wiped a traitorous tear from my cheek. “It was all real. Every second of it.” He searched my face for a few moments before craning his neck to the sky. Then nodded.
The two dragons soared towards us.
I trembled when it appeared as though they would crash right into the trees instead of land among them. But they veered at the last second, splaying their wings wide and flapping with enough force to blow nearby leaves into a frenzy.
They landed with a ground-vibrating thud. Close enough for me to feel their huffing breaths across my face, but not close enough to touch.
A feminine voice rang directly between my temples.
“Hello, Eloise.”
Unmistakably Theia’s.
A second, masculine voice accompanied the first. “I don’t know if I should be proud or insulted by the look you’re giving me.”
Brannon.
“It was you sitting up there,” I gasped softly. The eyes. I could see them properly now. Amber irises, with the smallest golden flecks. “You were too far up for me to see your eyes properly. But I knew they looked familiar.”
His massive head dipped, scales reflecting the faint light of the stars from above. “You make very intimidating death threats. I’m surprised you didn’t throw your dagger at me with that impeccable aim of yours.”
“You are a dragon,” I deadpanned.
“And so are you.” My eyes swung to the second dragon—to Theia. It—she—made to take a step forward, then seemed to decide against it, planting a claw-tipped talon back onto the ground. “Words cannot express how awful I feel for what I did to you. I am so sorry.”
“You did what you had to,” Kodhan cut in.
“You can hear them?” I asked without looking at him. Then shook my head. “Of course you can.” It was just like when they held silent conversations during the trials. Except this time I was a part of it. Lapis, forever that stunning shade, starred back at me.
“She feels bad for pushing you,” Brannon said, without missing a beat. “I told her you’d be fine. I should be the one apologizing. I didn’t have enough time to stop the entirety of your fall.” He scraped a single claw through the grass, creating a line of dirt. A blaringly human gesture. “Sorry.”
Kodhan didn’t protest as I untangled myself from him, something bitter and heavy swirling in my gut.
Though he stiffened, ready to grab me again if I decided to run.
“If what I’m hearing… what I’m seeing, is true, then you’re apologizing for the wrong reasons.
You claim to galivant on some quest to save me.
But I deserved to know the truth from the beginning.
Not just during the Starlight Trials. During the weeks you were in Aedreath.
” I stared accusingly at Kodhan. “Instead, you pretended not to know me at all. Kept me in the dark.”
Theia spoke first. “Of course you deserved to know. We wanted you to know, badly.”
“Which is why Theia almost unraveled our secret several times.” It was a different kind of strange to see a dragon roll their eyes. Unbefitting to such a nightmarish creature.
“I am no liar. And even less one to keep secrets,” she hissed.
“Well aware,” Kodhan drawled.
Theia’s head swiveled towards him, teeth barred in a snarl.
I took a slow step back. Tried not to let my devastation show as my gaze met Kodhan’s again. “It wasn’t real at all, was it? You tricked me.”
The words didn’t sound as angry as I’d hoped.