Chapter 1 #2
And I had lost so much more than myself in the running.
"But you stayed," I repeated. My voice cracked on the word. "That's all that matters. You stayed."
Lena's hand came up to cover mine where it rested on her cheek. Her palm was warm, calloused from work I could only imagine—the work of a wound-walker, the work of someone who spent their life reaching toward other people's pain.
"He never stopped calling me," she admitted. "Even when he was dying, even when he had nothing left to give, he called me home."
The bond pulsed.
East. Down. Come.
I gasped, my free hand flying to my chest where the golden thread was wrapped around whatever passed for my heart.
The pull was stronger now—had been growing stronger every moment since I'd emerged from the egg, every breath I took in this impossible new body.
It wasn't pain. It was worse than pain. It was *absence*—the phantom ache of something severed, something that had been reaching toward wholeness for ten thousand years and was now so close it could taste completion.
"It's starting," I managed.
Morgrith moved then, stepping closer with the fluid grace of a predator who had chosen gentleness.
His starlight eyes met mine, and I saw understanding there—the knowledge of someone who had sacrificed everything for love, who had torn holes in reality itself to reunite souls that were meant to be together.
"The bond is starved," he said quietly. "Ten millennia of denial. It won't wait much longer."
I pressed harder against my chest, as if I could somehow soothe the thread that demanded, demanded, demanded. But it wasn't a wound that could be healed by pressure. It was a connection that had never been completed, a circuit that had been broken by my cowardice before the current could ever flow.
Come to me, the bond whispered in a voice that wasn't quite a voice. Come home.
And beneath the words, beneath the pull, I felt something else. Something vast and dark and wrong in ways that made my new bones ache.
Valdris.
The most beautiful monster in existence, waiting in the dark for the bride who had destroyed him.
"He's calling me," I said. Just the truth, laid bare in the grotto's impossible light.
Lena's hand tightened on mine. "We'll help you. We have a plan—the Dragon Lords, their mates—we've been preparing—"
"He won't wait for plans."
I met her eyes—my eyes, in a face that was mine but not mine, looking back at me with all the courage I'd never had.
"And neither," I whispered, "can I."
Morgrith's transformation wasn't gradual—it was absolute, darkness gathering to him like water finding its level, shadow and starlight collapsing into a form so vast I had to crane my newly-made neck to take it all in.
Black scales threaded with captured stars.
Wings that blocked out the grotto's impossible light.
And eyes that remained the same even in this shape—ancient, knowing, full of a love that had survived the sacrifice of everything he was.
He lowered himself before us, one wing extended to create a path up to his back.
Lena climbed first, moving with the ease of someone who had done this before.
I followed more slowly, my new body still learning its limits, my hands finding holds in the ridges of his spine.
The scales beneath my palms were warm—not the cold of shadow I might have expected, but the warmth of something deeply alive.
When I settled behind Lena, pressed between the rising ridges of his back, I felt the bond pulse in recognition.
Not my bond—the golden thread that pulled me toward Valdris remained taut and aching—but the echo of theirs.
Lena and Morgrith. Dragon and mate. A connection so strong it resonated through the air between them like a second heartbeat.
Then we launched into the sky, and the world I'd left behind ten thousand years ago opened beneath us.
It had changed.
Of course it had changed. Ten millennia was long enough for empires to rise and crumble, for forests to become deserts and deserts to become seas.
The coastline below bore no resemblance to the shores I remembered.
The villages dotting the landscape were built in styles I didn't recognize, with materials I couldn't name.
But beneath the changes, I found the bones.
The shape of the mountains to the east, their silhouettes unchanged by the grinding patience of time.
The silver ribbon of the Thornveil River, following the same ancient path it had carved before humans ever walked these lands.
The way the air tasted different at certain altitudes—thin and sharp above the clouds, heavy with salt and green growth closer to the earth.
I recognized it the way you recognize a loved one grown old. The essential nature remained, even if the surface had transformed beyond all knowing.
"The cult," Lena began, her voice raised against the wind of our passage, "they call themselves the Children of Valdris. They worship him. The Unnamed."
The name hit me like a fist to the chest.
"They worship him," I repeated flatly. "The monster I created."
Lena's silence was answer enough.
"They've been operating for years," she continued after a moment. "Led by a man named Solmar—Lord Varek Solmar. He discovered Valdris's prison and established . . . communion with him. Valdris taught them magic. Rituals. Ways to harvest bonding potential from women who carried the gift."
Harvested.
The word sat sour on my tongue. I knew what it meant. Knew what kind of magic required the extraction of bonding potential from unwilling vessels. The cult had been butchering women—girls, probably, girls with gifts they didn't understand—feeding their potential to the thing I had made when I ran.
"How many?" My voice came out barely above a whisper.
"Hundreds. Over the years." Lena's shoulders tensed. "Thirteen just in the weeks before Wren escaped. She watched twelve women die before her."
Wren. The name meant nothing to me, but the grief in Lena's voice gave it weight.
"She survived the harvest cells," Lena continued. "She's bonded now—to Caelus, the Wind Master. She's safe. But the others . . ."
The others were dead. Fed to a monster because I had been too afraid to love him.
The bond pulsed, and I pressed my hand to my chest against the ache.
"The Dragon Lords found their mates," Lena said, shifting to face me as much as she could while we flew. "All six of them, in the space of a few months. Bonds that had been dormant for millennia suddenly igniting, one after another."
"Because the seals are weakening," I said. It wasn't a guess.
"Because of you," Morgrith's voice rumbled through his dragon form, felt more than heard.
"The magic that sealed Valdris was tied to the incomplete bond.
As your soul gathered strength to return, the seals began to fail.
The other bonds activated in response—defensively, perhaps.
Or perhaps because the original bond was finally moving toward completion. "
The original bond.
Me and Valdris.
The template from which all other dragon-mate bonds had derived, incomplete and aching for ten thousand years.
"They're all waiting at Davoren's keep," Lena said. "The Black-Glass Keep. All seven Dragon Lords and their mates. They've been planning, strategizing—"
"Planning how to stop him," I finished.
"Planning how to heal him." Lena's grey eyes met mine. "If it's possible. If there's any part of him left that can be reached. They want to try. But if healing fails . . ."
She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't need to.
Below us, the landscape shifted from coastal cliffs to volcanic slopes.
I could see the mountain in the distance—a massive peak wreathed in steam and heat shimmer, its dark stone veined with rivers of fire that glowed even in daylight.
The Black-Glass Keep would be there, I knew.
One of the seven strongholds, ruled by the Fire Master who had claimed these burning lands as his own.
"He felt me wake," I said. Not a question. The bond told me the truth of it, the connection between us vibrating with awareness that went both ways.
"The moment the egg cracked," Morgrith confirmed, "the darkness over the Sunken Palace screamed. The cultists sent scouts. They know you've returned. They're preparing."
Come to me, the bond whispered, pulling toward a prison that had held him for ten millennia. Come home. Come finish what you started.
I closed my eyes and held on as Morgrith's wings carried us toward the burning mountain.
The world had changed in my absence. Empires had risen and fallen. Humans had built and destroyed and built again. Seven Dragon Lords had spent millennia alone, waiting for mates who finally came to them in a cascade of igniting bonds.
And through it all, Valdris had waited.
Corrupted. Monstrous. Still calling my name.
The Black-Glass Keep rose from the mountain like a crown of frozen fire—obsidian walls that caught the light and scattered it into impossible patterns, veined with rivers of magma that pulsed like a heartbeat.
I had never seen its like, not in my first life, not in any of the dreams that had plagued my millennia in the void.
It was magnificent and terrible, a fortress forged from the volcano's own blood, and I could barely look at it.
Inside the great hall, I met them all.
Davoren, the Fire Master—tall and imposing with copper-dark skin that seemed to glow with inner heat, his grey-white hair bound in warrior braids that spoke of centuries of battle.
His mate Kara stood at his side, fierce-eyed and proud, her ash-brown hair elaborate with hidden braids.
She looked at me with knowing eyes, like she could see straight through to the guilt I carried.