Chapter 4 #2
“Aodhan,” Sydney muttered aloud, her voice breaking the heavy quiet.
Carrick paused, his eyes narrowing. “What about him?”
“The prophecy specifically calls out a King without a throne,” Sydney said, leaning against the table, her mind racing.
“We always assumed that just meant Aodhan was a lost King, a Ruler in exile because the ancient world ended. But what if it’s literal?
What if it’s about his current state? And right before that, it says tethered but untraceable. ”
She looked up at Ginnie, her eyes wide with a frantic sort of clarity. “Tethered to what? To me because of the Mate bond? To Garrett’s more-than-mortal body? Or is it something else entirely?”
Ginnie stood perfectly still, her lips slightly parted as she processed Sydney’s frantic questions. She looked down at the empty air between them, her analytical mind pulling apart the vocabulary of the cosmos.
“Sydney, say that again,” Ginnie murmured, her eyes suddenly shifting as the pieces clicked into place in her own head. “The exact words.”
“Tethered,” Sydney said. “Tethered but untraceable.”
“A tether,” Ginnie whispered, a chilling realization washing over her features. She looked up, her gaze snapping between Sydney and Carrick. “We keep calling The Abyss a prison. We’re treating this like Garrett and Aodhan are locked behind bars, and we just have to find the key to let them out.”
“They are in a prison,” Carrick said, his brow furrowing. “You said it yourself—a metaphysical confinement.”
“Yes, but a prison is designed to keep something in,” Ginnie countered, her voice dropping into a sharp, terrifyingly clever register. “A tether is designed to keep something from getting away.”
Nobody spoke. The distinction hit Sydney like a physical blow to the sternum.
“Those aren't the same thing,” she breathed, the frost in her chest flaring back to life.
“Exactly,” Ginnie pressed on, stepping closer to the table.
“If Leviathan just wanted them gone, The Abyss would dissolve them, or he would have destroyed their essence.
But he hasn't. He has them tethered. They aren't just hiding Garrett and Aodhan in the dark, Carrick.
They are anchoring them to a specific point in the universe.
They may be using a Dragon King's immortal soul as an anchor.”
Sydney stared at her, the scale of the horror expanding exponentially. They weren't just dealing with a cage. Were they dealing with an anchor? “Anchoring what?”
“That’s what scares me.” Ginnie’s eyes opened wide. “I don’t know.”
And if they pulled Garrett out of the dark without understanding what he was holding down... They might unleash whatever was waiting on the other side.
“He’s being kept right on the edge,” Sydney whispered, the realization scraping against her raw nerves.
Looking down at her hands, which were still slick with the phantom cold sweat of the connection, she went on, “When the pain slammed into me, it felt like a violent, blinding fire. But beneath it... there was a baseline. A cold, steady rhythm keeping Garrett grounded just enough to breathe. He was right on the precipice of slipping away, but something was actively holding him back.”
Carrick stood perfectly still, his silhouette dark against the rays of late afternoon sunlight shining through the window.
The hum in the ether said his mind was racing through the archives of his military training, comparing Sydney's description to every dark interrogation and occult ritual he had ever studied.
“Think about what Garrett has experienced since they took him,” Carrick said, his voice dropping into a dangerously low, gravelly register.
“Whatever Leviathan wants, Garrett has it. Information. Magic. Access. Hell, maybe it’s Aodhan himself.
We don’t know. But I do know one thing—if Leviathan only wanted Garrett dead, we wouldn’t be standing here trying to figure out why he’s gone to this much trouble to keep him alive. ”
Turning around slowly, his warrior gaze locked onto Sydney. “But he didn’t use standard spells. He built a cosmic cage inside the primordial waters. He wrapped a tether around a Dragon King's soul. And he's keeping Garrett's physical vessel precisely balanced between life and cessation.”
Ginnie let out a sharp, trembling breath, her fingers clutching the hem of her T-shirt. The pieces of the metaphysical puzzle in her mind were locking into a horrifying new shape.
“He’s not being executed,” Ginnie breathed, the words hanging like ice in the air.
“No,” Carrick countered, his jaw locking down with a terrifying, absolute certainty. “He’s being prepared.”
The word seemed to lower the temperature in the room. Prepared.
Inside Sydney’s mind, Kara didn't roar. She didn't rage.
The ancient Dragon Queen simply let out a low, predatory growl that vibrated with deep, instinctual dread.
She shared her thoughts with Sydney without mentally speaking.
A vessel kept perfectly empty of its own will, yet forcefully tethered to its immortal power, wasn't a prisoner anymore. It was an open door.
“Prepared for what?” Sydney asked, her voice cracking as the sheer scale of the nightmare closed in on them.
Carrick didn't answer. She instantly saw that he couldn't. The dark truth of what Leviathan was brewing in the depths of The Abyss was still hidden in the shadows, but one thing was undeniably clear: the clock wasn't just ticking for Garrett’s survival anymore.
It was ticking for the survival of everything they held dear.
Sydney stood frozen, the word prepared echoing in her mind like a death knell.
Her thoughts scrambled backward, retracing the chaotic explosion of sensations that had slammed into her only minutes ago.
She could still feel the phantom heat, taste the metallic tang of blood, and see the memory of that suffocating darkness.
And then, she remembered the sound.
Not the agonizing groans of her Mate. Not the roaring power of the Dragon King. She remembered what Garrett yelled…
“RUN!”
“He didn't call for help,” Sydney whispered, her voice cutting through the heavy silence of the room.
Carrick’s razor-sharp gaze snapped back to her. “What?”
“Garrett,” Sydney said, her eyes widening as the terrifying truth began to unravel in her mind.
“When he broke through the blackout... When he used every single ounce of his remaining strength to tear open that connection...
He didn't scream for me to save him. He didn't tell me he was hurting. He just screamed for me to run.”
She shook her head, a cold panic seizing her throat. “Why would he do that? If he’s being prepared as a vessel, if he’s trapped in a cosmic cage, the first instinct should be to cry out for a lifeline. But he didn't pull me in. He pushed me away.”
“Because he’s a Guardsman, Sydney,” Carrick said, his voice flat, trying to ground her. “His first instinct is always to protect his Mate.”
“No, it’s more than that,” Sydney pressed, stepping away from the table as her mind raced toward the missing variable.
“Think about the timeline. I spent days reaching for him and getting nowhere. It was a total blackout. But the exact moment I stopped searching for him and traced the path of his warning... The exact moment my Light broke through into that weeping black stone chamber...”
She stopped. The air left her lungs all at once.
“He felt me,” she breathed.
“Garrett?” Carrick asked, his posture instantly turning rigid.
Sydney slowly shook her head. She felt the color draining from her cheeks. “No. Whatever has him.”
The room went dead silent. Ginnie’s hand flew to her mouth.
“She speaks the truth,” Kara’s voice suddenly boomed from the depths of Sydney's soul, audible to everyone. The Dragon Queen wasn't roaring. Her mental tone was a jagged, razor-sharp whisper of pure, predatory alarm.
“When the connection snapped, My Special Girl... It wasn't a passive barrier dropping. Something ancient reached back through the line. It tasted our power. It felt our fire.
An out-and-out "oh shit" moment crashed over Sydney, making her knees tremble.
Leviathan didn't just have Garrett. Whether it had been Leviathan or something even older lurking in The Abyss, something now knew Sydney existed. That Drakara, one of the first Dragon Queens, still existed. The Demon Lord might not know her exact name yet, or the coordinates of Carrick and Ginnie’s home, or the full extent of the prophecy surrounding the Special One.
But he knew that a power strong enough to pierce the Abyss had just knocked on his front door.
Garrett hadn't been screaming a frantic warning from a place of blind panic. He had felt the Demon Lord’s attention pivot toward his Mate. He had seen the trap snapping shut, and with his final breath, he had tried to throw her out of Leviathan’s blast radius.
Sydney looked up at Carrick, the fierce, golden Dragonfire flickering unpredictably in her eyes.
“He told me to run,” Sydney whispered, a terrifyingly sharp smile slowly returning to her lips, though her hands were shaking. “Because he knew that the second I found him... The monster in the dark found me, too.”
The realization that Leviathan had felt her Light sent an electric shock through the room. Carrick didn't hesitate. “The time for analyzing is over,” he stated matter-of-factly.
Sydney recognized that he was in Warrior mode and fully in command.
He whipped out his phone, his thumb already flying across the screen.
“We’re burning our location,” he barked, his voice vibrating with immediate, tactical authority.
“Ginnie, pack the essentials. We move in five. I’m calling Gunnar back to get the exact coordinates of that ley line tear.
Then I’m looping in Rayne and Royce. We need the royal lineage involved if we’re dealing with an ancient prophecy, and we need the full weight of the Dragon Guard mobilized by midnight. ”
“Carrick, stop,” Sydney said.