“What’s going on?” I asked, my voice pulled tight by the wind. “You’re worried.”
I understand now,she said quietly, her thoughts weightier than before.Why the Blood Fae want you.
I gripped the saddle. “What do you mean?”
Your power… it’s not just rare. It’s dangerous.
“To them?”
To everyone, she said.You could be used to enslave the next generation. Dragons too young to defend their minds could be bound to you.
My stomach dropped. “But I wouldn’t?—”
That’s not the point, Kaelith growled.In the wrong hands, your power becomes a weapon beyond anything we’ve ever known.
I went cold. “What are you saying?”
There was a pause.
They could use you to make the Blood Fae fertile again.
I felt the blood drain from my face.
“What?” I whispered.
Their lines have fallen, Kaelith said.Corrupted by too much dark magic. Twisted by what they did to the old blood. But you… your magic is tied to life and destruction. A storm that gives breath or takes it away.
The weight of that knowledge settled over me like a shroud.
I wasn’t just the destroyer.
I was thekeyto something far worse.
Or far greater.
And now, I had no idea which.
Kaelith descended in a slow, sweeping arc over the Ascension Grounds, her massive wings rustling the trees at the cliff’s edge as we returned.
The sun was dipping low, painting the sky in shades of amber and bruised violet.
She landed with a thunderous thud, stone cracking faintly beneath her talons.
I slid off her back, boots hitting the ground harder than I expected. My legs were trembling, not from the flight, but from what I’d just learned.
I turned to her, needing something,anything, to hold on to.
“Did that help?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper. “Did going to the Hatchling Isle eliminate any of the prophecies?”
She didn’t speak right away.
Yes,she said.
Relief surged in my chest for half a second.
Until she added,Most of the favorable ones.
My heart dropped like a stone.
