"The bond," I manage, my voice suddenly raw as I speak my greatest fear aloud. "I cannot feel her, Eira. Not as I should. Not as I have since the ceremony." My claws dig into my palms. "If she were dead—" The words catch in my throat, a physical pain that steals my breath and sends cracks spiderwebbing through my carefully maintained control.
Eira's ancient eyes soften with understanding. She moves closer, unafraid of the flames that ripple across my scales in waves that match my erratic heartbeat. "Tell me precisely what you feel, Sovereign," she urges gently. "Not what you fear, but what you know."
I force myself to breathe, to focus on the gossamer-thin connection that still stretches between Leira and myself. "Distance," I finally say. "As if she travels farther with each moment. And... muffling. Like hearing a voice through water. I sense her existence but nothing more. No emotion. No direction. No..." My voice breaks, composure shattering like thin ice beneath too much weight. "No guiding thread to follow."
I, who have led armies and carried the burden of an entire species on my shoulders, find myself utterly lost without thebright pulse of her consciousness against mine. The silence in that space feels like drowning.
Eira regards me with eyes that have witnessed countless bonds form and break across centuries. "What you describe sounds like interference. Not just the sedative but distance combined with certain barriers. There are materials that can dampen thread-connections like lead-lined chambers or specific crystal formations."
“If the bond is too weak for me to track her, perhaps Zara could commune with the Flame. She might glimpse Leira's location where I cannot."
"I will wake her," Eira says, already gliding toward the inner sanctum, her ancient scales catching the dim light as she moves with surprising swiftness for one so old. "The child has been restless with visions these past nights.”
I pivot toward the main entrance, my scales rippling with impatience to assemble a team of Talons to begin my own search, when Eira's voice rips through the temple.
"Sovereign!" The ancient guardian's cry bounces off vaulted ceilings. "Zara is gone! Her guards lay dead outside her chamber."
Each word strikes like a precisely aimed dagger between my scales. First Leira. Now Zara. The fire in my blood extinguishes, replaced by a creeping cold that paralyzes me for three thundering heartbeats.
"They took them both," I whisper, fangs bared.
Zara, the first true seer born to our kind in centuries. Her last warning echoes in my memory,Beware the shadow that hides behind loyalty. Its fangs are patient.The little seer had hit close to the mark of who was behind the bombing, and they could not risk her seeing more.
Two treasures stolen from me this night. My bloodmate, whose touch melted centuries of ice around my heart, and theyoungling who looks at me with such unwavering trust. They are mine to protect. Mine to avenge.
Shards of cold rage give way to pure fire that races through me, scale by burning scale. My body becomes a forge, each heartbeat pumping molten fury through my core. Crimson and gold flames ripple visibly across my length, not in waves but in violent pulses that match my thundering heart. Let the enemy feel my coming like hellfire and my descent like extinction itself. I am vengeance incarnate. What is mine has been taken. What is mine, I will reclaim.
Chapter Twenty-Three
LEIRA
Consciousness returns in fragments. First the chill of stone beneath my body, then the musty scent of damp stone. My eyelids refuse to lift, weighted down as if forged from molten metal cooled against my face. The bitter aftertaste of the glimmergrain cake lingers on my tongue, mingling with the metallic tang of fear. Where am I? My mind struggles through the fog of the sedative Miria laced into that single, treacherous bite.
The distinctive whisper of scales against stone, the rhythmic drag of a serpentine body coming closer. I fight the instinct to tense as the sound stops just above where I lay. A soft hiss of indrawn breath. The subtle shift of weight as someone leans closer.
The scrape of a claw against metal, at my throat. I realize with sudden clarity that someone is tugging at the chain where Emberyn hangs. The chain slides against my skin but stops as it meets resistance.
I remain motionless, willing my muscles to stay slack, my chest rising and falling in the deep, measured rhythm of unconsciousness.
"Why in the Ancients’ name will this damned thing not snap?" a male voice mutters, the tone familiar in a way that sends ice through my veins. A sharper tug makes me fight to keep my expression slack, my breathing unchanged.
"It will not yield." A second voice slithers into the darkness. Female, honeyed yet precise, with that distinctive accent I once mistook for wisdom instead of cunning.Miria.My stomach twists into a knot. "The chain was forged in the Infinity Flame itself. Once placed around the Threadborn’s throat, no force born of mortal hand can sever it."
"You could have mentioned that before I wasted time trying," the male says, his tone controlled but edged with irritation. The voice clicks into place like a key finding its lock.Zaethir.The guard assigned to keep me safe, now revealed as my jailer. I should have trusted the prickle of unease I felt whenever those cold eyes followed my movements through the palace corridors.
"You did not ask." Miria's tone holds the faintest edge of amusement. "Besides, the serpent stone is not our concern. The human is. We must move her and the seer before dawn if we are to reach the rendezvous point."
My heart seizes in my chest, the thought of Zara in danger eclipsing any concern for myself.
“Too bad you allowed the human back to her chambers. Had she shared the cakes with Varok, we would have had him too,” Miria's voice drops to a seething whisper. "You can thank the Ancients that the seer is far more valuable than you realize. Thorne will be pleased with both acquisitions. Without the Threadborn, the prophecy remains unfulfilled, and the seer's visions will serve our greater purpose."
"The sovereign will tear Vessan-Kar apart stone by stone to find them," Zaethir says, his scales rustling against the stone floor as he shifts his weight.
"Precisely why you should have delivered the human to his chambers,” Miria replies, her voice tight with impatience. "We must be gone before first light touches the mountain."
"What of Lurok?" Zaethir asks. "He knows too much about us and the tunnels. Once he regains consciousness again?—"
"He will not," Miria cuts in. "The last dose I gave him would fell three naga. Slit his throat and leave him to bleed out.”
