“Keep training me and knock me down again if I fail!” ordered Thaelyn.
Thorne hesitated. Something dangerous flickered behind his calm. Then, with a low growl, he stepped forward. Their blades met again, wood slamming against wood, rhythm turning chaotic. Thaelyn fought through agony, her vision tunneling.
When Thorne disarmed her for the final time, Thaelyn didn’t yield. She lunged barehanded, grabbing his wrist, twisting, trying to use her weight against his.
Thorne’s control snapped. He pivoted, sweeping his leg under hers, and drove her down.
Thaelyn hit the ground hard. The impact sent another crack through her already-broken rib. The scream ripped from her throat before she could stop it.
Thorne was upon her in a blink, knee pressed to her hips, forearm across her collarbone. She flailed, but he was immovable. A stone wall with flames in his eyes. “Yield.”
Thaelyn blinked against the tears. “No.”
“Yield.” More urgent now. Still restrained.
“No!” she hissed.
And something cracked behind his eyes. Not cruelty. Fear. He hovered there, breath caught. “Thaelyn yield!” he demanded.
She snapped, “I AM NOT YOURS TO BREAK!”
The words shattered the air. A pulse erupted from her chest, an invisible, deafening explosion that wasn’t sound, butforce.The ground beneath them cracked open in a spiderweb of light. Wind screamed from every direction, tearing through the arena.
Thorne was flung backward by the power, his body lifted off the ground like a weightless shadow. The energy ripped through him too, his blood roaring with heat that wasn’t fire. The connection between them ignited, invisible but binding.
Through the haze, he felt it, her pain, her fear, the raw scream of her soul. It burned through his ribs like molten iron.
Vornokh’s voice thundered inside his skull.Protect thebond, rider!
Thorne gasped, forcing air into his lungs, summoning every drop of his dragon’s strength. Shadows rippled around his arms, absorbing the storm’s edge before it tore him apart. The darkness flared, merging with firelight, a dual pulse of black and crimson shielding him from her unraveling power.
But Thaelyn was already moving. The storm swallowed her whole.
Wind tore through the dome, shattering its ancient wards with a scream of breaking glass. Shards rained like stars as lightning struck through the open wound in the sky.
Thaelyn rose at the storm’s center, hair lifted by unseen currents, eyes blazing silver and violet. Blood streaked her face, but her expression was something more than mortal; it wasbecoming.
The air bowed to her.
From beyond the broken dome, a vast shadow fell across the Scorchfield. The dragons overhead. Kaeroth, Tarken, and Mirra, scattered like sparks before the wind. Only one remained, wings of midnight and flame, bellowing a sound that shook the mountain. Vornokh’s roar was not a warning.
Lightning tore the clouds apart.
Thorne channeled down to his powers and was flung back, weightless as a leaf. He struck the far wall with a dull, echoing thud and slid to the floor, unmoving.
Overhead, the dome groaned. Then it shattered. Fissure cracked across its center, then spiderwebbed outward. The sky poured through, not light, but storm. Not wind, but wrath. Lightning carved spirals in the air, weaving downward in arcs of silver flame.
The air churned with magic, the scent of ozone and scorched power thick in every lung. The sky shattered. A concussive pulse erupted from Thaelyn’s chest. The ground split in a jagged ring around her. Wind exploded outward with the sound of a thousand wings. Above, the glass dome, thought unbreakable, dragon-forged, split down the center. The dome blew apart into pieces. Shards cascaded like starlight, shooting across the room in every direction, scattering as the storm above bled through the wound in the sky. Avortex opened, with lightning spiraling downward and wind funneling in a violent dance. The storm gathered around her like a crown of wrath. Gasps broke from the cadets lining the walls. Some fell to their knees, others scrambled back in terror.
In the eye of it all, Thaelyn stood. Her hair lifted, caught in winds that were not her own. Sparks crackled along her fingers, coiling down her arms like serpents of Stormlight. Her eyes no longer held color. They held cosmos.
Thorne stirred, his vision hazy. Blood from his temple ran down his cheek as he stared at her.
Then, silence. The air stilled. Through the sundered dome, something vast stirred the clouds. The dragons circling overhead faltered. Kaeroth cried out, turning skyward. Vornokh loosed a long, low sound. Not a warning. A recognition.
Through the wound in the sky descended something ancient, vast, and special. Massive wings beat against the sky. A roar that was not sound but force echoed over the Scorchfield.
Every dragon circling above scattered like birds before a tempest. Every cadet looked up, breath caught in their throats. From the spiraling clouds descended a creature older than memory. She came. Her wings were woven of thunder and dusk, trailing Stormlight in their wake. Her scales shimmered in ever-shifting hues of blue, violet, silver, and storm-gray. Her eyes, opalite and bottomless, held knowledge no mortal had earned the right to see. She was a silhouette woven of shadow and brilliance. Wings seemed to span wider than the field itself, spans of Stormlight and scale. Every beat of those wings churned the wind, each stroke laced with ancient might.
