“It kept you alive long enough to be found again,”Nyxariel said, softer now.”Do not make her last choice only a wound.”
They let the name of his former rider, the one they didn’t want to speak of pass between them without saying it. The name hurt him less that way.
Wind combed the shattered arena. Somewhere far above, a patrol wheel of wings turned and faded. The night smelled of iron and rain.
Nyxariel’s gaze tilted toward the high cliffs.Thaelyn called me with a fracture, not a command.
“Thorne doesn’t know it,”Vornokh answered, “but he steadied when you came.A beat.He bleeds like his bloodline.”
“And burns like it,”she said, the hint of a smile in the thought.
Vornokh shifted, ground crunching under his weight. “They are not us.”
“No,”Nyxariel agreed. “Let them never be asked to be.”
A long breath. The distance between their foreheads was close. Heat met storm. In that small contact, the old roar flared, brief, bright, and almost whole.
“When you vanished long ago, I searched for you until my voice had edges,”Vornokh admitted, the confession rough. “I roared and frantically searched the sky or years. I did not find you.”
“I heard the roars,”she said. “They reached even the quiet place.”
“I would have torn the quiet open if I’d known where to place my teeth.”
“You tried.”
They watched the same section of sky. The crescent moon cut a seam in the clouds; lightning stitched it shut again in the far south. The border storm called and was answered.
Nyxariel’s thoughts brushed his like wingtip to wingtip.The thread pulled tonight.
“I felt it,”he said. “Old wind turned wrong.”
“Not hers.”
“No,”heagreed. “Not hers.”
They did not speak Nyxariel’s riders name either. Some names felt like traps if you looked at them too long.
Nyxariel lowered her brow until it rested against his for a heartbeat. The contact knocked something loose in the dark, small, bright, and almost laughter. “I remember the way you used to dislike when I spoke in riddles.”
“I still do.”But there was no heat in it.
“Then take this plain:her mind-voice steadied, iron under velvet.We fly together bonded again. Not what we were, but what returns.”
Vornokh’s wings unlatched a fraction, the old ache answering with reluctant grace. He felt it snap in place. Their bond was restored.And if they break under us?
We bank lower,she said.We teach them the turns we never learned in time.
He exhaled, long and slow, a red thread of heat.He’ll fight the harness.
She’ll try to carry the sky.
We cut the straps before they choke,he decided, surprised by how simple it sounded when he said it to her.
They stood until the field’s hush shifted from held breath to a steady one. In the high roosts, younger dragons stirred and settled; somewhere metal rang, distant rails, and not battle.
Nyxariel looked to the ridge where she had given her mark and burned it across a mortal's back.Something else woke in her when the moon darkened.
Vornokh’s scales clicked, uneasy.Yes.A pause like a drawn bow held in the strongest fingers.Not for them yet.For us.
