The dorm tower lay drowned in silence, moonlight sliding across the floorboards like liquid silver. Thaelyn sat on the edge of her bed, her hands clasped so tightly that her knuckles ached. She could hear the rhythm of her heartbeat in her ears, too fast, too loud for the stillness of midnight.
There was no alarm. No danger. Only that pull again. It thrummed faintly under her skin, soft, insistent, like a thread being tugged from deep within her chest.Thorne.
She pressed a palm to her sternum, willing it to stop, to still, but the ache only deepened. It wasn’t thought or voice; it wasn't something she could block out. It was a presence, warm, alive, steady, and the worst part was how familiar it had already become.
She stood abruptly, too restless to stay still. The air in the dorm felt stifling, too close, too heavy. Feyra mumbled in her sleep. Iri turned over by the window, the moon catching her braid. The normalcy of it made the pull worse. Thaelyn shoved her feet into her boots, threw her cloak around her shoulders, and slipped into the corridor before she could change her mind.
The hall was cold and empty. Each step echoed like guilt.
Outside, frost glittered across the courtyard stones. The night had teeth, sharp and clean, biting her cheeks. The moment she breathed it in, her chest hurt, not from cold, but from the ache that was trying to drag her somewhere she didn’t want to go.
She followed it anyway. Down the slope, past the statue of thefirst bonded rider, toward the cliffs where the sky opened wide. There she was. Nyxariel was waiting.
The dragon’s scales shimmered faintly under the moon, each one catching the light like tempered glass. Her wings were half-furled. When her eyes opened, the world seemed to be still around her.
“You are restless,”Nyxariel said, her voice a low rumble that rolled through the stones.
Thaelyn wrapped her arms around herself. “I felt him.”
The dragon shifted, smoke curling from her nostrils.“The bond deepens. You are resisting it.”
“I don’t understand it,” Thaelyn said, and the words came sharper than she intended. “Thorne makes me furious, Nyxariel. I feel like he sees me as if I’m some reckless girl, and yet,” She broke off, breath shaking. “I find myself wanting to feel him. It’s wrong.” The words tore out of her. “It’s not just some thread between minds. It’s inside me. It’s changing me. Every time he’s near, it feels like I’m being pulled apart, like I’m not even me anymore.”
“You are not becoming him,”Nyxariel said.“You are remembering what once was.”
“That’s worse!” Thaelyn snapped. “I don’t want to be some echo of a prophecy or a name I never asked for. I don’t want my choices stolen because of who I share a bond with!”
“You are storm. He is flame,”Nyxariel murmured.“The two were never meant to meet without ruin.”Lightning flickered faintly in the dragon’s throat.“Don’t fight it.”
“I am fighting it!” Thaelyn’s voice cracked, her breath shaking. “But it doesn’t stop! I dream of him, I feel him, even when he bleeds. It’s like the bond feeds on my defiance. It’s not fair!”
Nyxariel’s eyes softened, though her voice remained steady thunder.“Nothing ancient ever is.”
Thaelyn turned away, glaring at the horizon. “Then why bind us at all?”
“Because creation is born from what collides, not what coexists.”
“That’s not what I want.” Her voice cracked on the last word. “I didn’t choose this. I didn’t ask for him.”
Smoke curled from Nyxariel’s nostrils, the scent of lightning sharp in the air.“Neither did any of us. Yet, here we are.”
Thaelyn’s chest tightened. “I don’t want to belong to anyone, especially him.”
“You do not belong to him,”Nyxariel said softly.“You belong to the storm. The bond does not chain, it mirrors.”
Thaelyn shook her head. “Then why does it feel like losing myself?”
The dragon’s eyes gleamed.“Because you are still trying to be one thing, when the bond and fate is making you two.”
For a long moment, Thaelyn just stood there, staring out at the dark ridge line where the wind scraped over the cliffs. The world below looked small and still, but inside her, everything was shifting, breaking, bleeding into something she didn’t recognize.
“I can’t carry this,” she whispered. “Not again. Not like the Trials.”
“You carry it already,”Nyxariel said.“You only refuse to look at it.”
Thaelyn turned sharply, anger and fear burning beneath her ribs. “Then maybe I don’t want to look! Maybe I just want to be left alone, to breathe without hearing his name in my head.”
The dragon regarded her with something like pity.“The bond does not listen to want. It listens to truth.”
