“Then why did you?” he roars at me, waves of heat gushing from his mouth.
“Because you’re in pain,” I say, at which he jolts. “Your pain is driving you to self-destruction. You wish for death, but death is not the way.”
Graviter shakes his head, swaying back and forth and pawing the ground, edging forward, then back again, as if he can’t decide whether or not to attack me.
Behind me, Asha has jumped to her feet, but I sense her crouching again briefly before she rises once more.
The water swishes, as if she scooped something out of it, although I can’t see what.
I want to check that she’s okay, but I can’t take my eyes off Graviter. I have to make do with knowing that her heartbeat is strong and steady.
“Blacksmiths killed my family,” I say to Graviter, letting my pain rise to the surface. Against my will, my eyes fill with tears of rage, but I force myself to continue. “My brother was good. Kind. Innocent of all this. Just like your son.”
Graviter rakes his talons across the stone at his feet, causing the rock to spark. The heat from his body is drying out the ground and I worry about the little flames that seethe from between his lips.
Still, I continue, my voice filled with a wolfish growl. “If you want revenge against Thaden Kane, then you will need our help. You need my claws, and you need Asha’s power?—”
Graviter gives a howl. “I don’t need her darkness. It’s the same malice that doomed my son.”
“She is not darkness!” I roar, my control finally snapping. “Asha is the only light in my world.”
I sense her stillness at my words. The sudden jump in her heartbeat.
Without taking my eyes off Graviter, I point to the tree behind me. “Do you see what your fire has burned, dragon?”
His wild eyes focus beyond me for a second. Then back to me.
“Take a longer look, Dragon King.” I lower my voice. “Look at what Asha created from the monster Malak’s son left here to kill us. Look at the beautiful thing she made from such ugliness and hatred. Now, tell me again how you don’t need her help.”
The dragon hunches low to the ground, his snarls coming thick and fast, but it’s Asha’s voice that cuts across the mess of sound.
“The dragon’s right,” she whispers, and her voice sounds far too hollow. “I can’t fight Thaden Kane.”
I risk a glance at her, surprised to see that she’s gripping the dragon-imprinted medallion in her right hand. Her other medallion is still in the form of a chain and lies a mere five paces away, where Graviter threw it off his neck.
Of course, the medallion that’s fused to her hand has remained exactly where it is.
Blood drips from cuts across her shoulders, arms, and thighs. Her clothing is torn. There’s more blood in her hair, clumping the strands.
Her cheeks are deathly pale. She’s trembling hard.
She could be freezing from the icy water dripping off her body or going into shock or shaking with rage. Or all of these things at once.
“My power is useless against him.” Despite the danger right in front of her, she squeezes her eyes shut as she continues to shake. “Thaden made sure I knew it. Again and again. He stopped me from hurting you that time in the prison. He used his father’s own medallion to forge weapons that nearly killed you. He even hugged me when I was at my most dangerous.”
She opens her eyes and her expression is bleak. “When I arrived at the fae castle, he saw this medallion fused to my hand, and unlike everyone else, he wasn’t afraid. He lookedpleased, Erik. As if the thing I feared most gave him comfort.”
Her shoulders hunch and her fists clench, and she suddenly gives an icy laugh, so chilling that it makes me shiver.
“He used the dragon to change his appearance.” She nods her head. “Graviter said he was a child with eyes and hair as dark as night. Just like Malak. But if he’d looked like his father, we might have noticed the resemblance. Instead, he came to us with bronzed hair and fiery eyes and the scales of a dragon.
“He used the lie about being transformed to explain the Blacksmith magic he must have known I’d sense within him and… Oh!”
Her hand flies to her mouth. It’s the hand clutching the dragon-imprinted medallion and despite the pain it must be causing her, she presses it to her lips.
“Oh, he was clever,” she whispers. “He covered his powered hand—his right hand—in dragon scales so that no ordinary blade could sever his hand from his body.”
Her gaze quickly slips to Milena, whose own hand is missing, cut from her, leaving her unable to access her power ever again.
