I wouldn’t believe me, either.
Still, his hold on me eases. As soon as it does, I jump to my feet.
Within the circle of light, Asha continues to appear transfixed, and I’m not sure she can even hear us.
“Keep your distance,” Graviter warns with a low voice. “It’s up to Asha whether or not she accepts the gift of light magic that I’m offering her.”
“Light magic?”
“Every dragon is a creature of light magic,” Graviter says. “But not every dragon is born with the ability to share their light. Only fire dragons have that ability, and even then, not all of them. There is one of us in every generation, and sometimes not even that.Myfire can fill a receptive heart with light.”
I remember how the fae healer, Gliss, described dragons. She said they aren’t like other creatures, that their thoughts are complex and concealed with magic:lightmagic. The purest kind.
At the time, I recognized what she said about light magic. It’s the same deep light that my father’s people revered—the same light that I burned to stay alive when Malak transformed me.
“You were right, Wolf.” Graviter’s expression is solemn now. “Asha Silverspun has the power to alter the nature of darkness itself. The composition of the leaf proved it to me. But if she wishes to save her family, she must be prepared to accept my gift of light and its consequences.”
He calls it a ‘gift’.
But all I can see is the deep light bursting from my father’s body when his own light magic gave him the strength to fight the Blacksmiths.
The final burst before his death became inevitable.
The dragon isn’t lying. I recognize now that these sapphire flames are pure light magic.
But Asha’s death is what I fear.
It’s what I’ve fought against since the moment I found her in the snow all those years ago.
I can’t stop my savage snarl. “You would give her the gift of death?”
Graviter shakes his head. “I would give her the ability to fight the war she needs to fight. But to face it as she truly is, not as she was made to be.”
I’m not sure what he means.
For once,I’mon the receiving end of ambiguous answers and hidden meanings and I don’t like it.
But I take his warning seriously. Every instinct in my body is telling me to stay clear of Asha right now.
Her chest is rising and falling rapidly. She continues to stare at her palms, her forehead creasing, her lips pressing together.
Her hair and skin were tarnished by forge fire when the humans ground up crimson coal and created an explosion that was intended to kill her.
That fire permanently melded one of Malak’s medallions to her left hand and it’s been part of her for over a week now.
It changed her, but not in my eyes.
When I look at her, I see her as she was: kind, determined, beautiful.
Graviter focuses back on her and it’s clear he’s speaking to Asha when he says, “Who are you?”
I wasn’t sure if she could hear anything outside the light, but it seems she can. Without looking up, she replies softly, “I don’t know anymore.”
He exhales softly and little tendrils of blue light waft across the space between them. “I have eaten the memories you poured into that tree, Asha Silverspun. You don’t have to confess anything to me. I know it all.”
She finally looks up at him, tipping her head back, and even though she is so much smaller in stature than he is, her presence is somehow more powerful.
She’s barely tested the limits of the magic she controls and for the first time… that scares the fuck out of me.
