TWENTY-TWO
ARAX
The realization crashes through the building pressure like cold water on flame.
She’s unconscious. Vulnerable. Unable to choose. Whatever I might do to her—for her—in this state would be action taken without her agreement. It would be claiming without consent. It would be precisely the kind of violation that destroyed the dragon-witch relations during the purges I helped execute centuries ago.
I can’t. I won’t.
The withdrawal is physical agony. My hand comes away from her face like I’m tearing flesh from bone, every nerve howling at the separation. My domain surges in frustrated fury, power seeking an outlet and finding none. The protective impulse doesn’t diminish—if anything, it intensifies, fueled by the denial of its preferred solution.
I need to leave.
I can’t leave her undefended.
The contradiction locks me in place, caught between the imperative to stay and the imperative to flee. Every heartbeat stretches into eternity. Every breath carries the scent of her,feeding the hunger I can’t satisfy. Every moment of stillness is a victory that costs more than the last.
The shelter wall meets my fist before I consciously decide to strike.
The stone cracks.
Pain lances up my arm—immediate, clarifying, useful. I draw back and strike again, feeling knuckles split and bone bruise and the bright, clean agony of physical damage replacing the nebulous torment of unsatisfied need.
Again.
Again.
The wall accumulates evidence of my violence—impact marks, blood smears, fragments of stone that scatter across the floor with each successive strike. My knuckles are a ruin of torn flesh and exposed bone. The pain is exquisite, absolute, demanding every shred of attention I can spare.
The mating urge recedes.
Not vanishing—nothing short of actual mating or actual death will eliminate it—but subsiding to manageable levels. The physical damage has given my domain an outlet, redirecting the savage need into self-inflicted harm that carries no risk of violating her unconscious form.
I’m bleeding extensively by the time I stop.
Dragon regeneration will address the wounds within hours, but for now, my hands are useless—mangled collections of split flesh and damaged bone that can’t grip a weapon or form a fist or reach toward her face with treacherous gentleness.
Good.
I return to my station against the stone, cradling my destroyed hands against my torso, watching her with undiminished focus but now with physical barriers between impulse and action.
Dawn arrives without fanfare.
The Reach doesn’t mark time with sunlight—the gray pall overhead simply brightens by degrees until the oppressive darkness becomes merely oppressive dimness. I track the transition through changes in the ash drift visible through the shelter’s entrance, through the subtle shifts in magical pressure that accompany the Reach’s diurnal cycles.
My hands have healed to functional status. Not fully repaired—the knuckles are still tender, the skin newly formed and sensitive—but capable of gripping, striking, performing the basic functions combat requires.
Tanith hasn’t woken.
Her condition has stabilized. The dangerous pallor has retreated to normal ash-touched grayness, her pulse has slowed to an acceptable rhythm, her breathing has deepened into genuine rest rather than resource-depleted collapse. The crisis has passed—for now—but the underlying truth remains unchanged.
Then find another way.
The directive emerges from the strategic portion of my mind that hasn’t been entirely consumed by obsession. If mating isn’t currently available as a solution, other approaches must be identified. Eliminate the threats that force her to use her power. Reduce the frequency and intensity of battles. Create conditions where her reserves can recover rather than depleting further.
Hunt the Cardinal.
There is precedent for the bond, if it comes to that. Izan Sulien of the Cinder Flight mated a blood witch three centuries ago and survived both the physiological consequences and the political fallout—I know of him the way I know of any sovereign whose decisions created operational complications for the Ashen Flight. His witch, Alerie Narayan, is still alive, as is he. The bond stabilized her power rather than consuming it. The information is relevant. I file it.
