Keeping a watchful eye on him, I breathed in the humid air, letting the wind drag its fingers across my skin.
Otherness.Whatever it was coiled around my ribs, drumming like a beast that only needed a reason to tear through the world.
And Zaicha was my sole target.
I’d burn through every thread she wove, tearing her apart from the inside. All to keep Finley safe.
But when I looked at Alastor, at the shadows slinking low around his boots, at the weight pressing his shoulders down, that fury in my chest only sharpened. Death circled him, and I didn’t have a blade sharp enough to cut it away.
For Finley, I’d go to war.
But how could I protect Alastor from something I couldn’t see or touch? Something he not only accepted but seemed to welcome?
Chapter
Thirty-Three
FINLEY
Guilt and expectationrose inside me.
Even with the sick, the dragons had always made their cave feel alive. Now it felt like stepping into a tomb.
The sounds that echoed off the stone walls were sorrowful and fragile. A grief-stricken sound born from wounds too deep to be mended. The scent of smoke clung to the walls, but beneath it all was the heavier weight of grief.
Kassidy stood by the barely moving cluster of dragas, arms wound tight across her chest. Her eyes only hardened when she saw me.
She didn’t have to say it. I heard it in the way she breathed.Even more died when I wasn’t here.
Willow waited, her binding magic pulsing faintly. She wouldn’t lead this time but would stand guard. To be a wall if Zaicha came again.
Or at least that was our hope.
Brenton was at my side. Always a step away.
His hand brushed mine, reassuring me in that steady way of his, before falling away to give me space to work.
I knelt beside the first dragon, a youngling whose scales were dulled from illness. Desperate to help, my magic fluttered against my palm. I let it flow. Slow and careful. I weaved it through shallow breaths, around stuttering heartbeats as Brenton guarded through our bond.
When the youngling lifted his head, he let out a small keening noise that settled around the confines of my ribs. I was healing him and making this little one feel better.
One by one, my magic touched the dragas, the younglings, the hatchlings. Easing minor wounds that should’ve healed on their own weeks ago. Stripping away the magic that pulled them closer to death. Willow’s power hummed quietly in the background, like a safety net ready to catch me should I falter.
But it didn’t take away the sting of grief that lingered over the male dragons my magic had killed over a week ago.
The further I reached into myself, trying to rectify something that couldn’t be righted, the more my magic stretched thin. My pulse thudded hard in my throat while my head throbbed with a pending headache.
“Lolli,” Brenton said.
“I can do more.” My words trembled, but I pushed harder.
“Finley,” Willow warned.
I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. I owed them this.
And that was when Zaicha struck.
She yanked in the pit of my magic. A cold wave washed through me.
