“We are not what others make of us, K’haram. I am not my sister’s abuse, and you are not Arwan’s ruination. But we will be their downfall.”
“Always a dreamer at heart,”K’haram chuckles.“It’s one thing I’ve loved about you so dearly.”
We’re reaching the edge of Wrahta now, the frozen lands giving way to the vastness of the sea. As far as I can see, it stretches with no end, just an obscure canvas of undulating waves and hidden depths. K’haram plunges deep, like an arrowhead spearing toward the waters, and I squeal in exhilaration. He brushes the tips of his wings in the waves, disrupting their predetermined motion and flicks the icy water at me. Droplets land on my fevered flesh, their iciness a stark contrast to the flames that gauze me where my limbs curl around his gargantuan torso.
“When you were born, I felt your soul’s calling from half a realm away. It tore through the shackles wrapped around my being as if they were nothing, just flimsy threads of yarn. Centuries of oppressive blood magic dissolved into air, finally giving me freedom.”
My fingers brush against the scales at the base of his neck, scratching the hardened skin between the blades of flesh. He purrs like a contented feline, and I can’t help but giggle at the image that flashes through my mind, that of his majestic dragon form rolling around in the grass, expecting belly rubs and uprooting tree trunks with the excited flick of his tail. A glimpse of Chip’s joyful puppy face pops before my mind’s eye, and I sigh, thinking of the friend I lost so many years ago. If Eimirya does exist, I hope he’s eternally chasing sticks and getting all the love I did not have the chance to give him.
“But even my freedom came with a cost, Omri. That of my kin. Another stain upon my heavy soul. An enraged Arwan made it his mission to hunt down every dragon down to the last one. He didn’t want another weapon of mass destruction. It was punishment for my disobeyance. He bathedImiryion in the blood of my ilk, leaving me alive on purpose. To roam these lands alone. A reminder of the consequences of my rebellion against him.”
I can’t fathom how that must feel. To be the last one left standing. The guilt of surviving your entire species, decimated because you stood up to your abuser.
“It wasn’t your fault,”I say in a meek voice.
“It wasn’t, yet it was, Omri. It was my freedom against the lives of many.”
“You didn’t know, K’haram. And nobody should ever have to make such a choice.”A shadow of familiarity edges closer to the forefront of my brain. We’ve had this conversation before. Many times over.
“So you keep saying, Omri,”K’haram answers, confirming my suspicions. The finality in his tone is heartbreaking. I won’t convince him otherwise. I was not able back then, as Aeon, and I won’t succeed now either. So I change the subject.
“Tell me about myself. What kind of person was I? How was I as a little boy?”
“I didn’t present myself to you as a child, Omri. I was afraid to attract Arwan’s rage upon another innocent soul. I watched over you from afar, talking to you through the soul bond. I was your imaginary friend. The soothing voice you needed when the world was too rough, when the monsters were too real.”
A memory swims just below the surface, of a bright little boy with dark coppery curls and hazel eyes, brave and wild, running free in the heart of a dark forest and mock-fighting fictional foes with a sword carved from old wood.
“Life was not kind to you. You didn’t escape the curse of this realm either. Your mother loved you very much, but you lost her way too soon. Killed at the hands of petty thieves that stumbled one night into your small house at the edge of the village where she had found a haven.”
Phantom limbs of fear curl under my chest, the sheer terror and despair of a child hugging the lifeless body of his mother, his little fingers clinging helplessly to scraps of clothing spattered in blood.
“They found you after days, half dead from starvation, still clutching her decaying body. Xeys took you in—the blacksmith of the village and the one male that truly loved your mother, even after her death.”
A lone tear wets my cheek, and I catch it at the edge of my chin.
“That’s when I first spoke to you, you know. Gently coaxed you into hanging on, into surviving. I should have come for you then, I know I should have, but I feared Arwan finding you through me too greatly,”he sighs.
“By then I was the last dragon left. A vestige of a once-revered race. It was out of selfishness that I stayed away. Your safety meant I still had one connection left in this world.”
“When did you meet Aeon in person, then?”I ask in an attempt to steer him out of his guilt-infused spiral. No being should carry that much remorse, not one as inherently good as K’haram. He might not be faultless, but who ever is? We all dabble between the lines, forever dancing back and forth between our morality and sins. Granted, there are many monsters in Imiryion, but my dragon is not one of them.
“Upon your coming of age. You were already a troublesome young male, banding your group of rebels and delivering your own brand of justice. Targeting thieves and murderers, descending upon them like chimeras in the dead of night. Taking back what was stolen from the unfortunate.”
A layer of pride softens the edges of his voice as he soars up high, leaving the sea at our backs, taking the flight back to Sangeries.
“You were practically joined at the hip with Kreyos, that exasperating boy, your best friend. Llyr, Dhabvar, and Alektriona were there too, wreaking havoc alongside you.”
I still find it shocking to hear the names of beings I have cursed all my life—wrongly accusing them of being unfeeling deities when all they were was other victims of deceit. They were never the villains I believed themto be. Just normal people making the ultimate sacrifice. Everything I ever thought I knew in this existence has turned on its head. And a dormant part of me, quietly awakening, feels a terrible sense of loss and longing for their presence.
“You threatened to turn turtle the whole of Imiryion looking for me, and I–I finally relented. Was already worried that your vigilante ways would attract the wrong kind of attention. Arwan’s. But they didn’t. No, that happened much later. When she came into our midst.”
“You don’t like Killian, uhm, Akaori, I mean,”I say with a soft realization.
“I did not care for the vampire, no. And she did not care for me either. But there was mutual respect, even if hidden underneath thinly veiled threats.”
“So not much has changed,”I laugh out loud, the sound carrying on the wind.
“She was a force to be reckoned with, and reckon you did. I knew what was coming even before you realized it. Felt the way your heart would speed up at the mere mention of her name. You desired her so badly and yet despised that desire with absurd intensity. Many thought you’d kill each other, but the line between hate and love is so precarious, its edges so blurred, sometimes what burns inside oneself so ragefully is the mirror image of what they think it is.”
