Completely forgetting that he’d warned her to stay close, she charged forward. “Let me see them. Please.”
“Leave me to follow my young ones,” Frostborn bellowed. “Leave me in my pain!” Flames exploded through the stone structure, roaring and crackling with the intensity of the bowels of hell.
“Lyla! No!” Magnus threw up a wall of shielding magic, praying it had surrounded Lyla before it was too late. Keeping the Twanes behind him, he made his way forward and found her coughing and slapping at her smoking hair.
“I’m okay,” she told him. “Just a little singed.”
“I told ye to stay close to me, ye ken? Frostborn is mindless with pain.” He took hold of Lyla’s arm and gently tugged. “We should go. There is naught to be done now but honor their suffering.”
She jutted her chin higher and glared at him. “No. Hand me my guitar.”
“We must go,” he said, sensing a shift in the air that could only mean that either Bastion or Frostborn was inhaling and preparing to release another blast. “We must leave them with their grief.”
“I don’t do abandonment,” she said with exhilarating defiance while baring her clenched teeth. “Give me my guitar. Or the violin. I don’t care which, but give me one of them. Now.”
Cowering against the wall behind Magnus, Merriweather inched forward. “Which is which, my lady?”
“That’s the one.” She took the case from him, set it on the ground, and flipped it open. Removing the large, curvy, wooden thing with strings and a hole in its center, she looped the colorful, woven strap attached to it over her head and settled it across her shoulder so the instrument hung across her middle.
A subtle vibration shook through the cave, warning that another fiery blast was close to the point of explosion. Magnus reinforced the protective wall of magic still shimmering in place between Lyla and the depths of the lair where the dragon couple mourned the unbearable loss of their precious young.
“Lyla, we should go,” Magnus warned. His magic was the most powerful of all in the land—leastwise it had been until Kcirred fully immersed himself in darkness’s evil—but the energy of a mother’s pain from the loss of her young drew upon resources that only the universe and creation understood and could withstand.
“Shh…” She bowed her head and placed the fingertips of her left hand high on the wooden neck of the instrument, and with her other hand, stroked and plucked at the taut strings that stretched the length of the thing that she had called aguitar.
In the cave’s dimness, Magnus noticed something he’d not seen when she’d drawn the magical sounds from the apinlyre oreven when she’d touched the piano in her reality. A faint blue glow surrounded her, increasing in brilliance and strength the longer she held the instrument and coaxed the healing rhythm from it. It was her magic, the prophecy come to life, and revealing its wonder.
He turned, squinting as he tried to see deeper into the lair that the dragons had draped in the customary black shadows of their agony. But the curtains of grief blocked his view into the nursery. He prayed that those curtains would not block the sound.
The soothing music swelled louder, bathing the lair with Lyla’s pure, blue-white light. The ethereal, airy sound, as gentle and tender as a loving caress, washed through the space with the steady, lilting peacefulness of the sea. But then, along with the blessed music, he heardwords.
In her raspy, broken voice, Lyla softly sang along with the sounds she coaxed from the wooden instrument strapped across her. “Come with me, my little ones,” she sang with a rhythmic breathiness that made him strain to catch every word. “Spread your wings and fly. Come with me, my precious ones. Soar into the sky.” She coughed and swallowed hard, then continued, “Come with me, my sweetest dears. We’ve songs to sing and stories to hear. Open your eyes, my little ones. Hurry and take my hand. Let us spread our wings and fly. Over the sea and the land. Come with me, my little ones. Open your eyes and come with me.”
Tears streaming down her face, she pressed her lips tightly shut, tucked her chin, then sadly shook her head, frustrated that she could sing no more. The strength of what little voice she possessed had done all it could. Magnus’s heart and soul shuddered with the pain of her loss. Losing her ability to sing had hurt her just as badly as severing a limb from her body.
But even in her pain, she kept playing the soft, lilting tune on the guitar, the perfect dragon lullaby that poured compassion and healing light throughout the lair.
Then a gasping shriek shook the place, followed by a chorus of high-pitched chirruping that Magnus had feared they would never hear from Bastion and Frostborn’s lair—the sound of young ones, the excited chattering of braw, healthy hatchlings.
Lyla lifted her head, almost cringing as she looked at him. “Please tell me that sound is a good thing.”
He caught her up in his arms, awkwardly embracing her with the guitar caught between them. “It is a verra good thing, my love. Ye awakened the hatchlings. Ye brought them back from the sleep.”
“Come!” With his awkward, crippled gait, Bastion emerged from the depths of the lair. His great golden eye, the only one that had survived his countless battles, gleamed with joy, and his scarred muzzle glistened with dragon tears. “They have risen from the never-ending sleep. My children have returned!” Then he tucked his forearms to his chest and bowed his large, horned head low. “There are no words for our thankfulness. May the divine healer be as richly blessed as she has blessed us.”
“I’m so glad your babies are healed,” Lyla said while tucking tighter against Magnus.
“Let us meet the children of the Realm’s mightiest warriors,” Magnus said while gently nudging her along. She appeared to be somewhat shocked, even though he’d warned her of Bastion’s size. What she didn’t realize was that she had forged an eternal loyalty with dragonkind by what she’d done this day. “Come, my love. The younglings will be excited to meet ye.”
“Indeed,” Bastion said, waving them forward. “And Frostborn wishes to meet ye, Divine One, for another reason. Ye not only awakened Liesl, Mars, and Draystar, but ye healed mybeloved mate’s sight. She is actually able to see our young ones. Something she had never hoped to do.”
“I wish I could have healed you, too.” Lyla caught her bottom lip between her teeth, cringing as she halted. “I’m so sorry.”
Magnus tightened his arm around her, willing her to feel his adoration and pride. “Ye did much here today, my love.”
“Aye,” Bastion said. “Dinna apologize, Divine One. Ye not only healed my young ones and my mate, but ye healed my old heart.” He sidled over to the right and bowed again. “’Tis our honor to welcome both of ye to our nursery.”
Lyla unstrapped the guitar from around her and, while still holding tightly to Magnus’s arm, set it on the floor. Merriweather scurried forward and picked up the instrument. Then, offering a series of bows, he retreated from the nursery’s entrance.
