Page 101 of Dragon’s Rogue

“Silas,” she said. “You found me. Took you long enough.”

He took a step forward, spreading his arms. “You always knew it was going to end like this. You betrayed me, and you have to pay. Now, give me the idol.”

Blaze laughed at him. The darkness rose up inside her, and she crackled with power. Once more, they were children, playing in the forest, pitting their powers against each other. “Come and take it—if you can.”

He stepped forward again, circling, watching her carefully for telltale signs of which spells she would use against him.

He tried a quick summoning spell—the same one she’d used to grab the idol away from him. She countered it with a gesture.

“Really?” she said. “I was always better at that one than you.”

“You were never better than me. I taught you everything you know. I was preparing you to be my consort, and then your mother betrayed everything I’d worked for.”

He circled the other way, drawing ever closer to where she stood.

“You betrayed me,” Blaze said. Lightning flashed out of Silas’s hands in response. Blaze swept hers apart, deflecting it aside. It bounced off a stalagmite, leaving a scorch mark and the smell of ozone.

She went on, “You betrayed our coven.”

The chamber had stopped rumbling. Everything was quiet, except the sound of their footsteps and their breathing. It was as if Vyrkos was waiting for the outcome of this battle.

As if the whole mountain was waiting.

“You killed my parents,” Blaze continued relentlessly. “You destroyed everyone I cared about. You and… this.” She gestured at everything around them. “And for what?”

“Power, of course.” Silas was inching closer, his eyes on the idol in her hands. The fog had disappeared, seeping inside her, into her bones and her pores and her cells.

Filling her with darkness.

Filling her with power.

“But what’s it good for?” she asked. “What does it do, except destroy?”

“You don’t understand. You never understood.”

She stood there in the cavern, surrounded by more power than she could fathom. Power that had never been used for anything bright or good. Only to dominate and twist and destroy, turning in on itself, existing only to serve itself, never to help or heal or give.

Despite the darkness welling up inside her, she looked at Silas with clear eyes. His ruined, twisted face looked back at her.

He had been so handsome, once. The coven’s golden boy who could do no wrong.

Maybe that was the problem. Maybe mistakes and pain and consequences were the only things that bred compassion. “What happened to you, Silas?” she asked. “I looked up to you. I worshiped you. That power you wanted so badly has twisted you beyond recognition, inside and out.”

“This is your fault,” Silas hissed. “Do you know what you did to me, when you took the idol? The pain you caused? Every day it was away from me was a torment. You did that to me. You did this to me.”

He pointed to his scarred, twisted face.

Had she done that? Had she condemned him to ten years of torture?

Or had holding on to the idol’s power done that?

“I tried to save you,” she said. “I thought if I took the idol away, your real nature would reassert itself. That you’d be free.”

He laughed. He was walking back the other way, still wary, but the arc of his circle was getting smaller and smaller. She was at the wall, near the brass star, and she had nowhere to go.

“I was always free,” he said. “And this is my nature.”

“No.” She refused to believe it. “You cared about me.” All those years of playing together, of teaching and learning. He had to have cared.