Page 178 of The Shattered Rite
Waiting.
Eliryn trembled.
And then it struck.
Not an attack.
An anointing.
The tendril of flame touched her breastbone, directly above her heart.
And her body bowed.
Not from pain.
Frompower.
The force of it rippled through her bones like a low bell tolling inside her. Heat surged down her arms, her spine, her legs—suffusing her blood, saturating her skin. She felt her dragonbond snap taut—like a chain pulled tight across distance—and Vaeronth roared in her mind, not in fear, but in triumph.
Your soul is known.
Her runes burned to life across her skin, glowing along her throat, her shoulders, down her spine. Every mark the gods had left upon her since the day she’d first touched Vaeronth’s scales now shimmered with molten gold, as if lit from within.
And her eyes—
Her useless, sightless eyes flared open.
Not seeing as humans did.
Butburning.
Pupils eclipsed. Irises filled with pure, opalescent light, bright as the core of the sun.
The crowd gasped, some falling to their knees.
Her hair whipped around her as the air itself shifted, pulled toward her like gravity.
Her marks pulsed in time with her heartbeat.
Vaeronth’s voice rang steady through her:
You are the Flame's true chosen.
The Flame didn’t retreat immediately. It lingered, coiled around her like a lover’s hand upon the throat, as though reluctant to let her go.
When it pulled back, it did not choose another.
The Flamekeeper’s voice, when it came, sounded subdued. Reverent.
“Eliryn of Lirin’s Edge. The Last Dragonrider. The Flame has spoken.”
The tendril vanished.
And silence crushed the square.
Eliryn collapsed to her knees, gasping.
Not in weakness.
