Page 191 of The Shattered Rite
She was slipping.
Her strength—the fire inside her—ebbing with every heartbeat.
“Garic…” she rasped. “Why… Malric… why…”
Vaeronth’s voice answered, steady as stone.
You will not die here. Not like this.
Tears burned her eyes.
“Vaeronth…”
You are Flame-chosen. Dragonbonded. MINE. I will not let you fall.
She pressed her face to his scales, her skin feverish, her breath thin. The clouds spun around her. The cold seeped in.
“Not yet…” she pleaded with herself.
Below them, the kingdom fractured into chaos. Smoke spiraled from the castle towers. Shadows moved like ants. She felt the weight of the Flame’s choosing heavy in her chest—a burden she didn’t ask for. A crown she’d never wanted. A prophecy fulfilled in the most horrific way.
And all she could think was:I don’t know how to survive this.
She didn’t know how far they had flown. Minutes. Miles. A lifetime. Behind them, the castle was a blot of stone and shadow. She could still see the flames rising from one tower. She could still feel Garic's command ringing in her chest.
Run, Dragonrider.
Was he still fighting? Was he alive? She didn’t know. And the not-knowing crushed something deep inside her.
“He’ll live,” she murmured, like a spell cast into the sky. “He has to.”
Vaeronth said nothing. He flew steady, wings slicing through cloud and silence.
Below them, the realm spread out; fractured, beautiful, unknown.
The Flame had chosen her.
But what if the crown fell?
What if her blood marked not the beginning of her reign, but the end of an era?
Eliryn closed her eyes. Her fingers curled weakly against Vaeronth’s side.
I will not let you fall,the dragon said.This isn’t the end.
And in that moment, with the sky around her and the world unraveling beneath, Eliryn did not feel victorious.
She felt like a question the gods hadn’t finished answering.
Chapter 31: The Sky Remembers
“Even the wounded can rise above the ruins, if only to see what the earth forgets.”—Dragonrider Chronicles
The sky opened around them, vast and silent.
Vaeronth flew higher than the clouds now, wings cleaving through the last bands of molten gold as if he could outrun the horizon itself. The wind roared past Eliryn’s ears, but it couldn’t drown the sound of her own breathing—ragged, thin, and wet with blood.
She lay flat against him, pressed low along the ridged sweep of his spine, her trembling fingers curled tight into the warm seams between his scales.
