Page 21 of Dreams and Dragon Wings
My God is angry. And beneath the weight of His fury, something sparks within me.
My own.
“Why have you forsaken me?” I shout, letting my voice swell, allowing it to pass through the dome of magic arcing overhead to echo off the walls. The ceiling. “You areNa’Eruvand I have cried out to you since I was a boy. I have begged you countless times to take this pain from me.”
Breath rattles through my lungs as I stare at the shadows dancing across the floor. As I watch them blur.Naei. I refuse to cry.
“You can do all things,” I rasp, hating the way my voice shatters around the words. “But you’ve let me suffer. You… you let him…” I clench my eyes shut, trying to block out my memory of that day.
But I can’t stop it any more than I can stop the sun from setting.
With the next thud of my heart, I am no longer kneeling in the Vault of Kings but standing on the island in the center of the Living Waters. The crystalline waves lap against the shore, sparkling beneath the afternoon sun.
Naei.
It is the eve of my eighteenth birthday.
Please.
I am seventeen again.
Stop.
Foolish. Reckless.
Screaming.
I have done the unthinkable. I have tried to weave with magic that is not mine to weave—to draw power from the very source of all magic. Magic that is forbidden. Magic that I am not strong enough to bear.
Tears sting my eyes in the then. In the now.
I was desperate.I was out of time.Aurelia.I had to break the curse for Aurelia.
But I wasn’t strong enough.
I relive that day all over again as the magic from the Living Waters shreds me from within, tearing me apart piece by piece. I feel my body fraying. Unraveling.
I scream. In the then? Or in the now?
I am in both at once.
Through the haze of my pain, through the veil of my tears, I see him. My father. He flies toward me as fast as his wings can carry him, with my aunties and mother flitting close behind. The Corona blazes above his head, a halo of fire and fury.
Naei!
I don’t want to see what comes next. I don’t want to watch it happen again. But I can’t escape. My mind makes me watch—
As Valor, King of Drakara, crashes onto the sand beside me.
As he takes the magic from my broken body into his own.
As he saves me.
As he dies.
My pained sob reverberates through the vault. I come back to myself, back to the here. The now. Consumed by my despair. Choking on my sorrow.
The Aether wraps around me, firm and secure—as warm as any father’s embrace.
