Page 102 of Bound to the Shadow Queen
To save Draven?
I pieced together my conversation with Isren, along with all the things I had read.
It was true that the dragons didn’t take kindly to unexpected visitors, but according to this book, they were highly protective of their own…
That didn’t help me find him.
There had been something, something that felt inconsequential when I was skimming through this tome, looking for information about the wards. When I hadn’t known I was the dragon’s descendant or felt the residue of the power it left behind.
But now…
There. A small sentence, tacked onto a larger passage detailing the many ways in which a dragon’s hide was impenetrable.
Dragons guard their scales above all else because they serve as portals to the beasts themselves.
There were no drawings here like in the rest of the book, nothing to tell me where to find a scale or what one might look like. It was a fool’s hope, maybe one I had fabricated entirely in my mind…
Still, I raced into Draven’s rooms. I had only ever felt one thing that felt like the crystals, potent and chaotic and ancient andfamiliar.
My mother’s necklace.
I had just had my hands on every inch of his skin, run them along his clothes before he took them off, and it hadn’t been on him.
So it was here somewhere. I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath as I tried to sense any lingering echo of the power that was locked in the amulet. It was here. I could just barely sense it when I focused, like a whisper on the tip of my tongue.
I followed the faint sensation, stopping when I got to the carved midnight desk in his study. There.
My mouth went dry, my heart thundering an unsteady staccato like hail on a stained glass window.
I wrenched open the drawer, and there it was. With trembling fingers, I reached for the pendant, undoing the tiny clasp and prying it open.
A violet light flashed, strong enough to blind me if I hadn’t squeezed my eyes shut. When I opened them, the same strange prismatic shard awaited me, still glowing faintly like it sensed my presence.
Its surface was alive, shifting like molten glass, fractured facets catching on themselves until the colors bled together—violet, obsidian, silver, and gold. Light pulsed through it like a heartbeat, slow at first, then quickening to match my own. With every throb, the air thickened, charged, as if the shard breathed power into the room.
It was like nothing I’d ever seen before, and once again it called to me.
A summons in my blood, heavy as iron, certain as the turning of the stars. It pressed into me with the weight of generations, as though an ancient presence recognized me, claimed me. Dark, overwhelming, terrible in its enormity… and yet it felt like home. Like the echo of a voice I had never heard and had always known.
This time, I didn’t resist the pull. Instead, I gave into its siren song, touching my finger to the scale.
Then there was nothing but darkness.
Everly
I landedin the mouth of a cave.
The air was warm to the point of being hot, thick with the familiar mana that bled from the stone and the dark, patient and enormous.
Beyond the cave’s mouth, a narrow river drifted quietly through the trees, its surface glinting where the light touched it. The forest swayed with the breeze, branches brushing together in a low murmur, as if unaware of the heavy power gathered just inside the stone.
The serenity of it all was jarring against the suffocating weight that pressed from within the cave, like it was trying to test me with the intentional reminder that there was still time to walk away, to find my way back to safety.
Snow and blood spliced together in a flash, showing Nevara’s shining mana working in time with Draven’s relentless barrage of ice.
The monster shrieked, more in anger than pain, shooting out webbing that glittered like broken glass.
No. There was no turning back now. I had come here for a reason.
