Page 170 of Memories Like Fangs
Crack.
Crack.
Crack.
When the cracks finally shattered, something unleashed, shaking, andwrathfulbroke free.
“ENOUGH!” I roared. So deep. So primal. So raw. I heard my own ears pop and knew it had shattered everyone else’s.
The cave shook. The tremors made Lilah unsteady. The others staggered or tumbled backwards. Each of the sapphires all around flared with a blinding light that looked like the sun and all the stars in the sky had been trapped within the crystals. I summoned the power within the sapphire spire I was leaning on, the rest of the sapphires in the cave, and every ounce of power I had within me. Impossibly, the crystals brightened. Their trembling grew. Their humming became so loud that I thought I could start to hear voices singing within. They soon reached a fever pitch.
Then, they fractured.
Sapphire after sapphire along the walls, ceiling, and the floor exploded. The sound was as deafening as my roar, rippling out in waves all around. Instead of falling or simply arcing in a barrage toward Lilah like I had done to the hunters in the cavern as a teen, thousands of fragments flew toward me. They began to turn and swirl fast as they were suspended and glowing. The shards formed constellations around me as more joined in, like I was the center of a galaxy purely made of my family’s legacy. The air between them glimmered. The humming from generations past deepened, each note strung between the sapphires like stardust tethering a dream. The power of the sapphires and my bloodline embraced me with arms of energy, lifting me into the air like they were my wings.
In a moment where I felt like I should be coming undone, I felt like I was being made whole.
My crystal hands and arms started to glow. Delicate and radiant as new frost in the early morning light, fine patterns with the faint appearance of veins but the sharp corners ofa geometric design spiderwebbed up my arms and shoulders toward my neck and chest. My toes all the way up to my thighs hardened and crystallized like my arms. My chrysalis magic bloomed and flowed outward, surrounding me and the crystals in a vibrant kaleidoscope of light and color.
The surrender was so sweet and soft. It was too easy to just let the magic take hold. The cocoon sealed around me, a perfect crystal of living, dancing light and brilliance. For a beat, that was my world and nothing more. It was like the existence between breaths you didn’t know you were holding. Between heartbeats and blinks. Between sleep and awake, darkness and light. Between death and rebirth.
From deep within that silence, I felt it.
My limbs extended and expanded. Every part of me grew to exceed my full dragon form’s size and even my father’s full dragon form’s size. My four pellucid stained glass dragonfly wings reformed and unfurled into two vast, arching wings. My tail lengthened, its curve becoming even more graceful and deadly at the same time as the crystal spikes that had only lined my spine multiplied to take up more of my tail and be more movable. My talons lengthened, too, into sculpted gemstone swords on each of my huge fingers. More rows of fangs formed in my muzzle, and my crown of crystals also grew and added more sharp towers of stone. When I burst from my chrysalis, there was no glitter or sparks raining down. It was stardust, rays of stormlight and lighting, and power so strong the air folded in on itself.
My size couldn’t be understated as I towered high above. I had to be at least fifty feet long from nose to the point of crystal at the end of my tail, making me take up a large portion of the cave. The mane of my locs going down my long neck had lost its color, becoming white like my old scales. My scales now gleamed in the same peachy-pink hue of my Mom’s ring and the sapphirethat had first called to me with rainbow shimmers of the other hues of sapphire flickering in between. What made light refract onto the now-empty cavern was my wings. What I had thought were feathers were actually shards of sapphire. They were razor-edged, glinting with kisses of rainbow light. They were a cascade of colors in no particular order, layered in perfect symmetry on each wing to mimic the grace of a large bird while carrying the weight of a weaponized storm. Every crystal of my tail, crown, and talons was my family’s sapphires. I was truly the embodiment of their magic.
I used to be so afraid of vengeance and killing. I worried that it would consume me. I wasterrifiedthat killing would force me to bury what made me the soft, emotional, empathetic girl that my parents had raised and turn me into a monster who could never wash the blood away. I had long accepted that there were times when there was no other way. Even if it was justified or self-defense, I carried the guilt of ending someone’s story with me because their families didn’t deserve that grief. Lilah, ever the cheerleader of war, destruction, and death in the name of power, had once said that made me weak. She said I would never be the dragon who burned down villages for killing her own and stealing their riches. But she was wrong. She was so very fucking wrong. I wasn’t that little dragon-shifter-in-distress. I wasn’t a dragon who could turn off her feelings and kill for sport. I wasn’t a dragon who burned down villages for revenge. In this moment, I wasn’t even just Byrd Pierce anymore.
I was the culmination of every Pierce before me.
I was their wildest daydreams, manifested and realized.
I was pure crystal and ancestral magic.
I was a dragon who would do anything to protect her finest treasure: her fated mate, family, and friends.
Even if that meant putting Lilah’s head on the end of my tail.
This ends now.
Gasps from the entrance of the cave brought my attention to my family, who all stood there, both agog and aghast, with slack jaws and eyes about to fall out of their heads. Quinn released a litany of curses in Spanish while still maintaining so much reverence and awe in her voice that it seemed blasphemous. My preening purr under her admiration rumbled throughout the cave. Rosso couldn’t even cover Leah’s and Betty’s ears, he was in such shock. At least the girls weren’t paying any attention beyond the sight of the biggest dragon they had ever seen and would likely ever see.
“Shiny dragon!” Bryson giggled and clapped from his mom’s arms.
“This power…” Everett whispered. “It’s like when her body tried to manifest after her mom died. But this… this is so much more than that…”
“That’s because Byrdie isn’t just fighting with just her magic anymore,” Aunt Titi explained with twinkles of respect and pride in her eyes. “She has the strength of every dragon who came before her on her Mama’s side. Lilah had no business starting a fight in a dragon’s home enchantment, dead or not, but taking on acrystaldragon in her family’s horde? She signed her death certificate the moment she set foot in there.”
“And, while wearing heels and black? Thedisrespect.” Ayrie shook her head before she raised her voice to project to me. “Fuck her up, sis!”
Lilah’s laughter pierced through the conversation. It was so loud, high-pitched, and gleeful that it didn’t just scrape against the stone walls but dug under my skin until it struck a nerve. My rage was already clean, righteous, and boiling in my gut, but Lilah just poured gasoline on it. I turned on her, fangs bared in a snarl that set all of the sapphires on my body on edge.
She cackled, doubling over. “You really think going video game final boss is going to intimidate me? What is this, ladybug, your final kaiju form?”
Heat sparked behind my eyes, sharpening my vision with a burning light. Magic popped along my body like a fireworks show. It vibrated from my sternum alongside my growl that sent more tremors through the cave.
“Okay, okay, Byrdie-pie. I suppose I will entertain you.” Lilah straightened from where she stood at the far end, wiping her eyes of her tears from her laughter. She sighed as her enjoyment waned. “The dragonneverwins in fairytales, you know. So, how about a knightly sword to make this really appropriate?”
