Heart of the Dragon

by Rachel Jonas

  So, I let them fall. Not that I had much choice in the matter. I was a mess, painfully aware of all the years we missed out on already, and how I would now have to endure the same hell he had. Only … there was no hope of him coming back. Not with his ring in the Sovereign’s possession. If he died now, with the talisman so far away, it was of no use to anyone. As of today, it was just a useless piece of jewelry in the hands of a malevolent ruler.

  My body shook with fear, with loss. A sound at the top of the stairs barely registered, even as Elise descended and joined me on the tile floor, letting her back rest against the front door. I couldn’t even speak to her, couldn’t open my mouth to explain how this happened, or why things turned out the way they did. Maybe because I didn’t even fully understand myself. However, the warmth of her hand when it slipped into mine made it clear she didn’t require any explanation.

  “You did something amazing today,” she said quietly, emotion clearly marking her tone when she wiped a tear from her eye.

  I shook my head, hearing her, but the words only registered as a lie.

  “No,” I breathed. “I failed. We were too late.”

  My hand squeezed in hers and my stomach turned. I questioned whether I might have gotten to him in time if I’d gone on my own, if I’d had a bit more faith in myself and hadn’t wasted time trying to round up others to help me fight.

  “Evangeline, you did all you could, which was more than most of us could have accomplished,” she assured me. “You brought him home.”

  Blinking water from my eyes, I scoffed. “And what good did that do? I brought him home to die?”

  “You don’t know that he won’t make it,” she reasoned.

  Only, I kind of did. She couldn’t feel what I felt. A small part of Liam lived inside me and it was almost nonexistent, which meant his soul was fading. So, if anyone knew he wouldn’t survive … it’d be me.

  I couldn’t say those words to her, though. Couldn’t force her to live with my reality. So, I remained silent.

  My dragon was already beginning to mourn. Her presence, so strong, was heavy, weighing me down even more than I already was, consuming me. But she was quiet. It was during our journey home that I realized how Liam was able to wake up, how he was able to injure Blaise gravely enough that it created a means of escape. It was that show of defiance my dragon displayed when I should have cowered beneath Blaise’s boot. While my human counterpart was full of fear, my dragon egged him on, practically begging him to do me bodily harm.

  Because she knew the stakes had to be raised in order to jar Liam back to consciousness.

  Our connection was weak, but still present. She knew what needed to be done to wake him and it worked. It provided me a chance to look into his eyes again, gave me the peace of mind knowing he’d at least know I came for him. At least he knew I tried.

  Even if I didn’t get to him in time.

  Hours passed and the sun had set quite some time ago. There was silence upstairs where Hilda and Dallas had been with Liam since we first returned. I felt like such a coward for not moving from this spot, for not going to him, but fear of what I’d find when I got there kept me bound.

  Elise sat beside me without a word. She hadn’t moved all day, just sat beside me while I went insane with grief on the inside. That feeling only peaked when the tether—the last thing I had to hold on to—severed completely, leaving me with a sense of loneliness I hadn’t even felt before I knew Liam existed. It was a jarring hollowness with no words in existence to describe it.

  There was no doubt he was gone.

  Slow steps trudged down the staircase and I didn’t lift my eyes. The looks on Hilda’s and Dallas’ faces would have been too much. Elise stood, but I didn’t.

  Couldn’t.

  So many regrets rested on my heart in that moment. Among them, the acknowledgement that, during that brief moment where he was aware that I was with him, while the Sovereign could have stricken us all dead, I should have just said the words I felt—I should have told Liam I loved him. I was so concerned with escaping, so concerned with staying focused on the task at hand that I missed the task at hand. Making sure he knew how I felt should have been the only thing that mattered.

  And now here I sat … wishing I could turn back the hands of time.

  Wishing I had one more chance to tell him he was the only important thing.

  Hilda stopped in front of me and a deep breath left her mouth as she began.

  “They tried to take his wings, but the amateurs the Sovereign sent in to do the job didn’t realize they only manifest when a dragon has shifted. So, from the looks of things, they dug around in his back for a bit, he resisted the shift, and they beat him within inches of his life for not cooperating. Of course, the witches must have played a part, otherwise, he would have cut the lycans down where they stood.”

  Bile crept up my throat as I envisioned the torture he must have endured, letting my eyes drift closed.

  “And as I’m sure you noticed, his healing mechanism never kicked in,” she sighed. “My first thought was that he’d been hexed, that some curse had been placed on him to keep his flesh from mending, but then …”

  Silence. Whatever she was going to say, the words got stuck in her throat.

  My eyes opened then, glancing up toward her when she stalled. She must have seen the plea within my gaze, because she went on.

  “Then … I found traces of candrenium. A bit in his hair, a little beneath his nails, which led me to swab the inside of his nose and mouth.” Her expression remained grave.

  “I’ve … I’ve never heard of it,” Elise stammered, nearly just as desperate as I was.

  “It’s an ancient herb,” Hilda explained. “Used on a concoction only a few of the oldest witches have the recipe to create. And it serves one purpose, and one purpose only.”

  “Hilda … please,” Elise begged as my aunt broke this all down gently, to avoid overwhelming us, I guessed.

  A sympathetic stare came my way, and then words. Words I never expected to hear. “Candrenium is the main ingredient in potion of sorts, one most effective in powder form. It’s the candrenium that gives it its brilliant, purple color.”

  When she said that … my heart nearly stopped, recalling the final moments as I followed Liam’s command and ran from the Sovereign and his men. I recalled the witch Blaise called forth blowing a purple substance in his face right before his body slumped to the snow.

  I focused on Hilda again as she went on.

  “I’m assuming the spell used was intended to take effect slowly. Based on Dallas’ retelling of the details you’ve given him, Sebastian must have wanted to … harvest … Liam’s parts first.” She nearly choked on that disgusting term the Sovereign used. “And then the spell would have made it easier to dispose of him when they were done. Or perhaps the purpose was to take some of the fight out of him,” she guessed.

  “Wait … first? First before what?” I asked, getting to my feet.

  She hadn’t even had time to answer this question when I asked another.

  “Is he alive?” The words were barely a whisper and, for so many reasons, I couldn’t believe I asked it, but I did. Maybe out of disbelief. Maybe out of desperation.

  Of course he wasn’t alive.

  The tether was gone.

  We were too late.

  But then I saw that shimmer of sympathy in Hilda’s eyes when she shook her head, and it made me wonder if I’d been wrong this whole time.

  “Yes,” she answered. “He’s alive.”

  I nearly sank back to the floor as I stumbled back, resting against the door for only the fraction of a second as I tried to let that sink in. But then, the next second, my eyes flickered toward the stairs and my only thought was that I had to go to him.

  However, when I took a step, a huge arm and half a body blocked me.

  Dallas.

  There was a look on his face that let me know Liam still wasn’t out of the woods. A look that meant
there was still something wrong.

  It was then that I went back over all Hilda had shared. Something stood out and I turned to her.

  “What did you mean?” I asked, shaking, doing all I could not to let it show how frantic I was on the inside, but there was no hiding it.

  “You … you said the Sovereign wanted to harvest parts from him ‘before’ … something, but … before what?” My voice was panicked, but I didn’t care. When it came to Liam, I didn’t care that it was always so abundantly obvious that he was the one thing in my life that could make me come undone.

  That dimness returned to Hilda’s eyes when our gazes locked, and my heart sunk at the sight of it. It wasn’t until a moment later, when she opened her mouth to speak, that I understood the cause of the remorseful look.

  “Before, the transition is complete,” she replied, sympathy weighing down each drawn out syllable. “Evangeline, he’s—”

  She stopped, and when she did, her gaze slipped from mine. In those fleeting seconds, I felt my knees get weak, long before the veil of secrecy had been lifted.

  And then, with the words that followed … Hilda drove a knife straight through my heart.

  “…They’ve turned him human.”

  To be continued…

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  “Heart of the Dragon”

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