Dragon's Rogue

by Anastasia Wilde

  Blaze and the dragons invoked the four elements—air, fire, water and earth—and the corresponding compass directions, raising magic to power the circle, and to contain and focus the energy of the spell.

  Once the circle was activated, Thorne began the incantation for the first part of the severing spell—making the connections between Jack, Silas and the idol visible to their sight. Blaze felt the power rising, nausea churning in her stomach.

  Something didn’t feel right to her. She glanced at the dragons, but none of them seemed distressed. Nonetheless, the sense of wrongness grew, making her vision waver. She saw Jack’s life force, and the dark webbing of Silas’s power twined with it, connected to the idol but dormant, the glow of the spell cage interrupting the current.

  And then, for a split second, she saw something completely different. The spell cage rotting and disintegrating. A thick dark-yellow stream of energy passing through the east wall of the room like a rushing river, pouring into the idol.

  And from there, into Jack. Except she could barely see Jack’s energy at all now. It looked like…

  Her vision snapped back to normal, and she saw what she’d seen all along. The others hadn’t seemed to notice anything—they were focusing on Jack, as Thorne intoned a tricky part of the spell.

  But the feeling of wrongness was tearing her insides apart. The Seal on her back burned. Careful not to interfere with what Thorne was doing, she whispered a tiny spell to enhance her magical sight and see through illusion.

  Snap. Her magical sight shifted again, and she looked at the man lying on the floor. It wasn’t Jack. It had never been Jack. The face and voice and body were a complicated, detailed illusion.

  It was Silas.

  He’d taken Jack’s form and convinced them to carry him in here like a Trojan horse, and now he was pulling power directly from Vyrkos and Corwyn through the idol, gathering it into himself.

  Before she could warn anyone, Silas opened his eyes and flung out one hand. “Dianta mortenous capurna!”

  Power rolled through the room, augmented by the idol, freezing everyone in place. Thorne’s incantation stopped in mid-sentence, and the severing spell crumbled.

  The spell cage holding the idol disintegrated into a pile of dust, and its eyes opened and began to glow.

  Chapter 44

  Silas gazed around the room, his eyes lingering on Blaze. She drew in her breath in shock.

  She could see why he wanted to wear someone else’s face. His was twisted and deformed, the whole lower half looking like he’d been in a terrible accident.

  But his eyes were the same as she remembered, dark and arrogant, and so was his voice.

  He shook his head. “You should never have stood against me, Ariella.” It was a shock to hear her old name. “I was always smarter than you.” He held out his hand, and the idol floated into it.

  He always thought he was the smartest person in the room. And just like when he stood at the top of the ravine, he always overestimated his ability, and underestimated others. Had he forgotten he’d taught her this stasis spell himself—and how to counter it before it took hold of her?

  Or had he just thought she wouldn’t see it coming?

  “Apparently you’re not.” She stepped out of the stasis field. She could see the dragons fighting the spell, struggling like flies in amber, veins bulging, faces furious. She knew they had magical resistance, but Silas had Vyrkos pouring power into him.

  A Draken Lord with power over dragons.

  She was on her own.

  “Really, Silas,” she said, shaking her head in a way that used to infuriate him. “How many hours did you spend teaching me counterspells?”

  “Too many, I see,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter. The rest of the coven is already on their way. Now that I’m inside, the dragons’ wards won’t keep them out. And when they get here, your life will be forfeit, along with your pet dragons.”

  “Kill them,” the idol intoned. It was Vyrkos’ voice, and it made Blaze’s necklace shiver in fear. “The Keepers of the Seals. Kill them now, before they take the Seals to the tomb.”

  The dragons’ eyes went wide, and they redoubled their fight to free themselves and protect their mates. Blaze’s mind was racing. If Vyrkos was afraid they’d use the Seals, there must be a way for her to do it. But to leave Tempest and Rebel here, helpless…

  Or not. Behind Silas, she saw Rebel moving slowly forward. Rebel, the thief, who could adjust her body’s aura to resonate with magical fields, so they slid right past her.

  Blaze fought to keep her face impassive, so as not to draw Silas’s attention to Rebel. Silas raised his hands in an arcane gesture and began an incantation. Behind him, Rebel drew her knife, its blade glowing faintly with the magic that had allowed it to pierce a dragon’s hide. She pointed to Blaze, then to Silas, and then towards the door.

  Blaze nodded. They understood each other perfectly.

  In one graceful leap, Rebel jumped on Silas and ripped her knife across the back of his leg. The blade sliced the skin, making his leg buckle.

  In the first split-second he was distracted, Blaze activated her summoning spell. The idol jerked out of Silas’s hand and flew across the room, smacking into her palm so hard it stung.

  In the next split-second, she let loose a global dissolution spell.

  Silas overpowered Rebel and threw her across the room with inhuman strength. But he’d lost his concentration, and his stasis spell dissolved.

  Zane and Tyr dove for Silas simultaneously. Thorn flung himself at Rebel, getting in between her and the stone wall just before she slid into it headfirst.

  The idol twisted in Blaze’s hands. “I am Vyrkos, Lord of Draken, and I rule all Draken!” it thundered. “I command you to take your true forms! Attack the Keepers!”

  Blaze wrapped her hands around its mouth and eyes, but it was too late. Thorne—the closest to pure Draken—succumbed first, erupting into his dragon form with a roar of pain. He raised a claw to slash at Rebel, stopping himself just in time.

  Blaze could see the power of the mating bond fighting with Vyrkos’ command: the bone-deep instinct to protect his mate at all costs, warring with the need to obey his Lord. He writhed in agony, caught in an impossible dilemma.

  Tyr went next, wrenched into his dragon form with bone-breaking force. Zane barreled into Silas and the two of them rolled over and over, locked in combat.

  “Tyr!” Tempest, glowing white, screamed at him to Change back. He, too, writhed in pain, trying to follow both her command and Vyrkos’, and torn between the two.

  Zane was switching from dragon to human to bear and back again, unable to settle in a ‘true’ form. As Blaze wrestled with the idol, trying to keep it from wrenching itself out of her hands, Zane tried to keep a hold on Silas, who was hammering at him with wounding spells. Blood streamed from a dozen cuts.

  Zane turned human, his eyes finding Blaze. “Go!” he said. “Get the idol out of here!”

  With one last agonized look behind her, Blaze ran.

  She pounded down the stone hallway, the idol writhing in her hands like a live thing. Behind her, she could hear shouts and the trumpeting cries of dragons, and the roar of a grizzly bear in pain.

  Zane.

  Everything in her ached to turn around and run back to him, to fight by his side. But he was counting on her.

  Everyone was counting on her.

  The sound of her footsteps echoed down the corridor, and she cast a quick spell to muffle the sound. That, and the sound of her panting.

  She felt like she was running in slow motion, as if in a dream. Silas was behind her, and she had to get through the portal before he caught her.

  She knew what she had to do. Deep down, she’d always known. This was about her and Silas, about love and pain and trust and betrayal. About Corwyn and Maia.

  She carried that conflict in her hands and in her body. Corwyn, the idol, and Maia, the Seal.

  Maia had tried to take Corwyn do
wn, and she’d almost succeeded. Now it was up to Blaze to finish the job.

  Even if it finished her.

  Because she knew now what would release the Seal.

  Behind her, she heard the echo of footsteps. Too close. Was Silas tracking her magically? Or did he somehow sense the idol? It didn’t matter. As long as he was away from the others, as long as they were safe, that was all that mattered.

  There it was—the corridor to the portal room. She dashed around the corner, getting a second wind. Just few more yards.

  She could hear him getting closer.

  Blaze ran down to the dead end and turned. Silas was standing at the far end of the corridor. “There’s nowhere else for you to go,” he said. “Bring me the idol.”

  “Come and get it,” she said, and slammed her hand onto the sensor.

  The door to the portal room rumbled open. Blaze dashed inside and threw herself across the room to the lever, wrenching it to the side. The wall shimmered; the portal appeared, and Blaze ran through.

  The silence hit her like a blow. She stopped for a moment, then swung around to face the portal as she backed towards the brass star, the now-silent idol clutched in her hands.

  For a moment, all remained still. Then there was a sound like distant thunder, or an underground train heading towards the station. It grew louder, shaking the cavern, and bits of stone and dust rained down from the ceiling.

  As she watched, more cracks appeared in the floor, spiderwebbing over the dragon’s tomb. One huge eye opened a slit, and red light shot from it, refracting from the cracks.

  The idol blinked its ruby eyes, and the gold mouth smiled. “Maia,” it said in its deep voice. “I knew you would come.”

  Dark fog rolled out of its mouth and enveloped Blaze with its oily touch. “Give yourself to me, and we will be together forever.”

  This time, Blaze didn’t fight back. She stared into the idol’s smug golden face. “Go ahead, sucker,” she said. “Make me evil. It’s only going to help me do what I need to do.”

  Blaze opened herself and let the darkness come.

  The portal shimmered and Silas stepped through, his eyes burning red in his misshapen face.

  Chapter 45

  Zane stumbled through the corridors towards the portal chamber. Every hallway seemed miles long. His body was out of his control, changing from dragon to bear to human so fast he kept falling, crawling on his hands and knees, trying to walk on two legs as a bear.

  His bones broke and rebroke, shooting white-hot darts of pain through him every time he tried to take a step.

  But he had to keep going. He had to get to Blaze in time.

  His mind was filled with visions: Blaze lying hurt, dying from magic or a blade or the fiery breath of a dragon. In each one, he almost made it in time, failing at the last moment to save her, to protect her.

  He couldn’t fail again. She was his heart, his most precious treasure.

  Saving her was the only option.

  He managed to hold his dragon form for a minute or two, dragging himself through the hallways. But he was too big for the hallway to the portal chamber, and Changing to human cost him almost a full minute. He had bear paws and a bear head, but he was running down the hall, and the doorway to the portal chamber was open. He didn’t need the palm scan.

  The portal was closed, and he lunged for the lever. He couldn’t hold his shape; he went full-on bear again and now he was too big for the portal. He slapped the viewing panel with his huge paw while he focused on turning human.

  He couldn’t, he almost turned dragon instead, growing and squeezing against the walls of the room. Agony. Agony. He had to be small. He had to be soft and human and small and vulnerable.

  For her. For Blaze.

  Blaze faced down the man in front of her. He’d been chasing her for so long, and she’d been running. Now, finally, they were face to face.

  And she was strong. The idol had helped her remember all the things she’d learned, all the prices she’d paid.

  Dark spells. Dark powers, lying dormant inside her for this moment.

  “Silas,” she said. “You found me. Took you long enough.”

  He took a step forward, spreading his arms. “You always knew it was going to end like this. You betrayed me, and you have to pay. Now, give me the idol.”

  Blaze laughed at him. The darkness rose up inside her, and she crackled with power. Once more, they were children, playing in the forest, pitting their powers against each other. “Come and take it—if you can.”

  He stepped forward again, circling, watching her carefully for telltale signs of which spells she would use against him.

  He tried a quick summoning spell—the same one she’d used to grab the idol away from him. She countered it with a gesture.

  “Really?” she said. “I was always better at that one than you.”

  “You were never better than me. I taught you everything you know. I was preparing you to be my consort, and then your mother betrayed everything I’d worked for.”

  He circled the other way, drawing ever closer to where she stood.

  “You betrayed me,” Blaze said. Lightning flashed out of Silas’s hands in response. Blaze swept hers apart, deflecting it aside. It bounced off a stalagmite, leaving a scorch mark and the smell of ozone.

  She went on, “You betrayed our coven.”

  The chamber had stopped rumbling. Everything was quiet, except the sound of their footsteps and their breathing. It was as if Vyrkos was waiting for the outcome of this battle.

  As if the whole mountain was waiting.

  “You killed my parents,” Blaze continued relentlessly. “You destroyed everyone I cared about. You and… this.” She gestured at everything around them. “And for what?”

  “Power, of course.” Silas was inching closer, his eyes on the idol in her hands. The fog had disappeared, seeping inside her, into her bones and her pores and her cells.

  Filling her with darkness.

  Filling her with power.

  “But what’s it good for?” she asked. “What does it do, except destroy?”

  “You don’t understand. You never understood.”

  She stood there in the cavern, surrounded by more power than she could fathom. Power that had never been used for anything bright or good. Only to dominate and twist and destroy, turning in on itself, existing only to serve itself, never to help or heal or give.

  Despite the darkness welling up inside her, she looked at Silas with clear eyes. His ruined, twisted face looked back at her.

  He had been so handsome, once. The coven’s golden boy who could do no wrong.

  Maybe that was the problem. Maybe mistakes and pain and consequences were the only things that bred compassion. “What happened to you, Silas?” she asked. “I looked up to you. I worshiped you. That power you wanted so badly has twisted you beyond recognition, inside and out.”

  “This is your fault,” Silas hissed. “Do you know what you did to me, when you took the idol? The pain you caused? Every day it was away from me was a torment. You did that to me. You did this to me.”

  He pointed to his scarred, twisted face.

  Had she done that? Had she condemned him to ten years of torture?

  Or had holding on to the idol’s power done that?

  “I tried to save you,” she said. “I thought if I took the idol away, your real nature would reassert itself. That you’d be free.”

  He laughed. He was walking back the other way, still wary, but the arc of his circle was getting smaller and smaller. She was at the wall, near the brass star, and she had nowhere to go.

  “I was always free,” he said. “And this is my nature.”

  “No.” She refused to believe it. “You cared about me.” All those years of playing together, of teaching and learning. He had to have cared.

  “Caring is for the weak.” He moved ever nearer, watching her eyes, watching the idol. “You were weak like your mother.”

  “My m
other was stronger than you could ever imagine. She saved me.” Blaze stared into his demon-red eyes. “And now I’m going to save everyone else.”

  Silas sneered, “You can’t stand against me. I know your true name. I can use it to make you do anything I want. I can make you strip naked and dance for me. I can make you kill that dragon you’ve been whoring it up with.”

  He moved closer, his voice dropping to a whisper. “I can rip your soul from your body and consign it to eternal torment. Nothing but pain and agony for eternity.”

  He threw his arms open, his black robe spreading like the wings of a dark angel. His voice rolled out through the cavern. “Ariella Rowan, I know your True Name, the name that rules your inner self. Moonshadow of the Silver Raven coven, I call your name. Kneel before me…”

  And Blaze began to laugh.

  Silas stopped, shocked.

  “I stopped being Ariella Rowan a long time ago,” she said. “I am no longer Moonshadow. In pain and in darkness, I cut my ties with the Silver Raven coven and remade myself.”

  She took a step forward.

  “You no longer know my True Name. But I know yours.”

  It had been confided to her by a seventeen-year-old boy, when she was only eleven. When he’d taken her to the ravine and his flying spell had failed. She’d saved him, used that link to his inner self to lend him the power to heal himself, and traded the knowledge of her name for his.

  And he’d bonded to the idol with his true name.

  Blaze raised her arms. This moment had been barreling down on her for ten years, no matter how far she’d tried to run, how well she’d tried to hide.

  She’d always known it would come to this, even if it ended her. And it would.

  “Silas Turner, I call you by your True Name, Sunstar of the Silver Raven coven. With it, I sever all ties you’ve made with your soul and your spirit. I tear you from this magic talisman.”

  She could almost feel the cosmic rip as Silas was torn away from his connection with the idol. Silas dropped to his knees, his back arching in pain.

  “I tear you from Corwyn the Sorcerer. I tear you from Vyrkos, Lord of the Draken…”