Serina
I couldn't stop staring at my arm.
The mark glowed beneath my skin like trapped moonlight, shifting when I moved. It didn't hurt anymore and the burning had faded to a warm pulse.
Verath stood with his back to me, staring at the obsidian pillar like it had personally offended him. His shoulders were rigid, hands clenched at his sides.
"So," I said, because the silence was worse than his anger. "What happens now?"
"Now?" He didn't turn around. "Now you go back to your dying brother and discover that soul-bonds don't work like wishes from children's stories. Magic requires equivalent exchange. You want him healed? The bond will take something from you in return."
My stomach dropped. "What kind of something?"
"I don't know. Years of your life, maybe. Your memories. Your ability to feel joy." He finally looked at me, and his expression was carved from stone. "The bond isn't generous, girl. It's a contract written in desperation and sealed in blood. It doesn't care about fairness."
"But it will save him?"
"Probably. If we don't both die first." He moved past me toward the tunnel entrance, his footsteps impossibly silent for someone his size. "Come on. Standing here won't change anything."
I scrambled to my feet, grabbing my coat before it took me a minute to get what he said. "Wait. Die? What do you mean die?"
"I mean the Council spent four hundred years making sure creatures like me stayed buried." He paused at the tunnel's mouth, silver eyes catching the light. "The moment they sense dragon magic active in their precious empire, they'll send everything they have to eliminate the source. Which is now you."
The weight of that hit me like a physical blow.
"But I'm Nullborn. I don't have magic. How would they even-"
"You didn't have magic." He gestured at my marked arm. "Now you're carrying a piece of my soul. That mark isn't decoration…it's a bridge. My power flows through you, which means you're no longer invisible to their detection systems."
I looked down at the glowing silver dragon wrapped around my forearm. It was strangely beautiful.
"The Luminous Pillars," Verath continued, starting up the tunnel, "monitor magical signatures across the entire continent. They're designed to detect unauthorized magic use…anything that doesn't flow from their controlled system. Dragon magic is about as unauthorized as it gets."
I hurried after him. "How long until they notice?"
"Already have, probably. The unsealing released a pulse that every Luminal within fifty miles felt in their bones." His voice echoed off stone. "We're on borrowed time."
"Then we run."
"To where?" He glanced back at me. "The Pillars' reach extends across all of Kaldris. There's nowhere in the civilized lands where their magic doesn't flow." He paused. "Well. Almost nowhere."
"Almost?"
"There are places their system doesn't touch. Dead zones. The Scorched Wastes, for example. It's too barren to bother controlling. But those regions are uninhabitable for a reason." He kept climbing. "We'd be trading execution for starvation."
My lungs burned as I struggled to keep pace. The tunnel seemed longer going up than it had coming down, and Verath moved like gravity was optional.
"You keep saying 'we,'" I panted. "Like you're stuck with me."
"I am stuck with you." He didn't sound happy about it. "Soul-bonds work both ways. Your life is tethered to mine now. If you die, I feel it. If you're in danger, I'm compelled to protect you." He said it like he was describing a disease. "The contract won't let me abandon you, even if I wanted to."
"Do you? Want to?"
He stopped so abruptly I almost crashed into his back.
"Four hundred years," he said quietly, not turning around. "I've been sealed for four hundred years. Do you understand what that means? Everyone I knew is dead. The world I helped build is gone, replaced by this—" He gestured vaguely upward, toward the city above. "This hierarchy that treats people like commodities. And the first person to wake me is a desperate child who doesn't even know what she's done."
The words should have stung. Instead, I felt something else. Sympathy? No It was recognition.
"I'm nineteen," I said. "Not a child."
"You're nineteen and you have the magical education of a newborn." He resumed walking. "Same thing."
"Then teach me."
That made him stop again. This time he did turn, and his expression was unreadable.
"Teach you?"
"You said I have your power now. That makes me dangerous to the Council, right?" I held up my marked arm. "So teach me how to use it. How to fight. How to actually do something with this bond instead of just waiting to die."
For a long moment, he just stared at me.
Then something that might have been respect flickered in those silver eyes.
"You really don't know when to quit, do you?"
"Can't afford to."
"Fine. I'll teach you. But first—" He started climbing again. "First, we save your brother. Then we figure out how to survive the next twenty-four hours."
We emerged into Old Ashfall just as dawn was breaking. The sky had shifted from black to deep purple, and the first factory bells were starting to ring in the distance.
Verath pulled up his hood, hiding his face. In the dim light, he could almost pass for human if you ignored the way he moved, fluid and predatory, and the faint shimmer of scales visible at his collar.
"Your brother," he said. "Where?"
"Boarding house on Cinder Street. Third floor." I hesitated. "You're really going to heal him?"
"The bond demands it. You asked for him to be saved; the contract will enforce that term." His jaw tightened.
We moved through the waking Lower City, staying to shadows and alleys. People were starting to emerge. No one looked twice at us. In Ashfall, everyone was too busy surviving to notice their neighbors.
"You there! Stop!"
I guess I spoke too soon.
Two guards stood at the mouth of the alley ahead—Luminal Guard, judging by the blue-and-silver armor and the way they carried themselves like they owned the air they breathed. Both were young, maybe mid-twenties, with the posture of C-Class Common who'd clawed their way into military service.
The taller one pointed at me. "Show us your arm. Now."
Verath's hand closed around my wrist. His grip was gentle but immovable. "Easy," he murmured. "Don't react."
"We're looking for a magical disturbance," the shorter guard said, hand on his sword hilt. "There was an unauthorized activation in this district last night. Every citizen gets checked."
My heart hammered. The mark on my arm pulsed with light beneath my sleeve.
"We haven't seen anything," Verath said, his voice smooth and unremarkable. He'd done something to it. He sounded human. "We're just heading to work."
The tall guard's eyes narrowed. "I didn't ask what you've seen. I said show us your arms."
"Is that really necessary?" Verath's tone stayed pleasant. "We're already late, and—"
"Show us your arms."
The mark flared hot. I felt something building in my chest… power that wasn't mine demanding to be released.
Verath's grip tightened in warning.
"Of course," he said calmly. "One moment."
He released my wrist and stepped forward, and I saw his hand move to his belt…except there was no belt. There was nothing. Just Verath moving with deliberate slowness as the guards watched, and then—
Silver light exploded from his palm.
It wasn't fire. Wasn't lightning. It was pure force, compressed and directed, and it hit both guards like a battering ram. They flew backward, crashing into the alley wall with sickening cracks.
Neither of them got up.
"Run," Verath said.
I didn't need to be told twice.
We sprinted through the Lower City, taking random turns, ducking through markets and climbing over walls. My lungs screamed and my legs burned, but Verath didn't slow down and I refused to be the one who gave out first.
Behind us, bells began to ring. Alarm bells.
"They're calling reinforcements," Verath said, not even winded. "How far to your brother?"
"Two blocks!"
We burst onto Cinder Street.
I took the stairs three at a time, Verath right behind me, and threw open the door to our room.
Aden was still asleep, curled under his thin blanket, breathing in shallow gasps.
"Move," Verath said, pushing past me.
He knelt beside Aden's mattress and placed one hand on my brother's chest. Silver light, the same light that had marked my arm, spread from his palm, sinking into Aden's skin like water into sand.
Aden's eyes flew open. He gasped, back arching, and for a horrible second I thought we were too late.
But then color returned to his face. Just like that. His gray skin flushed pink.
I watched, frozen, as my dying brother became whole.
When the light faded, a silver mark glowed on Aden's right palm smaller than mine. A dragon's claw print.
"What?" Aden stared at his hand, then at Verath, then at me. "Rina? What's happening? Who is—"
"No time," Verath said, standing. "The Guard will be here in minutes. We need to move."
"Move where?" I demanded. "You said there's nowhere to run!"
"I said nowhere in the civilized lands." He moved to the window, glancing down at the street where armored figures were already appearing. "The Wastes are three days' travel. 4 tops. If we can reach them before the Luminals catch us, we might survive long enough for me to teach you how to not get us both killed."
Then I heard the sound of boots on stairs.
"Rina," Aden said, his voice stronger than I'd heard in months. "What did you do?"
"Something stupid," I said. "Come on. We're leaving."