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Magic so similar to mine calling out to me.

Notquitethe same as mine, but definitely possessing an undeniable connection.

And then the awful realization hit me along with the identification. “My grandfather… he… he created this with Draco. That beast didn’t just preserve memories that included what happened to my grandfather, they were complicit in making this together.” I screwed up my face, not liking where I could sense this leading. “They were as one. Together.”

“They were,” Cornelius confirmed. “They were lovers and dangerous allies.”

I staggered back a step. “No. He wouldn’t… he wouldn’t do that… any of that… with a monster like Draco.”

Kai grasped my arm in an effort to ground me. “Is that why Malrik was killed by the True Celestials? His alliance with Draco?”

“Yes. However, I do not know the details of such an alliance. It was kept from me. It was kept from most True Celestials, in fact. I believed I’d be able to discover what was kept from us—and the Titanus family—through accessing the memories in this stone.” He looked at me. “Alas, when I approached your father, Zepharion, and informed him of the existence of this object, he wanted nothing to do with it. It can only be accessed by Celestial magicandTitanus blood.”

“He knew about this?” I bit out. “My father knew Malrik and Draco were aligned?”

“Given how he reacted with so much disgust when I broached this subject matter with him, I suspect he knows much more than that.”

“Motherfucker,” I snarled, fisting my hands, and only just managing to leave it at that.

The itch to shift into dragon form and let loose was creeping up dangerously.

“V, I can do this for you. If it’s too much, I’ll view the memories. We’ll just access them with some drops of your blood and I’ll take it from there with Cornelius,” Kai offered.

I shook my head and took a beat, before looking out at them both in turn. “We came here to do this, let’s do it. No more preamble. No more guesswork or assumptions. Let’s pull out the truth from that thing.”

“As you wish,” Cornelius said, handing out the stone to me.

I took it, fighting against the part of me that didn’t want to know now.

I placed it on my palm like he had.

I jolted as the crimson flecks began glowing vibrantly at my touch.

“How much blood?” I asked Cornelius. “Drops, right? Like Kai said?”

“He is correct, yes. Merely a couple of drops.”

I called my talons forth on my free hand and sliced into the skin of one of my fingertips. Withdrawing them, I then closed my hand around the stone, smearing the blood on it.

In the next moment, Cornelius’ power flared, then his silver glow was encompassing all three of us. “Brace yourselves. This can be a disconcerting undertaking.”

The words had barely been communicated when a flash of black and crimson light exploded, feeling like it was sucking us in.

I grunted as a surge of uncomfortable energy ripped through me, and in the next second, our surroundings disappeared.

I blinked,the stone gone from my palm, Kai and Cornelius no longer there with me either.

I could feel my presence, my body, but I couldn’t see it, much like in most dreams I’d had. I was just an observer, incapable of impacting what materialized all around me.

I found myself in a volcanic chamber. I could feel draconic magic all around me paired with the might of Celestial power. It had a similarity to Ariana’s, except there was something more there too, something that tasted vile—the toxicity of a depth of darkness I’d never experienced before.

Heat rolled through me. An uncomfortable heat that was unlike dragon fire, or even that which emanated from the volcanic surroundings.

I took in the obsidian walls of the chamber that glimmered with molten veins.

And then I saw the Beast, the one I’d only heard about before, and seen pictures of from texts I’d been given as part of my studies at Maven Academy. Never in the Dracoryn Realm. Now I knew why. Why such a prominent figure hadn’t been spoken about once when I’d been growing up.

I took the bastard in.