Page 21 of Burned Alive to Be His

XVITAR

T he first thing I’m aware of is the pain.

It is a symphony of agony, a white-hot chorus conducted by my broken arm, my gashed side, and the deep, throbbing ache in my leg.

The second thing is the silence. The roar of the volcano has subsided to a low, hungry rumble.

The clash of steel is gone. The screams have faded.

There is only the whine of the wind and the sound of my own blood, a slow, hot trickle against my skin.

My eyes flutter open. The world is a smear of grey sky and black rock.

I am lying on the obsidian bridge, the body of the warrior who was choking the life from me a heavy, dead weight on my chest. His eyes are wide, glassy, and empty, a single, perfect hole drilled through the center of his forehead.

It is a wound made not by a blade, but by a focused, impossible force.

I shove his corpse off me with a groan, the movement sending a fresh wave of agony through my entire body. I roll onto my side, my vision swimming, and I push myself up, my good arm trembling with the effort.

The caldera is a scene of utter devastation. Grakar’s other warriors are dead, their bodies twisted, broken things on the bridge. Grakar himself is a heap of shattered bones and ruined flesh at the base of the altar, his chest rising and falling in shallow, ragged gasps. He is broken. Beaten.

But my eyes are not on him. They are not on the dead. They are searching, desperately, frantically, for the only thing in this world that matters.

And then I see her.

She stands beside the altar, her back to me. She is covered in a fine layer of grey ash, her hair a wild, tangled mess. The fur-lined cloak I gave her is singed at the edges. But she is standing. She is whole. She is unbroken.

She is holding my obsidian sphere, the Heart of the Mountain, in her hands.

It is no longer a solid, light-swallowing black.

It is glowing with a soft, internal white light, a captured star held between her small, steady hands.

The blood-red light of the altar is gone, the angry hum of its power silenced.

The mountain is quiet. The eruption has been stopped.

She did this.

The thought is not a thought. It is a cataclysm. A fundamental reordering of my entire universe. She, this fragile human, this creature I deemed a weakness, a parasite… she saved me. She saved all of us.

The memory of her master’s drunken ramblings, the stories she told me in the cavern, crash into the present. The Regulator. A key, not a treasure. They sit on the very key to their own power, and they do not even know it.

I was the fool. We were all fools. For generations, we have hoarded these stones, seeing only their beauty, their rarity.

We saw them as treasures to be owned. We never saw them as tools to be wielded.

But she did. She, with her fragmented memories of a drunken master’s obsession, saw the truth that was hidden from us in plain sight.

The prophecy. It was never just about a human mate to unlock the eggs. It was about a partner. It was about a union of our strength and their cunning, our power and their wisdom. It was about balance.

I stare at her, at the small, indomitable line of her back, and I am humbled. I am awestruck. The arrogance, the pride, the deep-seated belief in my own superiority that has been the bedrock of my entire existence, crumbles to dust, leaving me raw, exposed, and utterly, irrevocably lost.

I push myself to my feet, my body a screaming chorus of pain. I stumble toward her, my steps unsteady on the shuddering bridge.

“Judith,” I say, voice broken, raspy.

She turns, and the sight of her face snatches the breath from out of my lungs.

Her eyes are wide, her cheeks are tracked with clean paths where her tears have washed away the ash.

But she is not crying now. She is looking at me, her gaze filled with a fierce, protective worry that makes my heart ache.

She rushes to my side, her hands fluttering near my wounds as if she is afraid to touch me. “You are bleeding,” she says in a trembling whisper.

“It is nothing,” I grunt, the words a hollow echo of my former self. I look from her face to the glowing sphere in her hands. “What did you do?”

“I remembered,” she says, her gaze dropping to the sphere. “My master… he said it was a key. That it could channel the mountain’s rage. I didn’t know if it was true. I just… I couldn’t let them kill you.”

She looks back at me, her dark eyes searching mine. “I thought you were dead.”

“You saved me,” I say, the words sounding like a confession, an admission of a debt I can never repay.

“We saved each other,” she corrects me softly.

And in that moment, I know, with a certainty that settles deep in my soul, that I am hers. I am not her master. I am not her captor. I am hers, in a way that has nothing to do with possession and everything to do with a fierce, desperate, all-consuming devotion.

I reach out with my good hand and gently cup her jaw, my thumb stroking the line of her cheek. She leans into my touch, her eyes fluttering shut for a moment, a silent, absolute trust that shatters the last of my defenses.

Before I can say anything else, a new sound reaches us. The beat of powerful wings. I look up, my body instinctively moving to shield Judith’s, and I see them. A group of dragons, their forms dark against the grey, roiling clouds, are descending into the caldera.

Vorlag leads them. He lands at the side of the crater, his ancient form radiating an aura of immense power and authority.

The other warriors land behind him, their eyes wide as they take in the scene of devastation.

They see the dead warriors, the broken, bleeding form of Grakar, and me, wounded and swaying, my hand on the face of the human.

Vorlag’s gaze sweeps over the carnage, his expression unreadable. He looks at the silenced altar, at the glowing sphere in Judith’s hands, and then his eyes fall upon the new, gaping hole in the side of the crater wall.

During the chaos, during the release of the altar’s power, the mountain has given up its greatest secret. A section of the cliff face has collapsed, revealing a shimmering, heat-hazed portal. It is the entrance to the hidden cavern. The entrance to our future.

A slow, profound awe dawns on Vorlag’s ancient face. He looks from the portal to Judith, and for the first time, he does not look at her as a tool, as a key. He looks at her as a miracle.

“The prophecy is fulfilled,” he says in a reverent whisper that carries across the caldera. “The trial is complete.”

He strides toward us, his movements slow and deliberate. He stops before Judith, his old, wise eyes fixed on her face. “You have faced the fire of our world, little human,” he says, voice rumbling. “And you have not been consumed. You have mastered it. You have a dragon’s heart.”

He looks at me, and his gaze is sharp, knowing. He sees the way I am standing, the way my body shields her, the way my hand still rests on her face. He sees the truth that is blazing in my eyes.

“You have both proven your worth,” he says, his voice rising, a proclamation for the other warriors to hear. “The Hearthkeeper is pleased. The path is open.”

He gestures to Grakar’s broken form, where he is being tended to by two of the warriors. “Take him back to the settlement. He will face the clan’s judgment for his treason.” He looks at me. “And you, Xvitar. You are wounded. You must be tended to.”

“I am fine,” I grunt, though my vision is beginning to swim from blood loss.

“No,” Judith says, her voice quiet but firm. She looks at Vorlag, her chin lifted, her gaze unwavering. “He is not fine. He is gravely injured. He needs a healer.”

Vorlag looks at her, a flicker of surprise in his eyes at her audacity. But he does not rebuke her. He simply nods. “The girl is right. Take him. Both of them.”

Two of the warriors move to my side, their hands supporting me. I want to shove them away, to stand on my own, but my strength is failing. They begin to lead me away from the altar, away from the bridge of death.

But my eyes are on Judith. She is still holding the obsidian sphere, its light casting a soft, ethereal glow on her face. She looks small, and lost, and utterly magnificent.

As they lead me past her, I stop. I reach out with my good hand and gently take the sphere from her. It is warm, humming with a faint, residual power.

“This is a key,” I say. “Not a treasure.”

I place it back in her hands. “And it belongs to you.”

I turn and let the warriors guide me away, leaving her standing there, the Heart of the Mountain in her hands, the future of my people in her soul.

And as I stumble away from the summit, I know that my life, my heart, my entire world, now belongs to the small, impossible human who walked into the fire and emerged a queen.