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CHAPTER TEN

PYRAH

When I cling to Rook’s hand, trying to comfort him, he closes his eyes.

Rook could have died.

Lark places her hand over his wound before unleashing her magic.

His skin starts glowing like red-hot iron.

He chokes back a scream, though he can’t hold it in forever.

The raw anguish in his voice strangles my own throat until I can’t remember how to breathe.

He grips my hand, tighter and tighter, his claws digging into my skin.

He’s hurting me, though this pain must be nothing compared to what he’s enduring.

I don’t know how else to help him.

Blood drenches him, both from his enemies and himself, and it's impossible to tell the difference. One of the knights skewered him straight through his chest and out through his back. The knight’s sword came far too close to piercing his heart and ending the fight.

Does he fear death or welcome it with open arms?

Rook’s grip slackens. Limp, he collapses back in the mud.

Dead? This question overshadows every other thought in my mind. My fingers shaking violently, I bring them to his neck and search for a pulse. Please let me find a pulse.

His heartbeat flutters beneath my fingertips, faint but undeniably there. I exhale a shaky breath. He's alive. The relief that washes over me is so intense it nearly brings me to tears.

“Rook,” I say, almost pleading with him. “Rook, wake up.”

“He won't," Lark says. "Not right away."

“Have you healed him before?"

“More times than I can remember.”

I have never counted his scars, though they mark most of his body. It’s obvious that he has survived a great number of wounds throughout his life. “What happened to him?”

Lark’s eyes focus somewhere faraway. “Rook wasn’t always like this. Wasn't always so willing to run straight into danger." She sighs. "God, I had hoped he would be less self-destructive after finding his mate.”

“Self-destructive?” I echo. "Why?"

She grimaces, closing her eyes for a moment.

"Our father, King Everhart, despised his children.

Despised us. He ignored me, for the most part, but he treated Rook like the filth beneath his boots.

Everhart called him bastard, demonspawn, monster.

But Rook…" She flinches as if these memories are still too raw to remember.

"Rook kept trying to prove himself worthy of love. "

My throat tightens until I'm unable to speak. It's all too easy to imagine Rook as a little boy, desperate for scraps of affection, hoping his father would finally wake up one day and discover he was good.

Lark keeps talking, her eyes dark, her voice somber. "When the queen stabbed our father in the back, Rook found him bleeding out. I don't know if Rook tried to save his life. I've never had the courage to ask him."

I stroke Rook's battered knuckles, trying to comfort him even as he lies senseless. A memory stalks through the darkness of my mind—my own mother, dying in a pool of her blood—before I force it away.

"Rook started hunting monsters," Lark continues, "and flung himself into more and more perilous situations. Each hunt was a roll of the dice. He didn't care about the gold, didn't care if he lost the next fight."

"He wanted to destroy himself," I whisper, knowing this feeling all too well.

My fingers trace one of the countless scars on his chest, one that looks especially old and deep. How many times had he faced creatures that could have killed him? How many times had he hoped they would?

"The worst part was waiting for him to return from hunts," Lark says.

"He would always come back soaked in blood. Sometimes he dragged himself back, half-dead, his body nearly broken. One winter, during the coldest time, he never returned at all. I tracked him down to a forest where he was alone and bleeding in the snow. He would have bled out or frozen to death if I hadn’t found him. "

Did he lie there, wondering if anyone would miss him?

Did he even care?

Rook has never hesitated to put himself between me and danger, to pay the price of my safety in his own blood.

I have always thought of this as protection, nothing more, though now I see the shadow of self-destruction in his actions.

He has been like this ever since I first met him.

To save his sister, he was willing to enter the lair of a dragon— my lair, back when we were still enemies.

"He captured me for my dragonfire," I say. "To save you."

"Thank God he did." Lark meets my gaze. "Something in him changed when he met you.”

"What do you mean?"

"You are like a bright flame in the darkness, Pyrah. You guide his way through the shadows and give him hope."

The weight of her words should feel like a burden, but instead it makes my heart feel light enough to fly. She speaks the truth—I have seen the way Rook looks at me as if I'm something precious. He makes me feel like it’s true.

I squeeze his hand tighter. You are loved .

"But he's still so reckless with his own life," Lark says. "Deep down, he still doesn't believe he's worth saving."

"How can we save him?"

"Someone lost in the darkness must find their own way out."

I'm silent for a long moment, contemplating what she said. "I remember what it's like to be lost in the darkness."

Lark waits for me to speak without pressing me for more. I'm grateful for her listening without judgment.

"Sometimes the darkness steals away your memories. I was sixteen when my mother was murdered by a dragonslayer." The words taste like ash in my mouth. "But I don't... I can't remember all of it."

"What do you mean?"

"There's nothing there. Just a blank space where the memory should be." My teeth itch, on the brink of becoming fangs, but I force myself to remain human. "I remember seeing the dragonslayer who killed her. His face, the gleam of his bastard sword. Then everything goes dark."

The next clear memory surfaces—the heat of flames against my skin, the scent of burning flesh. "The next thing I remember is building her funeral pyre. Watching her body burn."

"Your mind protected you from the pain," Lark says softly.

"But shouldn't I remember? She was my mother." My voice cracks. "I can't remember her final moments."

Lark reaches across Rook to touch my arm. "It's not your fault."

I stare down at my hands, remembering how they shook as I gathered wood for the pyre. "Sometimes I dream about it. Fragments, pieces that don't make sense. But I wake up before I can piece them together."

"Have you told Rook? About not remembering?"

I shake my head. "He knows I have nightmares. He knows my mother was killed by a dragonslayer."

"Why not tell him the rest?"

"I've never told anyone before." The confession slips out before I can stop it. "About the missing memories, the dreams that don't make sense. How sometimes I wake up screaming and can't remember why."

Lark's voice softens. "Rook would understand better than most."

"He doesn't know everything," I whisper. "I didn't tell him how I spent weeks afterward in my dragon form, unable to shift back, how I burned everything I could find until there was nothing left but ashes."

The memory of those dark days rises up, tangled with the scents of smoke and blood, ringing with the echoes of screaming villagers.

I lost myself to rage and grief until there was very little of myself left.

The taste of ash still coats my tongue when I remember, and sometimes I wake with my hands shaking, convinced they are still stained with soot.

"I'm not his bright flame in the darkness," I say, my words quiet. "I'm nothing but the destruction of dragonfire. I’m the thing mothers warn their children about, the monster in their stories."

Unblinking, Lark holds my gaze. "Sometimes we need dragonfire. Sometimes the world deserves to burn."

My mouth twists into a bitter smile. "Rook needed my dragonfire to break you out of the Forgotten Tower. That was an evil place, a dungeon we should have burned down to ashes and rubble."

"Yes," Lark says. "Destruction is often necessary for salvation."

"Salvation." The word feels strange on my tongue, since I have so rarely spoken it. Dragons care little for such things—we are creatures of blood and fire, of hoarded treasures and lonely caves. "To be honest with you, I'm not sure I believe in such a thing."

"Without belief, we have no guiding star." Lark speaks with the quiet certainty of someone who has seen too much darkness to doubt the importance of light. "And I believe in you both."

"Do you believe in the prophecy?"

The Gray Prince will sit on the ruined throne . Rook's words echo in my mind, making a shiver crawl down my spine.

Lark gazes at her brother for a long moment, her broken horn glinting where it has been destroyed.

"Rook can't deny his identity as the Gray Prince, not for much longer.

" Her ember eyes simmer with conviction, reminding me so much of Rook's that it makes my throat ache.

"The throne of Chymeria awaits him, whether he wants it or not. "