Page 48 of Flameborne: Fury (Emberquell Academy #2)

~ brEN ~

I struggled and screamed, panted with ever-increasing panic that the next breath wouldn’t offer any air at all.

And all around me, the world crashed and shook.

Lights flashed on in the dark, voices shouted and the stone wall crumbled in pieces under Kgosi’s grip.

But he didn’t so much as flicker an ear towards it.

I was high in the air, held up to his eye-level, unable to see back into the apartment anymore, and terrified that I’d killed Donavyn.

“P-please, Kgosi. I’m s-so sorry!”

He opened his mouth and roared, the sound like an earthquake, making my very bones tremble.

Then Akhane shrieked and I tried to turn, to look for her, to beg her to help.

But I couldn’t move in his grip. And when I stopped trying, I was trapped as fully in his gaze as I was in the grip of his talons.

‘Speak,’ Kgosi intoned. ‘Speak on behalf of mercy. Speak for your mate. Speak any reason you can give why I should let you live, and heal him. Speak it, Little Flame.’

“Speak what?! I’ll say anything. I’ll mean it! But I already told you I didn’t mean to—”

‘A bond cannot be severed by one who wants it. To break that cord, your deepest heart must desire it. You abandoned your mate, Little Flame—you betrayed him to your soul!’

“But I didn’t know!”

‘SPEAK!’ he roared in my head so loudly my vision shook. ‘Speak the truth you fear, the panic you fight. Speak the part of you that you try so desperately to protect that you would harm your mate to achieve it!’

I gaped at him, tears rolling down my cheeks. I could hear Donavyn coughing, his breath wheezing. The wave of fear that he might die because of me was so tangible, so painful, I sobbed on the next exhale and trembled from head to toe.

‘Speak, Little Flame. Or die.’

“I don’t know what—”

‘What do you protect? What do you guard? What makes you so desperately afraid that you would kill to save it?’

A cloud of steam and smoke billowed over me, leaving me coughing, eyes stinging and watering. I struggled, but Akhane shrieked in my head.

‘Don’t resist, Bren! His smoke will clear your head! Breathe and speak the truth!’ Akhane called, shrieking as she landed on the roof of the building two dragon lengths away.

I drew in a clear breath. My heart still hammered in my chest, my blood still pulsed with abject terror. But I could think. And the moment my dragon reached for my mind with a rush of love and assurance and urgency, I knew. I knew what I had to tell the furious Primarch who held me in his grip.

I turned from Akhane and made myself meet Kgosi’s blazing eye. “I-I’m afraid of him,” I croaked, the tears coming thick and fast now. Kgosi grunted and I flinched.

‘Your mate is the best of men. The strongest. Why would you fear him?’

I looked at Akhane and saw the pain in her eyes. Saw the tense, pained way she held her wings. Felt the ache in her and I pleaded for help.

‘Tell him the truth, Bren. The full truth. No matter how hard it might seem.’

I sobbed again, then swallowed and tried to catch my breath. But I couldn’t. So, I stared straight into Kgosi’s furious eye and did as she said.

“I love him,” I whispered. “I’m scared because I love him and that means he can destroy me. It would only take one day, one night of choosing someone other than me, and I wouldn’t survive it. He could destroy me with a thought.”

Everything went very still inside me once those words were out.

Kgosi blinked. Then his nostrils flared. Another plume of that smoke and steam washed over me. But even though it made me cough so hard I gagged, when I could inhale again, my head was clearer, and I breathed a little bit easier.

‘Sometimes truth is the hardest thing to speak,’ Kgosi intoned in my head.

I heard Donavyn cough again and a new wave of tears pinched my throat. “Please,” I croaked. “Don’t make him pay because I was wrong. Please. Save him. Even if you kill me. Save him. He didn’t deserve this.”

Kgosi’s head tilted, like a bird looking at the ground, his eye rolling from me to the gaping hole into the apartment below, then back.

‘Now you’d sacrifice for him? Now you offer yourself?’

“I never meant to do anything to hurt him. I was trying to save myself.”

‘Then let that be your lesson. Protecting yourself from your mate leads to death. Instead, protect him. And let him protect you. Only in that will you find peace.’

I blinked and sucked in another hollow breath. “You called him my mate… still?”

Kgosi’s eyes narrowed. ‘He was, and could be again if you’re willing.’

“I’m willing! I didn’t mean to hurt him—or you! Tell me! Anything! Please, don’t let him die, Kgosi.”

A heavy snort of disgust poured through the night. ‘You think I’d let my human die?’

I shrank from him. “You said if I killed him—”

‘Silence, hatchling.’

Akhane made a low croon. I wasn’t sure if she tried to comfort me, or Kgosi.

But I couldn’t take my eyes off the furious Primarch.

I could feel the tension in him through Akhane, feel her panting and hurting—because I’d caused us all pain.

And I could sense them both wavering on the edge of something.

Then Kgosi sighed. ‘I can heal your bond—or rather, tell you how to do it. But you can never deny it again. Ever. No matter what. Even if he fails you. You cannot ever turn from him. It would kill you both—and likely us as well. You have weakened our foundation, Little Flame. It was not yours to destroy. And now we all pay the price. Should you be trusted to heal the harm you caused? I’m not sure. ’

Akhane lifted her head and gave a high, piercing call that sent warmth and relief coursing through me for a moment. I felt Kgosi’s grip loosen by a hair.

“I know I don’t deserve it,” I whispered. “But I don’t want to be away from him, Kgosi. I swear it. It’s true. The hard truth. I love him. I don’t deserve him, but I love him.”

Akhane made another noise behind me, a coo of disapproval and pain, but I didn’t take my eyes off Kgosi.

‘If you wish to heal your bond, you have only one choice, Bren. It is up to you to do, and your mate to accept. You must tell the truth.’

I blinked. “I did. I told you why—”

Kgosi growled and I shut my mouth quickly.

‘More,’ he snarled. ‘You must reveal your deepest heart. You must open the darkest corners of your mind and allow your mate to shine light into them. Only in that act of trust can the bond be rebuilt. Is it worth it to you to face that fear, Bren? Do you want your mate returned to you, fully?’

“Yes!”

‘Then that is your choice—to give all of yourself. Or to protect yourself and keep your heart apart from his. You will walk from this unless I kill you. I can save him without you. Both of you alive, though lessened. I will not heal a bond with a reluctant heart, no matter how it might harm him. I will not put him in the path of your continued destruction.’

‘Do it, Bren,’ Akhane pleaded with me. ‘Give him everything. Make it right.’

I nodded, though fear and shuddering insecurity rocked through me. “I… I will—”

‘I hear the fear in you, Little Flame. Do you lie?’

“No!” I rushed, my tears returning. “But, what if he doesn’t want me after he hears it all?”

Akhane keened, but Kgosi growled and she stopped. Then his eye locked on mine and he snorted. ‘That is the risk you take, bond-breaker. There’s only one way to find out. Make your choice.’