Page 69

69

Seven Flames

NYX

D ays passed.

I stared at the pile of ash on the floor. Watched as nothing happened. But what did I expect? For him to magically emerge from them? A mad thought. Whatever had happened on Hallows Eve was a fluke—a miracle. His ascension; written in the stars. A one-time phenomenon. It did not mean that he was a creature capable of regenerating from death repeatedly.

Still…a tiny, pathetic kindle of faith stayed lit in my heart.

Jedidiah and I had barely spoken. Besides his insisting on borrowing the selenite stylus to portal into the city. I had protested vigorously, not trusting him in the least. What did he need to do? Go find drugs? Go hunt vampires? Go be spotted and captured?

But he hadn’t relented. He promised he would just ‘get supplies’. After arguing on and off for hours, I finally caved.

That was two days ago.

The voice in the back of my head taunted me. You lost both of them .

“No,” I said aloud, shaking my head. I paced beside the fireplace, next to Solaris’s ashes. Near the spot by the doorway to the terrace where Jed had disappeared into the portal. “They’ll be back. Both of them will be back.”

The dragon didn’t return either. So many times I found myself kneeling before the fireplace, waiting.

I was alone—again.

Even worse this time, I didn’t have the city to cry with. I was isolated in the mountains, with nothing but my fucking thoughts

I missed my sister so bad it hurt. The distractions of the last few weeks were gone, and now the mystery of Emilia drew me in like a giant, army-grade magnet. I had almost asked Jedidiah to bring back a blackmirror but bit my tongue at the last second.

How was she faring in the wake of my exile? Was she demonized and cast out like me? A social pariah at Luna Academy on the altar of my destruction?

Or…had she risen to the occasion? Had she grabbed onto the reins of the narrative to wield it in her favor?

My heart thudded painfully as my mind reeled back and forth between possibilities.

I had to leave this room. Leave the ashes of Solaris and the way they called me back to the ashes of my former life. ?? I went to the war room. To the books.

I lingered in front of the shelf, staring at the thick red leather-bound book Solaris had taken from the Vatican.

A grimoire?

Curiosity burned through my blood like adrenaline. I dared to pluck it off the shelf, gasping a little at the weight of it. I rested it on the desk, standing over it, scanning every detail. The mystery remained. There was no title, no picture. Just aged leather the color of dried blood.

I tapped my fingers on the desk for an alarmingly long time before I finally opened it.

My brows came together as I flicked through the first few pages. Faded, handwritten text in an ancient tongue. Some familiar letters but mostly symbols. It didn’t seem like a grimoire… Even in a foreign language, I would be able to identify spell work. This was an actual book.

“Hm.”

On one of the very first pages, there was nothing but drawings of seven different colored flames. Gold, blue, pinkish-purple, orange, red, green, and black. Each flame was inside a circle, arranged in a Chakra-style formation. I brushed my fingers over the page, studying each different shade of fire.

Something deep in the recesses of myself began to stir as I looked at them.

I continued, sifting through the whole thing.

Then stopped.

My heart dropped. I’d lost the page so I had to go back, searching through a section until I found what had snagged my attention—an illustration that took up an entire two pages.

Women, drawn in Old-World, renaissance style. Dozens of them, each posed uniquely. Some fierce, others thoughtful, pensive, soft, alluring, intimidating. Some had white hair like mine, or black like Emilia’s. A few even had red hair. Light and dark skin. They wore ethereal, royal-looking clothing—from elaborate gowns to dragon-scale armor.

Around the women, there were dragons. Sketched simply, at the top and around the edges.

My lips parted, breath skating rapidly between them. What in the seven realms was this book?

I flipped to the next page. I found the same two-page drawing. Well, almost the same. Except now, the women—they were half dragon.

Their eyes, teeth, and hands—all shifted into reptilian nature. Some of them even had spikes and scales on their shoulders and face.

I was breathing hard.

Looking through the text more thoroughly, I discovered a myriad of illustrations inside. Of dragons and stars and moons and women and the seven different flames.

I snapped it shut.

My heart pounded.

“Solaris, what is this?” I whispered, brushing my fingers down the leather. My chest squeezed painfully. Would I ever get to ask him?

Dread pooled inside me like hot poison. Life with Solaris was hell. So why did the idea of his permanent absence send my nervous system into a fit?

Suddenly, my heart morphed into an anchor that dropped to the pit of my gut. The hairs on the back of my neck and arms rose and quivered.

I glanced up from the pages. A blade soared through my chest.

He was there.

In the stone doorway, a cloak pulled lazily around his shoulders, watching me with dead eyes.

How long had he been there?

Breath and coherent thought evaded me. I gawked at him, taking in his ashen skin. Pale, so pale, almost gray. His black-red hair hung to his shoulders, the ends coated with a chalky film of ash.

I might have breathed his name.

I didn’t move from my spot on the desk. He did not leave the doorway.

We stared at each other, trapped in a moment. Drowning in it. The only time his eyes left mine was to glance down at the book in my lap briefly.

Then, after an eternity, he ducked through the door, his wings barely fitting. They sprung free and splayed wide once he was through, though they were slightly wilted at the ends.

He rounded the war table. Slowly. Every step he took made my heart throb harder.

He’s here . From ashes to flesh and blood and bone.

He came and stood in front of me. Hauntingly close. His cloak hung loose, his pale clavicles and chest visible. Ashes on his skin. Fabric pooled around his bare feet like black water. Death shone in his steely eyes.

I didn’t move, but my glare raked over him. From what I could see, his wounds had healed. His wrists were hidden under wizard sleeves, so I couldn’t see if the manacles were still there, but I knew they were. If he’d been reunited with his power, the world would be plunged into eternal darkness.

I had no control over my hand as it rose, my palm sneaking through the cloak to gently rest over the center of his chest.

My gasp filled the air between us. His skin—it was hot . Like he had coals smoldering inside him.

His heart pounded against my hand. His beating heart.

He’s alive .

I bit my lip, keeping my stinging eyes away from his.

He leaned down, slowly, and pressed his forehead to mine.

We stayed like that. Only the Goddess knew for how long. Me sitting on the desk, his willowy frame looming over me like a shadow, his wings shrouding us. My hand on his heart, our foreheads pressed together.

I wanted to hold him and that fucking terrified me. The urge crashed through me like a tsunami. I longed to wrap my arms around him and weep and—

I jolted abruptly, like waking up from a bad dream. I pulled my hand back. I couldn’t see through the watery film corrupting my vision. I blinked it away, breathing deeply but quietly.

Solaris pulled away too, though he didn’t speak.

I closed the book in my lap and set it on the desk beside me. When I cultivated the courage to glance up at him again, I was immediately winded. His expression, I—

I drew a blank. I couldn’t think of any word that depicted a century of melancholic yearning veiled behind meticulously forged malice and stoicism.

He had wings and he had defied death for a second time, but he’d never looked more human.

With a breath through his nose first, he murmured, “The Groundshaker…?”

My shoulders slumped a little. “He left.”

His mouth twisted, eyes flashing with something that looked like hurt.

“He’ll be back, though… At least, he said he would.”

Solaris nodded carefully. “And you two… Have you…reconciled?”

My eyes plummeted to my lap, the words making my cheeks burn. What did he mean by that? Reconciled as in what, talking? Fucking? I shrugged. “I don’t know. Kind of. Not really, though. No.”

“Hm. Well, you must.”

“Really, Solaris? You rise from the dead and the first thing you care about is if me and Jedidiah are on good terms?”

He didn’t say anything back. My gaze wandered back up to lock with his. His stare had gone vacant again.

“You were dead.”

I thought he must have been going mad when he gave a faint smile. “You knew to burn my body.”

My heart felt like it had a fist around it.

He stared at me, that enigmatic Scorpio gaze that made the world spin out of control.

“I should have killed every last one of them.” The words slid menacingly through my clenched jaw. “I left them alive . For what they did, I should have burned them all.”

His face revealed nothing.

“Right?” I was almost panting now. “I mean. That’s what you would have done.”

Solaris’s unyielding glare almost dissolved me. My pulse was fucking hammering, my tongue dry. Since when did I want his approval ?

“On the contrary … You were perfect.”

My eyes narrowed. “What?”

“It couldn’t have gone any better. Not even if I’d orchestrated it myself.”

My mouth hung open but it took several seconds before I could speak. “What? Are you ser—what? They hurt you both— they killed you —”

Flames erupted from my fists, smoke curling from my lips and nostrils.

My fire illuminated the war room and reflected in Solaris’s silver eyes. The ghost of a smirk whispered across his lips but didn’t take form. Gently, he placed his hands over my flaming ones. His skin stayed unscathed.

“Your only flaw was your motives. Your mercy was a moral calamity, was it not? You didn’t want to be what they say you are.”

I tried to ignore the fact that he worded it almost exactly as I had.

No point in denying it. “Yes. And I will not make that mistake again.”

He did smirk now. I let my fire go out, ignoring the scorch of electricity spiking up my arms from where he touched me. “Morals aside, it was no mistake. You were truly magnificent, Firefly.”

My cheeks burned, his praise affecting me more than I would ever admit. My eyes fell to our hands. I had no instinct to pull away.

“And your serpents,” he continued, his voice hardly more than a whisper. “How did you do that?”

I swallowed, hard. Dared to look back up at him. “I don’t know.”

“You conjured snakes during the Clash of Spirits as well, yet you don’t know how?”

“No,” I quipped. “I don’t—not really. It just happened. It happened once when I was alone, too. It’s…I think it’s just how my earth element manifests. I Power-Shared with Jedidiah, as I think you know. Each time I’ve summoned snakes, I’ve been trying to tap into magic that’s not fire.”

“Hm,” he murmured. “Interesting. Well, you need to practice more. We can’t afford for you to have power you don’t understand or can’t control. For what is to come, you must be sharp.”

“Yeah?” I scoffed. “And what is to come, Solaris? And what do you mean leaving those parasites alive was no mistake?”

To my fury, he only grinned, holding my eyes in a way that made me feel like I was falling through the shadows once more.

I swatted his hands away and folded my arms over my chest, tipping my chin up to glare at him better. “What is wrong with you? Why would you want the people who kidnapped and murdered you to live?”

Pure, unadulterated rage bloomed behind his eyes. “It was Ra’ah and her two weasels who were responsible for that. They will pay. The rest of them may be spared, for they have another purpose.”

The knock of my pulse went from rapid to slow and painful.

Solaris moved away from me, gliding like a ghost. He descended into thought, pacing the room.

“What Goddess forsaken idea are you getting?”

“They yielded to you.”

I closed my eyes, dread turning my spine to icy steel. “Don’t be insane.”

“Are you denying it?”

I trembled. “It was the dragon. They stood down because of him. It had nothing to do with me.”

“Wrong!” he hissed, looking as if I’d personally offended him. “It was both of you. The bond. That is the magic.”

“The dragon and I haven’t bonded,” I clapped back.

“Doesn’t matter. You appeared as a bonded pair. And you will be, in time. You found the book, I see.” Silver eyes dropped to the heap of red leather beside me.

“Well. It’s not like I can read it.”

He frowned. “You can’t?”

“Should I be able to? What gave you the idea that I am fluent in ancient languages written in mostly symbols?”

Solaris searched my eyes as if he were trying to detect a lie. I grimaced at that. What was his issue?

He gave it up after a minute, shrugging it off. “Perhaps only after you bond, then.”

“Can you ever just speak fucking plainly?”

His reeling gaze flicked to mine. “This book is handwritten by all the great Queens and Priestesses from your lineage. It can only be read by a Drakiana. I assumed since you hatched a dragon, you would be able to read it. But upon reflection, it does make more sense that the ability would anchor in after you secure your bond.”

My shaky fingers brushed over the leather. “My ancestors…wrote this book?”

“Yes, and not just the Morningstars. There were a few different bloodlines that made up the Drakiana lineage. You all share the dragon’s blood.”

“Drakiana…” The word on my tongue had fireworks shooting off in my brain. Parts of me bursting to light for the first time. A soul-deep recognition and longing.

“That was what they were called, yes. The dragon women.”

“Why don’t I know this?”

He leveled me with a stare. “You do. With time, you’ll remember.”

My head weighed a thousand pounds. I wanted to slither to the floor and lay there, being flattened like recycled cardboard. Folded up and thrown away into the dark to be crushed down to a liquid.

“So, this was the book you stole from the Secret Library? I don’t understand why you would do that. I thought for sure you stole some demented grimoire full of the darkest, most putrid magic.”

He scoffed. “I was supposed to. But I saw that…” His eyes fell to the red leather. “And suddenly, I knew it was exactly what I was there for.”

I swallowed, thinking back on that fateful day. The day that changed everything.

“What about the other thing you stole? That creepy glass vial.”

His expression darkened. “Nevermind that.”

“Why?”

He shook his head. “I destroyed it.”

My brows jumped. “Why?”

He didn’t answer. He just continued to pace around the room like a wandering phantom. I watched him, watched his wheels turning. When I imagined what he might be thinking…

“You want me to accumulate power so you can wield it for yourself.”

The words—they came out unwarranted as the realization struck me.

Solaris went dead still. Stared at me, a painful look welling in his eyes. “No.”

“Yes,” I rasped. “It hasn’t made sense—this whole time. You won me on Hallows Eve yet you have done nothing with the power you now hold over me. I’ve been dreading it. Knowing that you’re saving it for something. Now, this—you want to get me an army. And a dragon. To what end, Solaris?”

“First of all, the army would be for us . For you, me, and the Groundshaker. As formidable as we are, we still need—”

“Oh my Goddess, stop.” I jumped down from the desk and began to stalk out of the room.

He grabbed my wrist, whirling me around and yanking me close. I gasped as his lips pressed above my ear, his breath casting shivers across my skin. “I have not used the power I hold over you because I do not wish to. I secured something between us on Hallows Eve, that’s true. But whatever my motives were at the time died with me in your flames. I will not use you as a puppet, Nyx Morningstar. I vow to you now, that I never will.”

I was shaking my head. Trying to pull away. “I don’t believe you.”

What happened next vacuumed the oxygen from my lungs and the room itself.

Solaris dropped down to his knees. His hands lightly gripped the backs of my thighs, his head bowed, wings tucked in. He pressed his forehead gently against my lower stomach. “I swear to you.”

I was dizzy. Falling off the edge of the world. Pieces of me splitting off and shooting away. Others clasping into place.

Solaris Adder, the one and only Darkbringer, master of shadows, the bane of my existence, was kneeling to me.