Page 24 of Wings of Frost and Fury (Merciless Dragons #4)
“Orders?” Varex gives a raw chuckle. “I am your prince. You take orders from me and from Kyreagan.”
“Of course, but I must obey her as well.”
“Ah yes. I noticed you answer to ‘pet’ now. ”
“That is none of your business,” Ashvelon growls.
“Perhaps not.” Varex’s tone softens. “And I will not mention it again, if you will only let me speak to her, just for a moment. I would not insist unless it were of vital importance.”
But Ashvelon holds his ground. “Tell me the message, and I will give it to her.”
“You cannot tell Kyreagan what I’m about to request.”
“I understand. I have my own secrets.”
“Ask Thelise not to change my captive.” Varex’s tone is pleading, desperate. “The red-headed dancer, Jessiva.”
Startled, I glance in Ashvelon’s direction. Surprise thrums through his tone. “You do not wish for her to be a female dragon?”
“I prefer her as she is,” Varex says quietly. “Small and human, with beautiful soft flesh.”
Ashvelon rumbles, a sound of commiseration and understanding. “But you will not be able to breed her.”
“I know. I am willing to relinquish the possibility of offspring, if only I can keep her with me, just as she is.”
I rock back on my heels, the chalk hanging idle between my fingers as I wait to hear Ashvelon’s response.
“I’m not sure if what you ask is even possible, but I will mention it to Thelise,” he says.
Clever dragon. He didn’t lie, exactly, but he also didn’t give away any part of my plan. Granted, I haven’t confided all the details to him, but he suspects the gist of it.
He reassures the Prince that he will keep the request a secret, although he adds, “I cannot promise Thelise’s silence. Discretion is not her strongest point.”
“The fuck,” I whisper.
“Do your best to convince her,” Varex pleads. “Even if it would not undermine Kyreagan, I’m not sure I would take Jessiva home. I am selfish. I want her to stay. ”
“I understand,” Ashvelon replies. “But you should look within yourself and know that selfishness is the enemy of true love. Your Grimmaw once told me that. Go now, my prince. Thelise wishes all dragons to be on the ground with their captives by sunset, to comfort them through the change. Return to your woman. I will make your request to the sorceress.”
Varex’s wingbeats recede, and I rise from the ground, taking a final look at the casting circles before striding over to Ashvelon.
“What was that? ‘Discretion is not her strongest point?’” I poke his wing.
“You said it yourself—you’re better with lies than secrets.”
“What are lies, if not cloaks for secrets? And also, who is Grimmaw?”
“The grandmother of the two Princes. She was a wise elder dragon. Mordessa and I went hunting with her once and shared a doe on top of the Riven Mountain. That’s where she spoke to us of friendship, loyalty, and love.”
“And do you believe her? That selfishness is the enemy of true love?”
He whirls toward me, narrowing those glowing blue eyes. “Why else do you think I submit to you and perform every task you require of me?”
I step back, swallowing hard, wild flutters dancing through my chest. “So dramatic, darling.” But my laugh is thinner and more fragile than I’d like it to be.
He’s saying he loves me, without actually saying it. Part of me wants to swallow up his love, to accept it greedily, to use it while it lasts, because it never lasts.
“Cover the entrance again,” I tell the dragon.
He does as he’s told and remains at the cave mouth, wings outstretched, while I place the candles, combine the incense and lay the crystals at the intersection points. I set the eclipse gem on the crux of the emergent lines. Then I touch the precious stone once more, lightly, almost regretfully.
The eclipse gem has lived on my finger since I left my father’s house.
I saw the ring lying on a table in the foyer just moments before I left with my belongings, and I took it, knowing it was valuable and powerful, knowing it was one of my father’s cherished possessions.
In all his letters, he never acknowledged that I stole it, nor did he ask for it back.
Eclipse gems are vital in the Janaan school of magic, my father’s chosen mode of practice, and while the Janaan style is not my preference for smaller spells, I’ve decided to incorporate elements of that method into this great enchantment.
The eclipse gem is the most powerful stone I currently possess, the only one available to use as a locus for such a big spell.
In the course of the casting, it will be devoured by the magic.
While I’m reluctant to lose it, there’s a cyclical beauty and horror in the fact that I’m using it to undo some of the damage my father did to the world.
When everything is ready, I call Ashvelon to light the candles. He does so with extreme care, keeping his wings pinned back, controlling his breath so he won’t accidentally blow the herbs or other elements of the spell out of place.
I sit cross-legged in the middle of the central casting circle, facing the wall on which we wrote the spell.
At my request, Ashvelon ignites the incense.
The use of his frost-fire lends strength to the enchantment.
Without his help, I’d have to use regular fire, which wouldn’t have the same magical strength, in which case I’d need to expend far more of the vital energy inside me.
With a working of this magnitude, that would bring me very close to death.
As it is, I should survive the casting, although it’s going to hurt, and I’ll be physically exhausted afterward.
“Go,” I tell Ashvelon. “Go to the entrance. Don’t speak to me, at your peril, unless you want to jeopardize the lives of every dragon on this island. ”
Eyes wide, he backs away. “Be safe,” he murmurs.
Behind me, I hear the whip of his wings as he spreads them again, shielding me from everything outside this cave, giving me the privacy and security I need for the work.
I begin to read the spell.
Clarity is key. Focus is vital. I must remember every ingredient in perfect order, adding them to the censer or moving them to the right location on the casting circles at the appropriate point in the spell. I cannot make one single error.
The purple lightning, the most common manifestation of my energy, uncoils from my chest and my fingers, joining with the blue frost-fire flames at the tips of the candles.
The eclipse gem begins to pulse audibly, a frenzied, humming rhythm that drives deep into my head and vibrates my eardrums until they itch.
The pain doesn’t start until I’ve passed the abstract, the section of the spell that includes the physical parameters and the governing precepts of the enchantment.
It increases throughout the delineation and exposition phase, and hits hardest when I’m in the activation phase, when every ingredient I’ve laid out and every word I’ve spoken come together and take effect, fueled by my power.
The itching sensation in my ears is hard to ignore.
I can barely keep my hands in the right position—inverted lotus bloom—as I pronounce the cadenza of the spell, the final section.
Agony snakes up my spine, a warning that I’m extending myself past safe limits.
Pain travels through my shoulder joints, down to the nerves inside my elbows, then to the sensitive tendons within my wrists.
I scream with the effort of holding my fingers in casting position, even as I’m trembling with the pain.
Anguish makes it nearly impossible to think, and yet I have to concentrate. I must keep reading the last lines of the spell. I lift the humming eclipse stone, even though it scorches my fingers, and I transfer the gem to the censer, on top of Ashvelon’s scale.
As I set it in place, the vibration of the gem pauses, the lightning freezes, and even the smoke from the incense ceases to unfurl.
I am suspended in time, trapped within a shell of a moment, caught in the hiatus of a spell that I am not powerful enough to complete.
I underestimated how weary I am. I haven’t recovered enough from trapping the dragons in the stable and casting the transformation spell on Ashvelon. I forgot to include that missing energy in my calculations when I estimated what I could handle
The spell has shifted into a momentary stasis while I decide what to do. I can proceed and perhaps finish it successfully—but I will die.
My second option is to break myself out of the spell. It will fail, and the backlash will damage my body and my energy. I’ll be sick for weeks, unable to attempt it again until mating season has already passed.
Or I can find some other source of power, some alternate channel from which to summon more strength… just enough, perhaps, for me to survive this.
My father’s books focused on the Janaan school of magic, which discourages emotion as a means of energy provenance.
But I follow the Dal Vitalin way of thinking, and a subset of that method is emotional potency, which I first learned from a tiny, fat volume wedged behind others on a shelf in our home library.
That book explained how to harvest positive emotions as a source of additional magical energy.
When all other sources of energy are stretched to the limit, emotional potency can lend an enchanter enough force to conclude a spell. Depending on the quality of the emotion that’s used, it also contribute a richness and beauty to the resulting magic that can’t be achieved any other way.
Despite my proclivity for laughter and sarcasm, I don’t feel genuinely positive emotions very often.
My mother left us when I was ten. Katlee died in my spell circle.
My father drove me from his house. And everyone since then has only wanted to use me.
If they can’t use me, they exile me, sometimes openly, sometimes subtly, but it’s effective either way.