Page 86 of Storm of Blood and Shadow

Both of us needed to say and to hear those things. But in some ways, we’re using them to stall, to forestall the most difficult conversation we will ever have.

When the meal is over, we can’t put it off any longer. If we do, the Mordvorren will have time to regain its grip on him. We need to have the talk now, while he feels strong.

I sit beside him, and I hold his hand while he tells me how his mother died.

He was fifteen seasons, he says. Fifteen years old. His control over the void was shaky then—sometimes it would burst out of him, and he was afraid that he might hurt someone. He began sleeping in his own cave, and often, in the dead of night, he would roam the skies alone.

Sometimes his mother went with him. “She could sense my unrest somehow,” Varex says. “That night, I was particularly restless and miserable, choking on my magic, vomiting out bits of the void with very little control over where they went and what they touched. When she appeared, flying beside me, I should have told her to turn back, that it was too dangerous to be around me. But I didn’t.”

“She would have gone with you anyway.” I say it confidently. Though I’ve never met his mother, I’m certain I would have loved her.

“Yes,” he admits. “But I wish I’d tried to lose her, to leave her behind and go on alone. Jessiva…” He hesitates, pain contorting his features. “What I’m about to say, I have never confessed to anyone.”

There’s lightning flickering deep in his eyes, and I’m terrified he’ll disappear again. I grip both his hands, despite the pit of fear in my stomach. I remember how those hands stabbedlightning into the cliff, breaking off its edge and sending me into empty space.

But I am brave enough for this, strong enough to endure the danger for his sake. I’m used to the stretch of muscles and limbs, the weariness of bones, the shedding of blood for the sake of the art that was so important to me it felt like breathing. I can lend him my strength in this moment—help him through the greatest pain of his existence.

“If the Mordvorren knows your secret, I deserve to know it too,” I tell him quietly. “And you owe it to yourself, if you ever want to be free of this.”

“I lied, Jessiva,” he whispers. “I lied to my father, to my brother and sister, to the whole clan. I told them we flew too close to the voratrice. But we didn’t. We were far above it, at a safe distance, when I accidentally released a spray of void orbs that I couldn’t control. They flew in all directions, and many of them shot through my mother’s wings.”

Horror chills my heart.

“Dragons are usually immune to each other’s powers, but my void magic is the exception. The orbs decimated her wings,” he says hoarsely. “She fell. I tried to catch her, but I was caught in a spasm of my magic. By the time I got control of it and dove after her, she was already in the clutches of the voratrice.”

I squeeze his hands tighter, tears overflowing his eyes and mine.

“She tried to claw her way free.” He’s gasping, his shoulders heaving. “One of her claws tore loose as the creature swallowed her down. I had no void magic or lightning left—my energy was spent. I couldn’t fight it. I heard her bones break. I heard her screaming inside its throat. It happened so fast.”

I wrap my arms around him as best I can despite the bulky wings folded against his back. He’s crying so hard I’m afraid he will quake apart.

“I took her claw. I flew back to my father. But he couldn’t—they couldn’t get her out. She was too deep. The core of the voratrice, where its stomach lies, is always far underground, and this one was old, buried too deep for them to reach. She died, Jessiva, she died, and her spirit wasn’t released, it couldn’t escape, and her bones—her bones, theydissolved. It’s the worst possible fate for a dragon. We value—bones are—sacred—”

He’s panting, breathing much too fast. I climb into his lap and press his palm against my chest. “Feel my heartbeat,” I say, my voice tight with tears. “Breathe when I do.”

Varex looks at me with the eyes of the broken dragon-boy who watched his mother die—who caused her death. His magic sent her into the throat of a monster. But her love for him was untiring, relentless, and beautiful, and he deserves a new love like that.

“I love you,” I tell him through a sob. “I love you.”

“What I did—”

“She forgives you. I know it.”

“Her spirit, Jessiva. Trapped forever in the guts of thatthing—”

I hold his palm tighter to my chest. “Breathe.”

He obeys, taking several shaky breaths.

“Could you go back to its den now?” I ask. “Use your void magic to root it out?”

“My father forbade me from going back there when he was alive, and now… I don’t know if I could do it safely, without hurting anyone. I wish I could rid the entire fucking island of those pestilent creatures, but they’re all interconnected, intertwined. They multiply like certain plants, sending out runners to form new cores.”

“So… it’s all one big monster,” I say.

He frowns. “I suppose that’s true.”

“There must be an original core. A really big one that they all came from.”

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