Page 103 of A Bond so Fierce and Fragile
She didn’t hesitate, and she made sure her instructions were more precise this time.
“I want you to show yourselves, and not like you’re doing now. One by one, standing still, please. And I want you to listen to me until I am finished talking.”
The threads around the golden ones vibrated for another second before they all stilled, and voices sounded as if from far away.
“Lessia! You did it!” her sister exclaimed.
“Lessia, enough,” Merrick urged softly.
But a strange sensation filled her, like she was full of energy, like it was racing across her skin.
And for the first time in a while, she felt…warm.
“Lessia.” Merrick’s voice became more demanding.
Power.
It was power.
This is what that felt like, she thought as she played with the golden rope, savoring the warmth filling her chest and dancing through every vein and limb.
She was holding so many lives in her hands. Lives that she could tell what to do, that she could control, that she could lead.
“Lessia!”
A surge shot through the darkness, and she blinked, turning her head toward the ball of light she’d eyed before.
It was telling her something.
Open your eyes.
It’s enough now.
But was it enough?
She was always weak, always the one beaten down.
The one tortured. The one hurt. The one cast away.
It’s enough for now, my little fighter.
She blinked at the light again, and Merrick’s love brushed her skin, replacing the powerful heat with his scorching one.
Lessia shook her head as an urge to walk to his light overcame her, but it was the thought that if she could compel the wyverns like this… she could do it to Merrick, too, that finally had her eyes fly open.
Even with the sun above them, it wasn’t as bright as Merrick’s light had been in her mind, but she still had to bat her eyelids a few times to take in the scene before her.
Wyverns of all colors and sizes floated in the water ahead of them. Behind them. To their sides.
Some of the larger ones had their wings displayed—which she’d learned from Ydren was a sign of warning to an enemy, a sign they could attack at any moment.
Maybe she should have asked the wyverns not to kill them as well.
But as the thought struck her, she realized she could still feel their minds, and when she blinked… she could see it so clearly—she would be able to control them even now.
A large golden wyvern let out a screech that had Merrick pull her against his chest, his sword flying out before them, and from the metallic sound to her right, Raine was also readying himself.
“That’s a lot of fucking wyverns,” Raine muttered.
