Page 34 of Burned Alive to Be His
She shakes her head, a single tear tracing a clean path through the grime on her cheek.
I look at the dead birds around us, at the blood on the rocks, at the small, trembling, impossible creature before me. She did not just survive. She fought. She protected herself. She protectedme.
A strange, unfamiliar emotion, hot and fierce, swells in my chest. It is a feeling I have only ever felt for my clan, for my home. It is the feeling of pride.
We rest for a time, huddled in the relative shelter of the crevice. I tend to the new gash on my shoulder, my movements clumsy with one hand. Judith watches me, her expression unreadable.
“Why is this mountain so important to you?” she asks, her voice quiet in the howling wind. “Why is it called Bloodstorm?”
I look at the genuine curiosity in her eyes. Finally, I feel the urge to explain. To share.
“It is not just a mountain,” I say in a low rumble. “It is our mother. The Hearthkeeper. Her heart is the fire that burns in its core. Her blood is the lava that flows in its veins. Her breath is the steam that rises from its fissures.”
I look up at the smoking peak, a sense of awe and reverence filling me. “When we are young, every dragon must spend a night alone on these slopes. We come to feel her heartbeat, to listen to her voice in the wind. We come to understand that her fire is our fire. Her rage is our rage. The storm of her blood is the storm in our own.”
I fall silent, a strange discomfort settling over me. I have never spoken these words to anyone. They are a part of me, as fundamental as the scales on my skin, the fire in my belly. To give them voice feels like a betrayal of their sacred silence.
“She is a harsh mother,” Judith says softly, her gaze following mine to the summit.
A short, harsh laugh escapes my lips. “She is a dragon’s mother,” I say. “She does not coddle her young. She forges them in fire and hardship. She teaches them that only the strong survive.”
I look at her, seeing the strength I am only just beginning to understand. “Perhaps,” I say in a quiet admission, “she has been teaching you as well.”
We sit in silence for a long time after that, a new, unspoken understanding between us. The sun begins to set, and the cold returns, a biting, relentless thing. We still have a long way to go.
As darkness falls, we reach the final ascent. The path narrows to a treacherous, windswept ledge, barely wide enough for one person, with a sheer, thousand-foot drop on one side. A sudden tremor from the mountain, a deep, groaning shudder, sends a shower of rocks clattering down from above. A section of the ledge just ahead of us crumbles and falls away into the darkness, leaving a terrifying, impassable gap.
We are trapped.
17
JUDITH
The world is a howling abyss. Below us, a chasm of shadow and wind drops into nothingness. Ahead of us, the path is gone, devoured by the mountain’s hungry shudder. We are trapped on a sliver of rock at the end of the world, the wind a physical force that threatens to peel us from the cliff face and cast us into the void.
Panic, cold and sharp, tries to claw its way up my throat, but I swallow it down. I have survived too much to be undone by a simple fall. I look at Xvitar. He stands braced against the wind, his one good arm pressed against the rock wall, his body a shield between me and the drop. His face is a mask of stone, but I see the fury in his eyes, the frustration of a predator caught in a trap not of its own making.
“There is no way across,” I state, my voice thin against the wind’s roar.
“For you, there is not,” he grunts, his gaze fixed on the opposite side of the gap, a sheer, ten-foot expanse of empty air. “For me, there is.”
Before I can question him, he moves. He shrugs out of his pack, letting it fall to the ledge. “Take off the cloak,” he commands.
I obey, my fingers clumsy with cold as I unfasten the heavy fur. He takes it from me, along with my own small pack, and with a powerful heave of his good arm, he throws them across the chasm. They sail through the air, a dark arc against the grey sky, and land safely on the other side.
He turns back to me, his violet eyes burning with a fierce, wild light. “There is only one way. You will not like it.”
And then, he shifts.
It is not the monstrous, partial transformation I witnessed in the Bone Yard. This is something else. Something controlled, deliberate. A low groan rumbles in his chest, and his body seems to expand, his muscles coiling and bunching under his skin. With a sound like tearing leather, two massive, leathery wings erupt from his back. They are the color of a starless midnight, vast and powerful, tipped with sharp, wicked claws. They unfurl to their full, magnificent span, blocking out the sky, cocooning us in their shadow.
He is beautiful. He is terrifying. He is a creature of myth and nightmare made real.
“What are you doing?” I breathe, my voice a whisper of awe and terror.
“I am ending this trial,” he says, voice a low, guttural rumble. He steps toward me, his wings folding slightly to navigate the narrow ledge. He crouches before me, his powerful form radiating an almost unbearable heat. “Come here.”
It is a command, but his eyes… his eyes hold a question. A plea. He is wounded. His arm is broken, his side is gashed. This will take a toll he cannot afford to show. He needs me to trust him.
