Page 81 of Silver Claws, Crimson Tears
The door clicks shut. I press my palms against my eyes until colors bloom in the darkness. What am I doing? Playing the victim? The wronged lover? Pathetic.
Commander Voltguard is the kind of woman I always thought I was. Unflinching, disciplined, focused. But I’ve let my passions drag me into this mess. Fallen for a man who condemns me at the slightest blow to his insecurities. Made friends who could be destroyed by association if my true nature is revealed.
Maybe it’s time for a change. To sever what little attachments I have. Cut Vaylen out like a diseased limb. Distance myself from Phoebe and the others before they get hurt. I already cut my father from my life, though that wound still bleeds if I prod it. I can do the same with the rest.
No more softness. No more vulnerability. If I survive whatever the King wants, I’ll be steel all the way through. No heart to break. No fears to exploit.
Zephyros my only companion.
A flash of amber eyes burns through my thoughts... Tahranis looking at me with that unsettling devotion. “Omneira,” he calls me, voice reverberating with something between worship and possession. “I would burn this world to ash for you. I would tear down mountains. Anything you desire.”
I shove the new vision away, hands trembling. It feels too real to be a delusion, too intimate to be a nightmare. Each vision carries the weight of truth, yet remains maddeningly incomplete.
What impossible events hide in my lost time? Did I become someone else before I forgot everything? Whatever the case, I refuse to be anyone’s puppet. Not Tahranis’s. Not Vaylen’s. Not the King’s.
The door reopens, and I expect Voltguard’s stern face. Maybe she forgot to tell me something. Instead, Vaylen steps in, his blue-and-gold eyes turbulent as a summer storm. My treacherous pulse quickens despite what I just decided.
“What do you want?” I ask, coating each word with ice. “Come to accuse me of more wrongdoings I don’t remember?”
Vaylen says nothing. His gaze holds mine, searching for something I can’t give him. The silence stretches between us, charged with everything we’ve left unsaid. My throat tightens, not from Cragmere’s assault but from the weight of what I feel for this man.
How could I ever truly harden my heart against him? The thought of Vaylen’s regard, his love, gave me hope since my return. But I must. For his sake more than mine.
Because what if I did choose Tahranis willingly? What if, when all my memories return, I discover my heart directed toward someone else? I can’t bear the thought of that betrayal, of giving Vaylen hope only to shatter it all over again.
Or worse… what if the King has me hanged this very day? I couldn’t put Vaylen through that pain again, knowing me truly dead after just finding me alive. Better if he thinks I wasn’t worth it. Better if my loss means nothing to him.
“You should go,” I say, drawing strength from the air around me, feeling it respond to my silent call. I pull it into my lungs, into my blood, letting it fortify the walls I’m building around my heart. I know just how. I blocked my father out years ago. “The Commander and I leave for Emberton soon. I’m sure you have important High Prime duties waiting.”
His jaw tightens. “Rhealyn?—”
“Don’t.” I cut him off, my voice sharp as intended. “Just don’t. We both know this was never going to work. You have your duty. I have whatever this is.” I gesture vaguely at myself, at the mess I’ve become. “Let’s stop pretending.”
Each utterance feels like swallowing hot coals, but I force them out anyway. It’s the kindest cruelty I can offer him.
Vaylen steps closer, his eyes shifting from storm to fire. “Duty doesn’t matter to me anymore.”
The words hang between us, impossible and dangerous. I stare at him, certain I’ve misheard. “What?”
“You heard me.” His voice drops lower, intense and certain in a way that makes my skin prickle. He comes closer. “I spent a year thinking you were dead, Rhealyn. A year believing I’d lost you forever. I won’t lose you again. Not to the King, not to duty, not to anything.”
I shake my head, backing away to relieve the terrible closeness. “You’re not thinking clearly?—”
“I’ve never thought more clearly in my life.” He crosses the distance between us in two strides, grabs my shoulders. “We can leave. Right now. Take Zephyros and go. If Fragor won’t come with us, I’ll leave him behind.”
The words knock the breath from my lungs. “Leave Fragor? Are you insane?”
“For you? Yes.” His hands come up to frame my face, and I hate how my body responds, leaning into his touch before I can stop myself. “I’d go to the end of the realm to keep you safe. I’d throw everything away. My rank, my dragon bond. All of it.”
For a heartbeat, I let myself imagine it. Running away together, finding some remote place where no one knows us, where there would be no king, no trial, no Screechclaws. Just us.
The fantasy burns bright and tempting.
Then reality crashes back. Vaylen without his honor? Without Fragor? He’d wither like a plant torn from the ground. The man I care for would slowly disappear, leaving a hollow shell eaten by regret.
Besides, the wrong sort of memory might still return, the one that confirms I willingly betrayed him, exchanged the blue of his gaze for the heat of embers.
“You’d hate me,” I whisper, pulling his hands from my face. “Maybe not today or tomorrow, but eventually. You’d resent me for taking you from everything that makes you who you are. I won’t be the cause of your destruction.”
