Chapter 37 Below
The entrance to the lower foundations is behind the restricted archive.
Not the obvious door, not the panel that leads to the restricted section, but the wall itself, a section of stone that Corvyn touches in three specific places and which swings inward on silence, like it has been waiting with perfect patience for exactly this moment.
The air that comes out is cold.
Not naturally cold. Supernaturally cold, the cold of a sealed space that has been holding something enormous at a very specific temperature for a very long time, and it smells like stone and old fire and something underneath both that I don't have a name for yet but that my tamer ability reaches toward immediately, instinctive and certain.
Rhydan puts his hand on my arm before I step through.
Not stopping me. Just there. Warm and steady against my sleeve and I look at him and his eyes are doing the silver thing at the edges and both his natures are fully awake and close to the surface, dragon and wolf alert simultaneously, and despite everything and the cold pouring out of the entrance and the pulse from below getting stronger, despite all of it, the feeling of his hand on my arm does something to my chest that is entirely inappropriate to the situation.
"Together," he says quietly.
"Together," I affirm.
Corvyn leads. Bram follows her. I go next and Rhydan stays at my shoulder and the narrow stone staircase goes down further than it should, curving in a slow spiral that takes us well below the academy's ground level, past the foundation stones and into something older, the rock changing texture underfoot from cut stone to raw, the walls narrowing and then opening again into a passage that runs straight toward a faint light.
Not electric light.
Not torch light.
A deep amber glow that pulses in rhythm with the heartbeat I feel in my chest, slow and enormous and alive.
The passage opens into a chamber.
I stop walking.
It is vast, far larger than anything should be this far below a building, the ceiling lost in darkness above us, the walls covered in markings that are not carved but grown, crystalline formations that catch the amber light and throw it back fractured in patterns that make my eyes ache if I look too long.
In the centre of the chamber floor, a seal.
Twenty metres across. Intricate beyond anything I have words for, witch craft and dragon craft woven together in a pattern so old it predates every classification system in the archive upstairs, and running through the centre of it, cracked now, a fissure splitting the seal from edge to edge, the amber light bleeding upward through the crack like something breathing underneath it.
"Veyra," Petra whispers from beside me.
I didn't know she followed us down, or at what point she joined us.
She is standing just inside the passage entrance, wind ability curling unconsciously around her fingers in pale ribbons, her eyes enormous in the amber light, and I reach back and find her hand and squeeze once and she squeezes back and does not run.
That is love.
"The seal was placed by the last bonded tamer pair at Northveil," Corvyn says from the chamber centre, her voice carrying strangely in the space. "Eighty-three years ago. They bound the dragon voluntarily. It agreed to the binding. Both parties understood it as temporary."
"Temporary meaning until the next bonded pair," I say slowly.
"Until the bond developed sufficiently to wake it properly," she replies. "Yes."
"Wake it for what?" Rhydan asks.
Corvyn looks at him steadily. "A dragon of this age and power cannot exist in the world without a tamer anchor. Without one it is uncontrollable. Dangerous. It has been dormant because dormancy was the only alternative to chaos."
"And now," I say.
"Now there is an alternative," she replies simply.
The amber light pulses.
The crack in the seal widens by a fraction and the temperature in the chamber drops sharply and the ward anchor in my hand burns so hot I nearly drop it and Rhydan's hand closes around mine over it immediately, his heat steadying mine, dragon warmth against tamer warmth, and the anchor settles.
From below the crack, something moves.
Not sound. Not light.
Presence.
Enormous and old and aware, pressing upward through the fractured seal and into the chamber air around us, and it is not hostile, it is simply vast, the way weather is vast, the way the ocean is vast, not cruel, just larger than anything that can be reasoned with in normal terms.
It touches my tamer awareness.
And I feel it feel me back.
"Oh," I breathe.
"What?" Rhydan demands quietly.
"It's curious," I say, which sounds absurd and is completely accurate. "About us."
"About you," Corvyn corrects.
"About both of us," I say, and I feel Rhydan register that through the bond, the significance of it landing in him, and his hand tightens around mine.
Then from the passage behind us, Bram's voice, sharp and urgent.
"We have a problem."
We turn.
He's standing in the passage entrance with his council tile in his hand and his expression stripped of everything except urgency.
"The two Drevari operatives from the arena," he says. "They weren't scouts."
"Then what were they?" Rhydan asks.
"Triggers," Bram says. "Their compulsion working wasn't targeting you specifically. It was targeting the bond. Designed to accelerate it past the natural threshold." He looks at me. "To force the seal open before you were ready."
The amber light pulses again, stronger.
"They wanted this to happen," I say slowly. "They wanted the dragon to wake."
"They want the dragon," Bram confirms. "Not contained. Not bonded. Unanchored and catastrophic and aimed." He looks at Rhydan. "At you."
"At me," Rhydan repeats flatly.
"A dual natured supernatural bonded to an unanchored ancient dragon," Bram says. "In the Drevari doctrine, that is not a person." His voice is very even. "That is the most destructive supernatural weapon in recorded history."
The chamber is very quiet.
The dragon's presence presses against all of us from below the cracked seal, patient and enormous and waiting.
My hand burns in Rhydan's grip.
"Then we anchor it first," I say.
Everyone looks at me.
"Before the Drevari get what they want. Before your grandfather binds you. Before any of it." I look at Rhydan and his silver-edged eyes look back at me and the bond runs bright and certain between us. "We anchor it. Properly. Now."
"Veyra," Corvyn says carefully. "You understand what anchoring means? What it costs?"
"Tell me."
She looks at me for a long moment.
"It means the dragon becomes part of your bond. Permanently. Bonded to you and through you to Rhydan. It means you carry something ancient and enormous inside your tamer ability for the rest of your life." She pauses. "And it means that anyone who wants the dragon will have to go through both of you to get it."
Rhydan turns to me fully.
"No," he says quietly.
"Rhydan..."
"That cost is too high," he says, and his voice is very low and very certain and underneath it something raw and protective that I feel as much as hear.
"It's my cost to decide," I say.
"Not alone," he replies.
We look at each other in the amber light with the ancient dragon's presence pressing around us and three different threats converging above our heads and I feel the bond between us, warm and permanent and real, and I think about my mother running and I think about Aldric spending twenty years with half of himself missing and I think about Rhydan on the cracked ice this morning with compulsion craft aimed at him and his dual nature fighting it alone.
Not alone.
Not anymore.
"Together then?"
Something in his face does the thing, the fully open thing, no walls, no almost, just him looking at me like I am the most significant thing in the room that contains an ancient dragon.
He laces his fingers through mine properly.
Turns to face the cracked seal.
"Together," he says.
The amber light surges upward.
And from above us, distantly but clearly, the sound of the academy doors blowing open.
All of them.
At once.