Chapter 43 What He Let Me Do
Petra grabs for my arm and misses.
I take the gallery stairs at speed, flash my student tile at the rink-side access door, push through into the cold sharp air at ice level, and the assistant coach looks at me with an expression of complete bewilderment as I cross directly to the Wolves bench.
Rhydan is on the ice.
He doesn't know yet.
He is executing perfectly, reading the play two moves ahead the way he always does, nothing externally wrong, but through the bond, the cold splinter is working steadily deeper and his dragon nature is starting to feel it, a restless heat building under his skin that belongs to something trying to fight back rather than to the game.
The whistle blows for an icing call.
He skates to the bench for the line change, drops onto the seat, pulls his helmet off, runs a hand back through damp hair, and when he looks up and finds me standing at the boards, his brows pull together hard and fast.
I lean over. "Your left shoulder, where he hit you... Something is in there and it is spreading."
Every muscle in his body locks for one controlled second.
"The captain?" Flat. Quiet.
"Yes."
His eyes go to the ice, to Greymoor's captain standing at the face-off dot, and I watch him read the situation in under three seconds... the way the captain's eyes have not touched the puck once, the way they are fixed on Rhydan's bench with the patience of someone waiting for something to take effect.
"My grandfather arranged this fixture," Rhydan says, very low, as realization hit him.
It hits me in the chest like something dropped from height.
The schedule. The matchup. The specific timing of it, while the council review sits active on paper and Elder Valecrest sits in his study and waits.
He put Drevari players on Northveil ice.
"Can you pull it out?" Rhydan asks quietly, and his voice is stripped all the way down to just the question, direct and steady and carrying a trust so complete and uncomplicated it does more to my chest than anything today has done.
I put my hand over his left shoulder.
Push my warmth inward.
The thing inside him resists immediately, cold and complex, built to fight removal, and I push harder and feel it begin coming apart under my hands piece by piece, and Rhydan sits perfectly still, breathing slowly and deliberately, jaw set, letting me work without flinching.
He trusts me.
Completely.
Without performance or conditions or anything between us except the bond running warm and certain in both directions.
Ninety seconds.
When the last of it dissolves, the relief that floods through from his side is enormous and immediate, a wave of it moving through the bond, and his eyes close for one single second.
Open.
Find mine.
"Thank you," he says, rough at the edges.
"Don't let him touch you again," I reply.
Something cold and absolute settles into his expression, not anger exactly, something older and quieter than anger, and he pulls his helmet back on and stands, and before he steps onto the ice, he looks back at me once.
Just once.
Grey eyes warm and steady and entirely deliberate.
Then he skates directly toward Greymoor's captain with the unhurried focused certainty of something that has identified exactly what it is hunting and is in no particular hurry because it already knows how this ends.
The crowd sees a hockey captain going back to work.
I see both his natures fully awake and running in alignment and aimed.
My phone vibrates.
Bram: I'm watching. Don't interfere further. This has to play out visibly or we lose the evidence for the council case.
I stare at the screen.
Look at the ice.
Greymoor's captain has just realised the planted magic is gone, his composure cracking by one visible degree, and his eyes find Rhydan approaching and something that looks very much like panic moves through his face before he pulls it back.
The Wolves score four minutes later.
Rhydan doesn't celebrate.
He looks up at me at the boards and the corner of his mouth moves, barely, just barely, and it moves through the bond like sunlight coming through a window that has been shut a long time.
I feel it in my whole body.
The final buzzer sounds, Northveil four, Greymoor one, and the arena erupts around me and I stand at the boards with the noise crashing over me and my hand warm and my heart doing something large and completely uncategorised.
In the top gallery Sera sits perfectly composed, hands folded, and as the crowd rises around her, she stays still and her phone screen glows briefly and she sends something and locks it before anyone near her can see the screen.
Her magical ability hums under her skin.
Not defensive.
Ready.
Cassian appears at my shoulder from nowhere, slightly breathless from the final period, still in full gear, and he follows my eyeline up to where Sera sits in the emptying gallery.
"She's been up there the whole game," he mutters.
"I know," I reply.
"She didn't watch the game once," he says.
"I know that too."
He looks at me sideways, something careful in his expression. "She was watching you."
I look at Sera in the gallery.
She looks back down at me, calm and composed and warm, and raises her cup slightly in a small gesture that could mean anything.
Could mean she is on our side.
Could mean she is exactly where she planned to be.
The locker room door opens behind me and Rhydan comes through it, hair damp, jacket unzipped, and he stops when he sees my face and reads it the way he reads everything now, immediately and completely.
"What?" he asks quietly.
I hand him my phone with Bram's message still open.
He reads it.
Reads it again.
"The evidence," he says slowly. "Bram needed it visible. The captain's face when the magic was gone. The planted working. All of it on the supernatural sports feed."
"Elder Valecrest arranged this fixture," I say. "And the council has it on camera."
Something moves through Rhydan's face, fierce and bright, and it transforms him completely for one unguarded second, and I want to keep that expression somewhere safe where it cannot get lost.
He looks up at the gallery where Sera was sitting.
She is gone.
"Where did she go?" he asks.
"I don't know," I reply.
His eyes come back to mine and the fierce brightness is still there but underneath it something quieter and more serious and entirely focused on me.
"She's moving," he says. "Whatever she's planning, she is starting it tonight."
"Yes," I agree.
"Then we need to move faster," he says.
From deep below the arena floor, through the ice and the stone and the ancient foundations of Northveil, the dragon's pulse moves upward, slow and enormous and no longer patient.
It is not asking anymore.
It is telling us something.
And we are running out of time to listen.