Chapter 33 Swear by Blood and Bone
“He was—” I choke on a sob, tears flowing freely and freezing in rivulets on my face. “He was just a kid.”
“And so are you, yet you survived. You were built for this, Anara. Not him. Calder should have stayed at the bakery with his mother and never dreamed of being a slayer. He chose his path. He suffered the consequences of that choice.”
“Are all slayers this heartless?” My shoulders heave, my back slouching against the stone behind me as Thorne releases his granite-like hold.
“We have to be heartless, or we cannot do what we are trained to do.” He tilts his head toward the sun where it lingers behind gray clouds. He takes a deep breath, reaches for his staff, and leans on the gnarled wood. “Encapsulate that heart of yours in stone, girl. It’s the only way you’ll survive this.”
A dragon cries in the distance as Thorne turns his back to me as if to accentuate the severity of his words. I listen to his staff click and drag against the ancient stone, and watch his back recede as he steps down into the spiral staircase below.
The dragon calls again, pulling my attention to the clouds above the continent. I see a flash of red scales and hear the thud of powerful wings, but the dragon doesn’t come closer. Like always, the threat is here. They’ll never let us forget it. They want us dead and they’ll do anything to make it happen.
I grab the golden rose and crush it in my hand, welcoming the pain as the thorns pierce my palm. They draw blood, rich red leaking out from my tightly wrapped fingers. Screaming, I thrust my fist into the air. Crimson drips down my arm, off my elbow, and onto the stones.
“I consecrate this castle with my blood,” I roar, slamming my palm on the bricks. “I will avenge everything you’ve taken!” I square my shoulders, spreading my blood over the stones and then my chest. “I’m coming for you, silver one. I’m coming for you all. I will break your hold on this land and eradicate the threat that looms over us all. This I swear, by blood and bone.”
“All the magic in the three realms can’t make that oath into truth.”
I spin, fist clenched and teeth bared, and face Zaries like he’s the next dragon I have to fight. He stands with legs spread wide, his arms crossed over his powerful chest, the silver dragon scale on his back reflecting the overcast skies.
“I’ve bound myself to it by blood. It will hold.” I tilt my chin to him defiantly. Just because he doesn’t believe in the power of magic doesn’t mean I can’t.
“So, what, are you going to kill all the dragons yourself?”
“If I have to!” I snarl, watching as he circles me on top of this tower.
“We have a long way to go before they’ll ever let us face a dragon, Anara.”
I laugh dryly, jamming my uninjured hand on my hip. “We faced a dragon twice before ever getting to Hellbane.”
“Three times,” he says quietly. His brown eyes hold all the depth of sorrow we’ve both faced for years. “Those times don’t matter, Anara. None of them do. Not until we’re trained in how to kill them can we count them as survived. We didn't survive those attacks, we escaped. Wounded, both heart and soul.”
My gaze drops from his and I nod, letting a curtain of my long black hair separate him from me. We didn’t survive. Not whole. Part of us died in each attack. The lives lost… Calder is only the latest, not the hardest.
“Do you remember when my father faced off with the silver dragon, the king of Obsidian Reach at his side?” Zaries asks, stopping behind me. I can feel his warm breath on the back of my neck, and I feel his breathing grow harder and rougher. “Two kings from realms who should have been torn asunder by what you did. They faced the giant silver dragon on the cliffs of Stormcoast together. They fought him, wounded him, backed him up to the fall so he would die on the piercing rocks below.”
“We watched from the treeline, too far away to do anything,” I whisper, trying to stand strong, trying not to shake under his scrutiny.
“They thought we were all dead. They were avenging their children. Atreus saw you as a daughter.”
Zaries’ words sting, each one a stab directly into my heart with needles as fine as a single strand of hair.
“Would they have faced him if they knew? Would they have died there on that cliff if they knew you and I were alive? Would the queens be widows now if someone had told them we were alive?”
“We’ll never know, it’s in the past. All we can do is avenge—”
“No!” Zaries hisses between his teeth. His strong arms wrap around my neck and I have only a brief second to cover my scale with my fingertips before he touches it and curses himself. He squeezes, backing up, and then spins me so I’m facing the deathly drop below.
“You should have died that day, not her. It should have been Elysandra and I who walked back to the castle. But that's not what happened, is it?”
I shake my head, tears slipping down my face.
“The worst part of it all, Anara? Do you want to know?”
I shake my head again. I don’t want to know what's worse than all this.
“The worst part is that no matter how much I hate you, no matter how much I want to watch you suffer for what you did…” His arms loosen and slide down my own, his calloused hands gripping my elbows and folding my arms in against my chest. “The sight of you suffering still breaks something inside of me.”
Every inch of my body freezes as his hands rub up and down my arms.
“This is the last time I want to see you cry, because I need to hate you, Anara.”
I turn in his arms and face him, chin tilted up so that we’re staring into the depths of each other’s souls.