Chapter 136 DECISIONS

Chapter 136 DECISIONS
THIRD PERSON

"Cadence’s exposure was extended,” Ser Thorian continued slowly. “Weeks inside the realm. The effects were cumulative and irreversible by the time she came back through the threshold.” He looked at the window. “Voss was inside for… we don’t know exactly how long. But the threshold was open for a matter of minutes on this side. Given the disparity in how time moves—” He stopped again.

“It may have been long enough for some level of exposure,” Cerys finished.

“We don’t know what level of exposure produces what effect,” he admitted. “We never studied it. We never had the opportunity or the subject.”

“We had Cadence,” Cerys reminded him quietly.

“Cadence died,” he replied, and the flatness in his voice was not coldness but resignation. Grief sat just beneath the surface of the words.

Cerys folded her hands on the desk. “I wish Voss had come through with her memory intact,” she pondered. “We would have had the truth one way or another. What drove her into the realm, what she found there, what happened during the crossing.” She paused. “Now we have none of it.”

“Kai and Yvaine know more than they disclosed in this office,” Ser Thorian observed. “I am certain of that. But even what they know is not the full picture.” He looked at her. “They were not with her when she went in. Whatever she had found, whatever she had decided, she went alone.”

“Which tells us something about what she knew,” Cerys noted.

“She knew enough to go,” he agreed. “And not enough to come back safely.”

The silence returned, different from the one before it. Heavier.

“If her memory does not come back,” Cerys continued, and she spoke plainly, “we will need to consider what happens to Tempest.”

Ser Thorian turned back to the window.

He did not respond immediately. The grounds below were still and dark, the marks in the training field were nagging at him. He looked at them and thought about thirty years ago, a storm rider he had trained alongside, her laugh, the way she had looked at Stormweaver in the early days of the bond, before any of them understood what the bond would cost. A deep, personal ache rose in him.

“I know what you mean,” he answered.

“The last time a storm dragon was at this Academy we were not prepared,” Cerys continued. “We did not have the knowledge or the infrastructure to study what we had. We lost it before we could learn from it.” She paused. “We are better prepared now. Tempest is here and she is extraordinary. There is a great deal that can be understood from her presence even without a rider actively bonded to her.”

“You’re talking about studying her without Lyra,” he pointed out.

“I’m talking about not wasting what we have,” Cerys rephrased. “If Voss does not recover her memory. If the bond cannot be maintained without the rider’s active participation, if Tempest becomes effectively unbonded—” She stopped. “There are decisions to be made. I am not making them tonight. But they exist and I am not pretending otherwise.”

Ser Thorian pressed one hand flat against the glass of the window.
“Give it time,” he urged. “The healer said—”

“I know what the healer said,” Cerys pressed. “I am also the principal of this Academy and I have obligations that extend beyond what the healer said.” She stood. “Give it time,” she agreed. “But not indefinitely.”

She left.
Ser Thorian stayed at the window.

He looked at the training field and thought about what was going through Kai’s mind as he sat in his dorm room with Cadence’s letter and a lifetime worth of questions about his mother that had partially been answered and had produced twice as many new ones. Worry for his son settled deep beside the older grief.

He pressed his hand harder against the glass.

~

The dormitory corridor was silent at two in the morning.

Yvaine had watched Lyra sleep for the better part of two hours, had sat in the chair with her book unopened in her lap and her eyes on the steady rise and fall of Lyra’s breathing, alert for any sign of distress, any change in the rhythm, any indication that the headache had returned or that something was wrong that needed the healer.

Nothing had been wrong.

Lyra had slept with deep unconsciousness. Her breathing was slow and even and the furrow between her brows had eased slightly as the hours passed. A quiet protectiveness kept Yvaine watching long after she should have rested.

Eventually, Yvaine had lain down on her own bed.

She had not intended to sleep. She had intended to remain available, alert, present in the room. But the chair had been uncomfortable and the bed was there, her body had its own priorities and she was asleep within ten minutes.

She did not hear Lyra get up

~

Lyra moved through the Academy in a state that was not sleep and was not waking.

Her eyes were closed. Her face was entirely still. Her feet moved with unhurried certainty like she was being directed rather than conscious of herself. The ankle which should have been agony, which would have been agony the moment she put weight on it in any ordinary state bore her weight without producing any sound or reaction, as though the part of her that translated physical sensation to experience had been temporarily suspended.

She went down the dormitory corridor and down the back stairs, through the door that the groundskeeping staff used because it was never locked from the inside. Across the dark Academy grounds.

The night air was cold enough to show her breath in the moonlight but she did not react to the cold.

She stopped in the centre of the training field, on the exact spot where she had come down. She stood there, eyes closed, face tilted slightly upward, and swayed once… a slow, slight movement, as though something was pulling at her from a direction that had no name in the physical world.

The air changed.

It did not change dramatically. A tightening. A density came in the space around her that had not been there a moment before, a charged quality that raised the hair on the back of her neck and settled on her skin.

The crackling began.

Small at first, a sound like static, like the snap of dry fabric in cold air, like the distant edge of a storm heard through walls. Then louder, and directional, concentrated in the air directly in front of where Lyra stood, and the darkness in that space began to behave differently from the darkness around it, a swirling developing, a movement in something that should have been still.

The threshold opened.

Not the way it had opened when Lyra crossed on Tempest’s back with the bond running full between them. No dragon, no flight, no rider bringing it forth. Just a tearing in the air and Valtheron Carew stepped through.