Chapter 47 Three Sides
The forest is very still around us.
Not naturally still. The specific stillness of a space where multiple supernatural abilities are running at once and the air itself is holding its breath trying not to set anything off.
I look at Dara.
She is unhurt. Frightened, her ability throwing gold light in unsteady pulses around her bound wrists, but physically unhurt, and the moment our eyes meet, I push a thread of tamer warmth toward her across the distance and watch her ability steady slightly, the pulses slowing, her breathing evening out.
She lifts her chin.
Good girl.
I look at Sera.
She looks back with that composed warmth that I have learned means she is running three calculations simultaneously and showing me none of them.
"Release her," I say.
"In a moment," Sera replies pleasantly. "There are things we need to discuss first."
"Sera." Rhydan's voice is very quiet beside me. The specific quiet of a pressure system building. "Release her now."
Something moves in Sera's expression, a flicker of something that is not the composure, something that responds to his voice with a specific quality of pain she covers in under a second.
She still wants him.
That has not changed.
It never will.
And she has learned to weaponise it rather than surrender to it, which makes her considerably more dangerous than someone who simply hates me.
"The three people behind you," I say, looking past Sera at the strangers, "are not your family. They are not Elder Valecrest's people. Who are they?"
Sera tilts her head slightly. "You noticed."
"Immediately," I reply.
Something that might be genuine appreciation crosses her face briefly. "They represent an interested party," she says carefully. "One who has been watching the bond develop with considerable investment in the outcome."
"A third faction," Rhydan says quietly.
"Everyone wants the dragon," Sera says simply. "Your grandfather wants it contained. The Drevari want it weaponised. These people," a small gesture backward, "want something else entirely."
"What?" I ask.
"To negotiate," she says.
I stare at her. "You kidnapped my roommate to arrange a negotiation."
"I borrowed her temporarily to ensure you would come quickly and without Corvyn," Sera says, and the precision of the phrasing, borrowed, temporarily, is so characteristic of her that despite everything I almost want to laugh.
"What does this third party want to negotiate?" Rhydan asks.
One of the three strangers steps forward.
A woman. Older than Sera, younger than Corvyn, with silver streaks through dark hair and the specific stillness of someone who carries a great deal of power and has learned not to let it show in ordinary moments.
She looks at me directly.
Not at Rhydan.
At me.
"We want to offer you protection," she says, low and accented. "From the Drevari. From Elder Valecrest. From anyone who wants to control what you and the dragon become together." She pauses. "In exchange for access."
"Access to what?" I ask.
"To the anchored bond," she says. "Once it is complete. Not control. Not ownership. Access. Research. Documentation. The first completed tamer-dragon anchor in eighty-three years is the most significant supernatural event of this century and there are people who want to witness it properly."
"Scholars," I say slowly.
"Among other things," she replies.
I look at Rhydan.
He looks back at me and his eyes are very steady and both his natures are running warm and awake and he gives me the smallest nod, not agreement, just I see it too, keep going.
"Release Dara," I say to Sera. "Now. Before this conversation continues one more word."
Sera holds my gaze for a moment.
Then she raises her hand and the silver restraints dissolve and Dara is on her feet in under a second, crossing the distance between us fast, and I catch her with both arms and she grabs on and shakes once, just once, the single controlled shudder of someone who held themselves together through sheer stubbornness and is now allowing themselves the one second it costs.
"Are you hurt?" I ask against her hair.
"No," she mutters. "I'm furious."
"Good," I say quietly. "Hold onto that."
I feel Rhydan step closer at my back, not touching, just there, a warm wall of presence between us and everyone else in this forest, and the bond runs steady and certain and I breathe.
Dara pulls back and looks at Sera with an expression of pure concentrated fury that is frankly impressive for someone whose magic is still unclassified.
"You," she says to Sera, flat and cold.
"I'm sorry," Sera says, and means approximately forty percent of it.
"You will be," Dara replies, and means all of it.
I look at the silver-streaked woman.
"We are not agreeing to anything today," I say. "Release of Dara was the condition for this conversation continuing and it has been met. The conversation is over."
The woman holds my gaze.
"You will need allies," she says quietly. "More than you currently have. The Drevari are not the only threat and Elder Valecrest is not the only powerful man who wants to control what you are becoming." She reaches into her jacket and places a card on the flat top of the nearest root. "When you are ready."
She steps back.
The three of them move through the trees and disappear with the specific ease of people who know this forest and have been in it before, and the space they leave behind feels lighter and colder simultaneously.
Rhydan picks up the card.
Reads it.
Hands it to me without a word.
No name. No organisation. Just a location and a date, three weeks from today, and underneath it in small careful script... a single line.
We knew your mother.
The forest holds its silence around us.
Dara looks at the card in my hand and then at my face and her furious expression shifts into something more complicated.
"Veyra," she says carefully.
"I know," I reply.
Rhydan's hand finds the small of my back, warm and steady.
I look at Sera.
She is watching me read the card with an expression I cannot fully categorise, something that sits between satisfaction and something much more complicated than satisfaction, something that looks uncomfortably close to genuine regret.
"You knew about this third party," I say to her.
"Yes," she admits.
"Since when?"
She is quiet for one beat too long.
"Since before I came to Northveil," she says quietly.
The trees hold their silence.
The dragon pulses once from somewhere impossibly far below our feet.
And I look at Sera Vance, this girl who has been my enemy and my rival and my almost-ally and my inside threat, and I understand with complete cold clarity that there is not a single person in this forest, possibly not a single person at Northveil, whose agenda I fully understand.
Including her.
Especially her.
"Come on," Rhydan says quietly behind me.
I take Dara's hand.
We walk out of the forest.
Sera follows three steps behind, and I do not look back at her, and the card burns in my other hand, and above us, the November sky is the specific grey of something about to break open.