Chapter 40 Elana Heart- POV
So yeah… I climbed. Because my instinct said so and my guts were never wrong.
However, the climb was a grueling comedy of errors. I hauled myself up the rough, silver bark of the Elder Oak, my nightdress snagging on every jagged knot and splinter.
Below me, the forest was a sea of shifting monstrosities, but the higher I went, the more the air thinned into a piercing, crystalline cold.
Xavier, tucked against my chest, stayed asleep, a warm, vibrating weight that felt like a living coal.
James, meanwhile, remained wedged in my hair, his tiny neon body acting like a glowing ornament that I desperately hoped wouldn't act as a beacon for the killers below.
I reached a thick, moss-laden branch about fifty feet up and pressed my back against the trunk, pulling my knees to my chest. Just as I settled, the silence of the forest was shattered.
The sound of iron-shod hooves and the clatter of heavy plate armor tore through the woods. Below me, through the canopy, I saw the flickers of torches, not the soft, starlight glow of the forest, but the harsh, orange fire of man-made destruction.
"Spread out!" a voice barked. I’d know that sharp, melodic snap anywhere.
It was Grace.
I looked down, my newly sharpened vision cutting through the dark like a hawk’s. She was no longer the girl who fanned me in the garden. She was draped in blackened steel, a crimson cape billowing behind her, her hair tied back in a severe, warrior's braid.
The rest of the knights, holding a mana lamp as they spread.
She looked every bit the High Commander of a rebel army, or perhaps, the secret daughter of a house that had waited centuries for this moment.
"The trail ends here," she hissed, her eyes scanning the moss where I had just been standing. "I hit her hard enough to crack a stone. She shouldn't have been able to crawl a yard, let alone vanish."
Beside her, a horse stepped into the light. Leo sat atop it, his face illuminated by a mana torch.
Gone was the humble butler; he wore a scholar’s robe of midnight blue, embroidered with silver sigils that pulsed with a sick, oily light.
"It was the Core, Lady Grace," Leo said, his voice flat and academic, as if he were discussing a broken clock rather than the King he had served for decades.
"Xavier is a fool. In that final moment, he didn't use the magic to slay us. He channeled the entirety of his life-force, his very mana, to trigger a blind teleportation. It was a suicide play."
Leo dismounted, kneeling to touch the scorched earth where Xavier had transformed. "He is core-less now. A Drake without a core is a husk. He’ll be dying in the dirt somewhere, his body failing as his magic bleeds into the ground. He isn’t a King anymore; he’s a man in the grass."
"I don't care about his state!" Grace snapped, kicking a pile of leaves in a fit of cold madness. "I want his head on a pike by sunrise. The Council is already fighting over the chairs in the Great Hall. They want proof the 'Shadow' is gone. And the girl... Elena is mine to deal with. She betrayed the Hearts. She chose a beast over her own blood."
"She chose a corpse," Leo corrected, a cruel, smug smile touching his lips. "Without the stone, Xavier’s heart will stop before the moon sets. And James? James was a construct of Xavier’s will. If the King fades, the Commander vanishes into ash."
I felt a tiny, sharp poke on my scalp. James was awake. He didn't move, but I felt his tiny, toothpick-sized limbs trembling. It wasn't fear; it was a cold, neon fury.
Down below, the madness continued. Grace turned to a group of mages who were marking the trees with red chalk. "Burn it," she commanded. "If we can't find them in the brush, we’ll smoke them out. I don't care if this entire forbidden grove turns to cinder. I want the Dragon dead."
Leo let out a dry, rattling laugh. "You always did lack finesse, Lady Grace. But your brutality is... efficient. Men! Prepare the pitch! We turn this forest into a pyre!"
I sat in the dark, my breath held tight. I looked down at the tiny, snoring lizard in my bodice—the "husk" of a King, and then at the neon gecko in my hair. They thought he was a corpse. They thought I was a traitor.
I looked at my hands, which were beginning to glow with a faint, violet heat again. I wasn't just a Heart anymore. I was the keeper of a dying King and a grumpy gecko, and if Grace wanted to burn the world down to find us, she was going to find out that even a core-less dragon still has teeth.
"You heard the man, James," I whispered into the leaves. "Apparently, you're supposed to be ash."
James let out a tiny, defiant chirp and bit my ear. Just a little.
Fine, I thought, looking down at the flickering torches. Let them light the fire. I’m the one who learned how to dance in it.