Chapter 32

An adrenaline spike was usually her high. It was the swing of her sword meeting another’s. It was the dizzy toll of taking a hit square to her jaw. It was motion and it was living. This was different. This wasn’t her legion against another but rather her against the world.

Meira was already running when the door came crashing down with an echoing boom. She didn”t look to see if Remis was behind her but she felt his nearness in almost the same way she could feel Mrithun landing behind the home. A roar drowned out the noise of men pouring inside. She and Remis had already turned the corner and were sprinting down the hall toward the door waiting to let them out the other side.

“Stop! Witch!” deep baritone voices shouted, getting lost to the screams that erupted outside.

Fear ate away at everything inside of her, hollowing her out completely, as she rushed into the yard leading to the back alleyway. Her heels dug into the grass as she forced her momentum to a stop. There was the blood-curdling, ear-splitting scream of a war cry and it took her several seconds to realize that the sound was coming from her.

Ropes had been tossed across her dragon’s back, pinning her wings, and holding her down with men gripping the binds on either side, weights tied at their ends. Smoke rose from several crumpled forms who’d gotten too close to Mrithun’s flames and suffered the consequence. Then there was the man with the syringe. He’d darted between the ropes and snuck close enough to shove a needle between the Bold Wings spread claws to the sensitive unprotected skin between each appendage.

That’s when Meira had lost all of her control. She’d cut through four city guards before someone was able to grab her and force her to let her weapon go. A needle had found its way into the curve of her neck and everything had turned black.

That was how Meira ended up in the bleak cell in the lowest levels of the city”s jail.

Alone.

Remis had been with her. Sometimes she thought she remembered him pulling his own sword, cutting down a few guards on his own. Sometimes she swore she’d heard the bark of his voice as he’d shouted at the men charging her and her Bold Wing.

She thought she’d already cried as much as she possibly could that morning, but apparently there were more tears to be had. Tears released like a flood the moment the cell door had shut, the lock twisted, and the only light available disappeared with the guards.

Cold metal propped her up. She breathed the damp scent of molding hay and the salt of her tears. Though she bore no clear marks, her skin stung, the sensation worsening with every cry Mrithun let out. Somewhere in this dark damned place her dragon was being cut up, tortured to the sound of guards” wicked laughs. Mrithun’s cries shook the walls, rattling the very bars Meira sat against.

It took hours for the men to stop playing their games with her Bold Wing. Hours for the prickled discomfort of her skin and the burning stripes of pain as though they’d cut into her to lessen. Eventually silence descended. It could have been minutes, hours, or days that she sat in that cell with no light or sound. Nothing but the steady flow of her own thoughts.

Was this it then? Was this the moment that had driven her to jump back to the beginning of the timeline? Remis wasn’t here. She was acutely aware of that fact. Could he have betrayed her? Somehow gotten word out about who and what she was? Pain twisted like a knife in her chest. She didn’t want to believe that. Lonely ideas kept circling around and kept growing her doubt.

Bram couldn’t be counted out either. Or someone else in Crimson Legion. No one turned witches into villains like scale riders did. She’d always thought it was because they longed for someone to be more hated in this country than them.

She’d failed. As a witch. Then as a scale rider. Meira was as good as dead now. They’d be prepping a stage to set flames upon her. She’d sooner fall upon a sword than let the city watch her burn.

For years she’d hidden the power inside of her. Her memory gave way to passing time as she forgot how to do little things that had come naturally as a child. Only after waking did she let herself dip back into that power, did she play with the thrum of magic in her veins. None of it was good enough to get her out of this prison cell. Not unless she used the last of her energy to start again. She wasn’t sure she could even do that with the lingering effects of whatever drug they’d pumped into her veins.

It was tempting though. The urge to start over and hope for a different outcome.

The glowing light of a torch returned. She couldn’t lift her head to see who it was. Exhaustion kept her still. Shadows passed over the walls of her cell. The bit of light was enough to reveal two stone walls and more bars between her prison and the next. It revealed a hunched form tossed into the cell next to her. Another click of a lock and then the light receded.

The constant wheeze of someone else’s breath was loud compared to what she’d grown used to. They’d walked themselves into the cell but it didn’t sound as though they’d moved since landing in their bed of straw.

“Meira?” A rough whispered voice.

She stiffened. “Remis?”

He let out a long slow breath that broke off into a fit of coughs and a groan. Him in a cell next to her didn’t bode well for her theory of his betrayal. He didn’t exactly sound as though he was at peak health either. So where had he been?

“Thought I might find you down here.” He exhaled, along with the shuffle of his movement. Meira imagined his face pressed against those bars. His beautiful features would be quite the contrast to their dingy surroundings. “How are you?”

Meira could laugh at the simple way he’d asked such a polite question but that would require energy she didn’t have. “I’m alive. For now. Where were you?”

“In another cell much better than this one. They had me locked up in a room for hours. Questioned me for a while…” The way he trailed off suggested they did more than question him. They’d hurt him. “They’ve decided that they’ve found me guilty of consorting with a witch. We’ve got until the morning.”

And exactly how many hours was that?

She pulled herself forward. Straw stuck to her palms as she crawled closer to the sound of his voice and found his hands clutching the iron bars. They were running out of options. “I can go back in time, bring us back to the house and we can run.” Or she could go even further than that, but she wouldn’t know why she’d done it then either, she might not have time for her memories to catch back up again. Then they’d somehow be right back in this position again. That’s not even to mention if she could lose herself to the witch’s sleep again.

“Would you remember if you went back?” Remis pulled her hand through the bars and pressed a kiss against her knuckles.

“No,” she whispered. She wasn’t sure if the curse would be removed either. Did this travel with her through time and space?

“I hate that you don’t remember.” He pressed her palm against his cheek and leaned into her touch. “I hate that there is a time with you that I have not experienced.”

The cool kiss of metal supported her head as she leaned against the bars. Silence was easy between them. It held all the things she wished to say, the emotions she wanted to admit to. The quiet held her love for a man she barely knew but felt nonetheless.

“Could you go back to a time before the curse? Could you forget me?”

Meira sighed. “I’m not sure. I can’t travel more than perhaps a few months back and the energy it would consume would make me ill. Bram said I’d been in bed for nearly a month this time. And I don’t know if the curse would follow. Considering I woke up with it, it’s likely safe to assume that it would.”

Remis squeezed her hand. He’d let her go if it meant she would live. That’s what he was getting at. She’d let him go once and though she wasn’t quite certain what had been the deciding factor, she hated the idea of doing this all again.

There might be one other way to escape their impending fate. A chance that she’d remember everything they’d shared and refuse the end the Empire would want of her.

“Would you like to know how scale riders bond with their Bold Wings?” Meira asked. Remis let out a slow breath and she took that as her cue to continue. “We share blood. A rider will find a Bold Wing when they are still fresh from the mother’s nest, young enough that they can be overpowered and outsmarted. Not yet flying either. The rider then makes a cut along unarmored flesh. Between their claws, just below their ears, or more dangerously just underneath their snout. We prick our fingers; you only need a little blood anyway, and rub it against the wound we’ve inflicted. Mrithun left scars from our bonding.

Then all of us wrestle our Bold Wings to the top of Mountain Ridmond. And we jump. If our Bold Wings take to flight for the first time and catch us on our descent the bond is solidified.”

She could remember every torturously scary moment of her bonding with Mrithun. Not all riders made it, not all dragons bonded. Some dragons took flight and didn’t bother to save their potential rider. Others died alongside the rider. All of this happened at the young age of ten.

Mrithun hadn’t yet darkened into her onyx scales when she’d been that young. The diamond-shaped scales had appeared almost violet under the midday sun. Meira had also found it so interesting that she was farther away from the other Bold Wings that were huddled around each other. An outsider. Just like her, she’d thought.

Mrithun put up one heck of a fight too. Threw Meira off her back at least a dozen times. Another child had seen and told Meira to find one who was more submissive. But no, even then, Meira knew Mrithun was meant to be hers. Even when the young Bold Wing had bitten into her arm, threatening to tear the meat clean off her bones, Meira had refused to give up on her.

“You jump? From the top of a mountain?” Remis sounded skeptical.

“That is the tradition.”

There had been several long minutes of falling through the haze of fog and cloud where Meira had convinced herself that she wasn’t going to be chosen. That perhaps Mrithun was too stubborn to take a rider or she simply had found Meira as an annoyance. Then she’d seen the rock terrain coming plainly into view, and as she’d prepared for impact, Mrithun had swooped up under her. Colliding with the dragon”s spiked spine had been painful and she might have yelped if the breath wasn’t knocked from her lungs.

“There are no mountains for us to readily jump from,” he said into the darkness.

“I’ve thought about that. I don’t think that it is so much that the jump is required but more so it is a choice given to the Bold Wing. They have to want you back.”

Meira could admit now that she did want Remis. At least in some twisted way. She’d wanted to kill him, and maybe that would have solved everything, or maybe when her memories returned she’d realize she’d ruined her life. There was too much unknown for her to make any sort of decision and now here she was with these overwhelming feelings. Now she knew what it felt like when he touched her. She longed for his smile and the way he laughed.

Did he want her though? Truly? Would he choose her?

Remis had been interested in what Kindred had said, but he was interested in the power that it gave him. Was that enough? To be bonded to another human would be far more intense than what they felt with this curse lingering on their skin. Right?

“What do you say, Nikremis Lexmore? Would you like to bond with a witch?”

It might be the only thing that could save them.