CHAPTER 3

SLADE

I know what this is.

I'm not sure exactly how I know, but an innate understanding fuses with my fraying consciousness.

I'm on my knees and heaving breath, my body trembling as an age-old magic floods through me. This is magic born when existence first bled into Annwyn. Magic that is rare and coveted and revered.

This is a p?yur bond fusing.

As soon as that realization enters my mind, my entire body flares. Black tendrils sift off my skin like smoke, swarmed with golden rays that shine amidst the inky black, flocking around my body in rippling streams.

I stare at my hands, my arms, watching the black and gold drift off me like steam from a hot spring.

It's our auras. Mine and hers, mixing.

The p?yur magic ripples. I feel it within me, like someone shoveling up my entire foundation and packing it in with Auren's essence.

Our souls are now bound together. Our lives forever connected. Our magic entwined.

It means that she and I are a match fated by the goddesses. It means that we have been given the greatest gift ever bestowed on a fae.

It means that she's mine.

Elation fills me as much as the magic does. Stunned, all I can do is stay kneeling on the murky ground.

I feel her magic pulse through me, the warmth of it filling my limbs. My rot dumps into the land, but streaks of gold, like gleaming ribbons, run through the black roots.

This power that stretches over the land also stretches through me. I feel it swim through my depths and rush into my chest.

I feel her burn. Her light .

I jerk my eyes down to my torn shirt, gaze locked on my distended heart. My teeth grit with the growing heat of the burn as sweat pours down my face. The heat is nearly unbearable, and yet, it feels like it's burning away all the bad, like cauterizing a wound.

The skin over the bulge starts to itch, making me flinch with its intensity. I have to scratch it. The urge is compulsory. Lifting a shaky hand, I reach down, and the moment my fingertip skims against it, the itch sizzles. Then the browned, sickly skin starts to curl and flake away like burning parchment.

The itch isn't satisfied. Not at all.

My finger presses down further, hooking in, taking chunks of more dead layers. I dig it all out, dig it away, like molded bits of bread being ripped off and tossed onto the floor. Faster, frantically, needing this sensation to be sated, I keep going. I watch as each piece peels off, a lighter brown than the layer before, all while my chest continues to burn.

I peel away one last flake with a hiss, and it finally stops itching. The spot is no longer bloating, and I blink down at it, breathing hard.

Without any more of the dead skin, I don't see a rotting, blistering heart. Instead, something else has grown beneath all those flaked-away layers.

Right here, over my heart, is a scale.

A golden scale.

I pull in a sharp breath, just before I reach down to feel it. Yet the moment my fingertip touches it, I explode.

Not my heart, but me .

Spikes and scales burst out of me in a violent rush that tosses me back. The spikes along my forearms, the ones down my spine, the ones above my eyebrows. I cry out as they pierce through my skin so fast that blood streaks from the punctures.

The countless rotted veins spread throughout my body start slithering wildly, like serpents racing away, just as my fae fangs drop down. My cheekbones feel scraped raw when my scales appear, and my ears pinch, the tips sharpening.

I remember what it felt like when I first tore in two. When I was forced to fight my father with raw power, and when the world ripped open. I remember what it felt like when that same power somehow ripped me in two.

But this…this feels like those two parts of me are smashing back together.

It's euphoric. Agonizing. Like needles sticking soul-deep, thrashing a thread through my entire being, and binding me back together again.

Two halves combining into a whole.

But when I feel the last stitch merging me…something else suddenly surges up.

Argo cries and flings back when shadows suddenly lunge out of my body. And it's not my aura. This is something else.

The vapor is as black as night, save for a ring of light around the edges that's unmistakably gold. It billows out of me like an odorless smoke.

I try to move, but I'm caught in this surge of magic. The smoke gathers and thickens, streaming out of me and pulling all my breath with it. More scales tear across my chest like a slashed wound from predatory claws, peeling away my skin in the process.

Sweat slicks down my face as I lift my head, watching as those shadows start to gather. Coalesce.

They come streaming out of my body and land upon the ground, making Argo back up even further.

I strain to sit up, to see…

The smoke takes form.

I suck in a breath of shock at what I see. It's as tall as I am when standing, its vapor dense and rippling. When I realize what shape it is, my mouth drops open. My eyes widen.

"What…the… fuck ."

A face looks out at me from billowing darkness. A face of power and viciousness. A face that hasn't been seen in Annwyn for hundreds of years.

A dragon.

A fucking dragon .

The same curved black spikes that are on my body are also on the dragon's. Four on each front forearm, six down its back, a row of stubbed ones arcing above each eye—just like mine.

The dragon is formed from the shadowy smoke that streamed out of me, but the wicked sharp teeth seem dense enough to bite. The layered black eyes clear enough to hunt for prey.

The creature has a sweep of gold scales along its silvered cheeks, with more down the chest like gilded armor. Each scale is as wide as my hand, brighter than the flare around my shadows, making the smoke creature gleam in the dark. It looks like something out of a nightmare. Something that can't possibly be real.

Except it is.

It turns to me, iridescent eyes blinking, and its gaze makes my blood run cold. The hair on the back of my neck lifts as it opens its mouth, flashing its coal-black fangs.

Yet just as quickly as it appeared, it dissipates. Like someone blew away a plume of dust. Just like that, its form and its magic fade away.

And I fade with it.

The last thing I see is Argo taking flight high above me, sending birds to burst out of the trees and aim for the sky. I slump back on the ground, and my eyes fall closed, submitting to the dark.

But inside of that dark, I feel Auren's fire continue to burn.