Chapter 29

Chapter Twenty-Nine

SIYANA

“Stay back, Kaida,” I demanded, my tone far more harsh than I’d ever been with him.

It was necessary—I couldn’t allow myself to be distracted by his involvement. He was mine to protect, and that was exactly what I was going to do.

His trill and stomps behind me told me he would do as I said, though he wasn’t happy about it. I didn’t need the dragon to be happy–I needed him to be safe.

My heart raced as I launched forward, my sword gleaming in the dim light. With all my training and skill, I aimed the blade straight for the god’s neck, hoping to end his life quickly. But as I drew closer, I couldn't help but wonder if a beheading would even work on a being this powerful.

Yet I couldn't hesitate now—my movements were swift and precise, honed from years of dedication. In mere seconds, I stood before him with my blade inches from his skin. But he was just as quick, effortlessly evading my attack with a grace that defied his immense stature. His ice daggers clashed against my sword as he parried. No matter how many blows I landed against the icy weapons, the divets I managed to make in them were healed almost instantly by his magic.

Not for the first time, I couldn’t help but wonder how anyone could stand a chance against a magical deity. Hadn’t Theo proven to me time and again that I could hold my own, until magic was involved? But I couldn't give up—there had to be a weakness I could exploit somewhere. Everyone had one, right?

A mocking laugh escaped him as I paused my assault, gasping for breath in the frigid air. Each breath was a brutal torture to my lung, and as loose strand of hair fell into my face, I blew it away as I carefully studied my adversary. There had to be a way to disarm him, but it dawned on me that he could simply conjure up more weapons with his magic. It was apparent then that I had to stop him from summoning them in the first place. But how?

He didn't use any gestures or incantations to cast his spells—it was as if he commanded the elements with merely his thoughts. So then, how could I prevent his thoughts? Was it even possible?

"This has been unexpectedly entertaining," the god admitted, letting his ice weapons melt away and drip onto the ground. "It has been a long while since I've felt the urge to meddle in the affairs of those in my topside domain. You have impressed me by not faltering, even after being pulled into my mirrored realm, where my powers are at their strongest."

For a moment, the revelation interrupted my thoughts of disarming him. A thousand new questions sparked in my mind, and I swallowed thickly around the urge to ask all of them at once.

"I couldn't help but notice that your castle is in the same location as the drackya's," I observed, noting the glint in his eyes. "Do all elementals reside in this mirrored realm?"

"Mmm," he murmured, tilting his head as he regarded me. A slow smile spread across his face, and my stomach twisted uncomfortably at the sinister twist of it. "I did warn you that more answers would cost you, mortal."

Shit.

My body froze, encased in the grasp of frigid magic that twisted around me like a deadly serpent. My sword, once an extension of my arm, now lay useless at my side, held in place by the same icy tendrils that bound me so effectively.

The god stood before me, his eyes blazing with triumph as he surveyed his helpless prey. I could feel the cold creeping into my bones, threatening to turn me into a frozen statue from the inside out. Panic began to claw its way up my throat as I realized the gravity of my situation. I hadn’t come this far to become a forgotten relic of the time a mere mortal had challenged the undine god.

"Such bravery, but you are no match for me," he taunted, his words sending shivers down my spine. I grit my teeth, defiance burning in my chest as I refused to back down. “You’ve put up much more of a fight than any other mortal before you, so for that, you have my begrudging respect.”

I didn’t want his respect–I wanted his defeat.

A surge of defiance rose within me and I gritted my teeth, refusing to back down. "If I die here, Theo will avenge me, tearing you limb from limb," I spat, already imagining the god’s death in return.

I may have seen the warm side of Theo that he kept locked away deep within his heart, but I also knew the ruthless and feral nature that lurked within him—and even that was just a fraction of what he was truly capable of.

In the midst of our standoff, a small roar echoed from behind me—not that of a full-grown dragon, but one that was representative of Kaida's first attempts at using his true voice.

“Forgive me, Sia,” a sweet voice spoke into my head. “I cannot sit and watch.”

“No! Kaida!” I yelled just as the god’s eyes snapped to the space behind me, switching focus. To my horror, I was bound tightly in my prison of ice, unable to turn toward my dragon and urge him with my eyes as well as my words. “Fly away!”

Shards of ice began to rain down as a shadow flew above me, cresting over my head and toward the god. A wall of impenetrable ice lifted with ease, a shield that encased the god from my dragon’s futile attempt to protect me.

“Kaida, please,” I begged as my eyes stung with tears, causing my vision to blur. “Please leave me.”

Just as my dragon descended, talons out and aimed at the block surrounding the undine elemental, the ice shattered. Kaida’s wings quickly expanded, in a likely attempt to shield me from the onslaught just before my eyes slammed shut, preparing myself for impact.

The ground shook and my eyes flew back open. Doing a quick mental sweep, I was relieved to feel no injuries to myself. When my eyes dropped lower, a scream ripped from my throat at the sight before me. Kaida was pinned to the ground with a large taloned foot on his throat and chest. A pure white dragon with sapphire eyes stood in place of the human form we’d seen from the god. He was, without a doubt, the most fearsome and intimidating beast I’d ever laid eyes on. Each of his glittering scales was tipped with shards of ice, covering him like a second layer of armor. His tail swept behind him, the ball of fearsome spikes at the end belying the fact that he would easily skewer a person with one easy swing of it.

In that moment, as I watched Kaida struggle and cry out in pain, I knew true terror for the first time. The tip of one of his gleaming black claws pulled back from its dangerously close position at the smaller dragon’s heart.

“I do not wish to harm you, little one.” The god seemed to speak without moving his mouth, though he was not infiltrating my mind. It was as if the wind itself was his messenger. His large, scaled face descended toward Kaida’s thrashing body, letting loose a billowing cloud of steam from his nostrils that engulfed the smaller dragon. “Stop squirming or I might harm you, accidentally, of course.”

I tugged at the ice trapping me, thrashing around wildly as I yelled, “You’re going to crush him!”

Those sapphire eyes lifted, trained on me as his taloned foot lifted ever-so-slightly. “I would never harm such a perfect creation, one born from my own power.”

The sheer offense in his tone as he admitted to creating the very dragon he was nearly crushing had my mouth clamping tightly shut.

Call me dense or naive, but never before had I wondered how the dragons had come into existence. For as long as our texts could recall, the dragons had simply lived alongside humans. I’d known of drackya and witches being of the elementals’ creation, but they hadn’t started to appear in our texts until the more recent centuries. Dragons had simply always been there, part of our prehistory that had never been questioned.

I didn’t intervene as he freely offered more information, instead letting him rant as I checked on Kaida.

“The dragons were the very first of our creations to occupy the human’s realm, offering a foothold into their world, as we cannot stay there ourselves. The dragons have served their purpose beautifully, cementing our tie to the human realm. It is our magic that runs through your world as ley lies. It is the very same magic we used to sustain the first dragons, creating ecosystems in which our creations could thrive. Over the span of their first millennia in your lands, the dragons and their connection to our magic through the ley lines changed the human realm, irrevocably.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, I…I think so,” he answered, his voice trembling even mentally. “I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough. Theo will be mad. I was supposed to protect you if he wasn’t here.”

I couldn’t stop the few stray tears from leaking from my eyes to hear the warbling admission from my dragon. “Theo will be so proud of you. You flew in to protect me, against someone much more powerful than both of us, despite me telling you not to.”

Fuck, where was Theo? We needed him.

Still the elemental droned on as Kaida continued to wiggle beneath his claws. “Life grew boring, as the humans and dragons continued to live separately. There was nothing for us to observe from our realm through their eyes, thus the drackya and witches were created and sent to the topside. We watched new civilizations rise and flourish until the drackya and witches became natural enemies, fighting for the energy from where the ley lines occupied in the central areas of each kingdom. With the dragons naturally taking the side of drackya and forming alliances, the witches were hunted to near extinction.”

“So, the elementals created these beings because you were dissatisfied with your lives in your own realm,” I mused, keeping up the conversation to try to buy time to figure out some type of plan. There had to be something I could do. Perishing without first putting up a fight simply was not an option. “If company and entertainment was what you wanted, you should have just kept your creations here.”

The ground vibrated as he stepped back, lifting his foot from Kaida’s wriggling form. My dragon shot into the air, flapping his wings one, twice, before pulling them tightly against his sides and skidding to a stop next to me. Through it all, Kaida never stopped growling at the massive beast.

“What entertainment can truly be found in observing creatures that you can easily control, easily bend to your will at your own whim?” he rebutted before collapsing back into his human form in the span of seconds. The sudden change in his appearance and size was jarring, my brain taking a second too long to catch up. His tone was flippant and full of arrogance as he continued, “We needed the unknown variable provided by the humans to truly keep us entertained. Though many of your kind are the same—selfish, greedy, and cruel–there are a few, like you, who manage to surprise us.”

The ice holding me captive melted away as he drew closer to us. It didn’t seem like he actually wanted to kill either of us, at least not yet. But why? What was the point in keeping us here, gloating about the creation of dragons, drackya, and witches?

It was like being splashed in the face with ice-cold water, the way the obvious truth hit me.

The curse was a way of providing him that entertainment he craved. If the undine god were to help us break that curse, ending his current tantalizing form of entertainment, he would want something in return. But what did I have to offer him that he would find more amusing than the unnecessary anger and grief felt by those most affected by the curse? That remained unclear.

“You told me to choose between Theo and myself,” I said, bringing us back to the very beginning of this fight. “I choose to offer myself.”

I kept my voice as even and confident as I could manage, but inside I was shaking, fear searing through my veins. I was gambling here, taking a huge leap of faith based on the little information I had gleaned from our conversation thus far. If humans were the key to his entertainment, would he simply kill me here? I was beginning to think not.

The cold lingered in my bones as I watched him, arms wrapping around my shaking body as he drew to a stop in his tracks. A bone-deep shiver passed over me as his eyes took in my body, from the hair atop my head to the tips of my toes and all the way back again.

“Well,” he started, that same slow, sinister smile from before returning to his face, “since you have both offered yourselves, it seems I must find a way to encourage one of you to…forfeit.”

He’d taken the bait.

“I don’t like this,” Kaida murmured while shuffling closer to me and extending a wing protectively over me.

I took a few small steps forward, refusing to cower behind him. I couldn’t allow him to pull the god’s focus from me. Not when I had him hooked. “Then what would you have me do?”

“Trust me, Kaida. We will all leave here together.”

I wasn’t sure if that was a promise I would actually be able to keep, but saying the words felt like the first step in manifesting my desired outcome. If I said it enough, I would eventually start to believe it too.

The god’s hands came together in a loud clap, sending shockwaves over us, the world around us morphing. Suddenly, the mountain and castle were gone, and instead, I found myself at the bottom of a large, stone arena, staring up and up and up, the stands stretching as far as the eye could see. Incorporeal figures made of various forms of water and ice filled the seemingly endless stands as I turned around slowly. The echoing booms of their loud cheers and shouts overwhelmed me as I struggled to understand what was going to happen now.

Kaida growled at my side before suddenly disappearing. Panic once more filled my being, leaving me with a racing heart and quickened breaths.

“Sia!”

My heart fluttered at the sound of Theo’s voice. It was so faint, the noises of the fake crowd drowning him out, but I scanned and scanned until I spotted him standing next to the god at the very top of the arena. They stood near a platform that jutted out beyond the stands, like an observation area that sat directly above a large gate in the arena. His hands and feet were bound with a pulsating energy that reminded me of the ley line itself, glowing a vibrant shade of blue, beating in a rhythm that made it seem alive. I watched as the restraint grew to cover his mouth, forcing itself between his lips and wrapping around to the back of his head.

Wisps of his white hair flew around his head as he thrashed in the constraints.

He seemed unharmed from what I could tell, and relief took root within my chest, growing into a wild, uncontrollable thing when I spotted Kaida next to him. A cage of the same magic trapped him as well.

“Please don’t do anything to risk yourselves,” I begged them both, staring up at them imploringly. I was met with silence in return, the path between our minds feeling severed in some way.

The god strode forward, and a long, billowing cape made of what looked to be blue silk glided behind him, long enough that it reached the floor. For an awful moment, I found myself wishing his legs would get caught in the material, twisting and twisting until he fell and met his end on the stone floor of the arena. He raised a hand, and suddenly all of the spectators quieted, leaving an eerie calm in the noise’s wake.

“The rules of today’s challenge are simple,” he began, but the creaking sound of heaving metal met my ears, pulling my eyes to the iron gate on the arena floor. “If you can defeat the beast, I will give you what you seek and release you.”

What beast was I expected to fight?

“Should the drackya king decide to intervene to protect you once the battle begins, the magic binding him will dissipate, allowing him to come to your rescue.”

Theo stilled at those words, head craning in the god’s direction. Hope fluttered to life in my chest before meeting a premature end. My blood ran cold at the god’s next ones.

“The cost of his intervention will be his dragon. Should the drackya come to your aid, he will forfeit the magic from within him, leaving him a human.”