19. Vale

Chapter 19

Vale

K ian’s amber gaze fell to the bundle in my hands, his irises igniting as if he’d like to set the book on fire. “Please don’t tell me you spent twelve hours dream walking for that.”

My gut bottomed out as the world tilted. “Twelve hours? We were in there for an hour at most. What do you mean twelve hours?”

I couldn’t believe it. Then again, I knew I’d overused my power. Tossing Arden away, keeping him from killing us, it had taken nearly everything I had.

Blackened scales rippled across Kian’s flesh, his animal too close to the surface for him to contain it. “I have been sitting here on my own, praying none of you died on me for half a fucking day, counting the minutes until you came back to me. Watching your nose bleed, watching your breathing slow, listening to your heartbeat, and praying it didn’t fucking stop.”

My heart wrenched in my chest. I had no idea that we had left him alone in this. Dropping the book on the side table, I reached for him, doing my best to reassure him that I was still alive.

“I'm so sorry. I thought it was minutes at most. I would never do that to you on purpose—never leave you to pick up the pieces.” I swallowed down my tears, trying to get myself together. “I got my family's histories. Maybe they have something about the curse. Maybe it has information so we can still save him.”

Kian let me go, and instantly my heart felt like it was turning to ice. Shuffling backward, his jaw hardened to granite as he got himself under control. “It's fine. I understand what you did and why you did it, just— Could you stop hurting yourself, please? I can't take losing you, too.”

I wanted to reach for him again, but it didn't seem like he wanted my touch at all.

“It’s not her fault,” Idris rumbled, coming to my side. “The Dreaming is dangerous, but we took a calculated risk. You should have seen her. There hasn’t been a Luxa in hundreds of years who can do what she did.”

While the praise made my heart soar, I also felt like the biggest asshole in the world for leaving Kian alone. I just hoped it was worth it.

Shakily, I stood next to Xavier’s bedside, hanging on to the frame for dear life. I didn't want to tell Idris or Kian this, but traveling to Direveil had taken more out of me than I thought I could spare. Hands trembling, I gently placed the book at the foot of Xavier’s bed, untying the bonds of the tattered fabric that had protected it for so long.

The binding was nearly broken, the thick leather tome held together by a hope and a prayer, but it had withstood the trip back from the Dreaming. Finally—through all of this—I’d managed to do something right. So many times I'd failed, but this once, I'd made a plan and fucking stuck with it.

With tears in my eyes, I tried to focus on the cover, but my sight wavered, blackness encroaching on the edges of my vision.

“Vale?” Idris called, his warm touch at my shoulder.

“I'm fine. I just need a minute.”

I’d just faced down my torturer, and I was about to open a book I had shut away for years. There was no way I could fall apart now. This curse had to be broken. I had to save Xavier. I had to get my shit together and fucking focus.

“I'm fine,” I repeated, though, I doubted anyone believed it, least of all me.

Gently, I lifted the cover, running my fingertip over the list of names of all the Luxa in my family. Now that I knew we were a bloodline and it wasn’t some magical curse bestowed upon me because I hadn’t been a good enough daughter, I realized each sovereign name was a form of protection. Each one was a way to keep us hidden, to keep us safe.

There were many before me, and it hurt my heart that so many were dead because of this curse.

But I was about to break it.

Turning the page, I skimmed the histories of Luxa—the bastardized version of the fabled story Idris had told me what seemed like eons ago. In this account, there was only a king cursed to live alone, unhappy with his fate as the keeper of all magic. I knew if there were ever a story like the one Idris shared with me, I would have paid a hell of a lot more attention to this book.

Few remember the true origins of the Luxa, and perhaps it is for the best. The blood of the light witches was woven with powers meant only for those who would understand the peril they inherit. But in time, all things hidden must surface.

As much as I had told him I hated the history of his ancestor, a part of me loved it, too. I loved how someone could care for another so much that they were willing to sacrifice their entire world for them. The longer I spent with my mates, the more and more it made sense.

The Luxa were born of the light and the darkness, blessed and cursed to walk the boundaries between realms. Not bound to any reality, nor may call any home, for the pull of both will seek to reclaim them.

Then the history morphed into what I’d always hated—the twisted recounting of Idris and his curse—the story of two brothers letting the world burn over their desire to possess a single woman. How the Luxa refused to let herself come between them and banished one brother while cursing the other.

It said so little about who they were as people, and even less about the banished brother. All it did was give dire warnings about why breaking the cursed king free of his bonds would bring the end to us all—that only a Luxa could free him.

There is a shadow over the Luxa, one which grows darker with each generation. Beware the one born of dreams, for she will be the harbinger of great change and ruin. When she rises to her power, the boundaries between realms will weaken, the Beast will be freed, and the Cursed One shall be unshackled.

I wished I would have known about my abilities far sooner. Wished my parents had thought to tell me what was coming—what I was. Of all the things they prepared me for, this had never been one of them. They had to have known what I would become.

Betrayal was a difficult emotion to swallow, especially when those that betrayed you were dead. But I didn't have time for regrets or recriminations. We had a curse to break, and I had a mate to save. I needed to read this damn book no matter if it tore me up inside.

Hastily, I kept flipping pages past the parts I knew and on to what I didn't. But there was so much to wade through that getting to the meat of everything seemed almost impossible. Some of the entries were in diary format, some of it was simple chicken scratch. The difference between my parents’ writing was obvious, even though I’d read so little of it.

My mother's handwriting clogged my throat, the tears of loss choking me as I allowed myself to run my finger over the indent of each word.

“My mother wrote this,” I whispered, trying not to sob at the unhealed wounds their deaths had left.

I wanted to tell them all about her, and what she meant to me. How she made the awful life with the guild bearable. There was so much I'd never said, so much they didn't know. There were so many bad times under the mountain, but there had been good times, too.

When we were all together.

When we were safe.

But that safety had always been an illusion—the truth was a bitter pill to swallow. Selene hadn’t been lying for once. My parents had stolen the scroll of the Luxa histories and potentially transcribed it into this book, hiding it away for years under the guild's nose.

What might my life have been like had they told me what I was—what I’d always been destined for? Would I have been prepared for the trials? Would I have been more amenable and less hostile to the dragons I’d fallen in love with?

Would I have wasted so much time?

Or would I have died like all the Luxa before me?

I guessed I'd never know.

But as my mother’s handwriting fell away and my father’s took her place, the text became more frantic, more illegible, and the deeper into the book I got, the less his words made sense.

What we have brought forth can never continue to be. This magic will be our end—our rightful extermination. We must let the halls of dreams die to ensure the survival of us all.

Did they want to kill the Dreaming? Why would they want to destroy it? It made no sense. And yet… something about the way it was worded reminded me of the mage’s warning.

I shook my head. Malvor was crazy and doing the bidding of a maniac. What difference did his ravings make?

But when I turned the page again, my entire world fell away.

Gasping, I shakily ran my fingers over the jagged edges. Roughly cleaved from the spine as if someone had ripped them out in a hurry, an entire chunk of the book was missing. My stomach heaved as I hung onto the bed frame, praying it would hold me up as my knees threatened to give out. But there wasn’t anything about how to break the curse—about how to fix anything. It was all warnings and bullshit—nothing substantial.

There had to be more than this. I didn’t nearly get us all killed for… for… this .

“What is it?” Idris rumbled, his hand on my shoulder like he didn’t know if he should keep me up or let me fall.

Funnily enough, I didn’t, either.

“It’s gone. The rest of the book is gone,” I whispered, my gaze landing on Xavier’s still form. He hadn’t so much as twitched since I’d been awake, and now there was no way I knew of to help him—to help anyone.

What was it all for? The torture, the pain. What was it all for if I wasn’t supposed to do good things—if I wasn’t supposed to right the wrongs? If I wasn’t supposed to fix what was broken?

Fury pooled in my chest, igniting the blazing rage that I’d kept leashed for so long. A scream ripped up my throat as I threw the book against the wall, hating every single page that fell from the broken binding. Tears flooded my eyes, blurring my already-fading vision.

“I can’t break your curse. I can’t heal Xavier. I can’t find my sister. I can’t fucking fix it. I can’t fix anything .”

“Hey,” Kian growled, his rough hands cupping my cheeks, making me look at him. “Focus, little witch. We’re no worse off than we were before, but we will be if you don’t calm down.”

Ripping myself out of his hold, I fought off the urge to explode. I wanted to destroy something—anything. I wanted to take something precious and break it. I wanted… My gaze fell on Xavier. His big body was barely contained in the bed, the ends of his hair still bloody from the trip to this useless monastery.

He was here because of me, and I wasn’t strong enough to heal him, and now he might not ever wake up.

“Being a little dramatic, aren’t we?” a smooth voice called from the doorway, but through my blurry vision, all I could see was the red hair. “It’s one thing to throw a fit, but darling girl, you’re about to take out the building. Dial it down a notch, yeah?”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to clear my head. There was no way Freya could be here, and yet, when I opened my eyes, she was. How had she even known we were here?

“Dramatic?” I growled, just noticing the blazing light pouring from my fingers, the stone floor scorching as light flooded from my body. “My mate is dying in a hospital bed, and you think I’m being dramatic? Not all of us can be hard-hearted thousand-year-old vampires, Freya. Some of us actually feel things.”

She had the gall to roll her eyes at me. I swore to everything holy, if she did it one more time, I would figure out a way to kill a vampire.

“These young doctors don't know the first thing about fateborn mate bonds,” she said, calm as you please, waltzing into the room as if I wasn’t one second away from losing it. “I know how you can heal him if you would just settle down and allow me to touch you.”

“If you know a way to save him, I don't care what I have to do.” I didn't. If there was a way to help Xavier wake up, I'd do it. So what if I couldn't break the curse? At least I would be able to do one thing right—even if my family’s book was a complete bust.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to pull the power into myself, taking deep breaths to calm the rage boiling in my chest. But it lived in me—curled up nice and tight right where my heart should be.

Freya kept talking, an odd story I didn't particularly want to listen to, spilling from her mouth while I tried to concentrate. “Do you have any idea what it's like to have a giant dragon roar the castle down disturbing your beauty sleep? Or trying to understand his bullshit dragon sign language while wondering why he’s covered in Xavier’s blood? I have to say, this day has not been my favorite, little Luxa. Not at all.”

Calming myself down couldn’t knock me out of my own head, but finding out Rune went and picked Freya up to help us sure as hell did.

“He did what?” I squeaked while Kian and Idris stood there with their mouths open, staring at her like she had a brand-new hole in her head.

“Oh, yeah,” she growled, her hands menacingly on her hips. “Did I forget to mention the part where he broke my balcony doors and yanked me out of my bed naked into the freezing courtyard? I was entertaining a guest . Not only was she terrified, but I got frostbite in places one should never get frostbite.”

I couldn’t help it, I snorted. Imagining Freya yelling at Rune for giving her frostbite the whole way here had to be the only funny thing to happen all damn day. Well, that and watching Arden’s head bounce off the wall, but who was counting?

“Now that you’ve officially calmed down in the face of my misery, it’s time to fix your mate,” Freya grumbled, shooing Kian out of the way as she drew a dagger from her leathers. “While there hasn’t been a fateborn mate in two centuries, there were plenty before Zamarra fucked us all over. And it wasn’t too uncommon for mates to occur across species. I might be an Ashbourne, but I’m not a dragon. Ever wonder why?”

Actually, I hadn't wondered why at all, I'd just assumed there were many different species in the Ashbourne line. “Not really. I assume you're going to give us all a history lesson?”

Freya squinted her eyes at me before giving me a little smile. “Fair enough. My father was a dragon, but my mother was not. She was a vampire, and when I was born, I inherited the magic from the dragon line and a fraction of the vampirism, which made me ill and my power unstable. Eventually, once I realized I would never shift into a dragon of my own, I embraced my mother's vampirism.”

“How long ago was that?” I asked, curious about Freya’s origins. I hadn’t realized how long she’d been alive or what she might have seen through the centuries.

“Over a thousand years ago, but the important part is once upon a time, my father was very sick, and no matter what my mother did, no matter how much power she infused in him, she could not heal him. Until one day, she let her vampire side take over and she fed him her blood. Granted, I fully believe she planned on turning him, but she didn’t have to.

“It didn't take very long until my father was healed, his wounds fading away as my mother's blood filled him. While no, you aren't a vampire, and this very well might not work, but if it'll save one of my closest friends, we're sure as hell going to try it.”

She held out her hand for mine, and I gladly gave it to her. Without so much as a warning, she sliced through my wrist, the wound pouring blood in an instant. She yanked me forward, pressing my flesh against Xavier’s lips as my lifeblood flowed down his throat.

Kian and Idris cried out, but I knew this was our only shot. If I had to lose my life for Xavier, I would do it, and Freya knew it, too. Dizzy, I wilted into Xavier’s side, resting my head on his chest. His heartbeat thrummed through my ear as the world whirled around me.

Kian lunged for her, his talons extended as Idris lifted my legs so I didn’t fall off the bed, but all I could hear was Xavier’s heartbeat getting stronger. And when the world faded away, I knew she’d been right.

I could heal Xavier.

I just might have to die to do it.