Her head tilted toward the tunnel and maybe I was losing it. I paused for two seconds, contemplating what to do before I was sprinting toward the direction Aura gestured.
Everything screamed at me to run up the stairs after Hael, but I knew Dahes wouldn’t kill him—not yet at least—and I had to warn the drakins. I had to make sure that Dahes didn’t take them over.
I hadn’t realized how much destruction he planned to cause. I knew he wanted Elion dead, and I knew he wanted the dragons, but I didn’trealize that meant enslaving the Wielders and murdering all the commoners.
The amount of people that were going to get caught up in the onslaught if I did nothing… I sucked in a breath, trying to focus.
Breathe. One. Two. Three. Four. Exhale.
Nessium was giving me an opportunity to right my wrongs, and I prayed she was on my side tonight.
I kept my transparency on as I sprinted toward the tunnel, then blew out a breath the moment I approached the opening and looked across. The entire path was completely black—I guess drakins didn’t believe in sconces.
Breathe. One. Two. Three. Four. Exhale.
I could do this.
And if I couldn’t, there was no going back now. We were already going to be punished for killing the sentries, I had to make it worth it.
I didn’t bother looking back at Aura. If she decided to stay in the Dome because of Hael, I wasn’t going to stop her.
I stepped through the tunnel, hesitantly at first, then broke out into a full blown sprint, praying to each Moon and Sun that I wasn’t making a mistake by coming here.
Mercifully,the tunnel wasn’t long, cutting a direct path underground instead of avoiding the peaks at the start of the pass.
But I still felt short of breath, was still panting, my thighs still burning.
I took a guess at Jaxs’ cabin and prayed I wasn’t wrong. I saw him coming from the one next to Hael’s the first time I was here.
I ran through the walls using my Token, not hesitating to see if I was right. At this point, any drakin would do.
“Holy fucking shit balls on the Moons,” Jaxs swore when he spotted me. His blue eyes were bulging out of his head, his dark hairwas wet and the water droplets dripping down his chest had me realizing he just got out of the bath.
Thank the Suns that I was right—and that he had pants on.
“Hi,” I said, walking away from the wall.
“Hi?” His voice squealed. “You walk through walls and just randomly trespass in someone’s home and sayHI?”
I frowned, turning back to the wall I just walked through before meeting his gaze again.
His pure shocked expression shifted to concern, his features immediately sobering as he realized I was alone. “Wait, where is Hael?”
I blurted everything out as fast as I possibly could, giving him a short summary of what happened. I knew I was leaving important details out, but we were running out of time. I could see the moons shifting in the sky.
“Shit,” Jaxs swore. “Shit. Shit. Shit.” He started pacing. “Dahes is a drakin?”
I nodded. “He was bonded to an Ater,” I said. “I think he’s using an illusion to hide all his monsters. I think MonClem is surrounded, I just can’t see them yet.”
Jaxs walked over to the window, looking up before he swore again. Everything looked the same. The moons were aligning, slowly moving to the same focal point in the sky.
There wasn’t a monster in sight, but if you looked close, you could see the outlines of the moons were distorted, their coloring not quite right. Everything had an air of fuzziness to it, like it was dipped in a haze, making everything less vibrant.
I was still wrapping my head around the fact that his dragon was how he invaded my mind, how he was now using it to warp our view and alter our reality. How many other times had he used an illusion on me and I had no idea?
I sent Nessium a private prayer that he wasn’t using his Vinculum on me now. After Hael told me how the bonds worked, it only confirmed that Dahes’ control over my mind wasn’t endless. Maybe it was before his Ater died, maybe he pulled from his dragon whenever he was running low on his own well. But now that the extra powersource was gone, I prayed it meant he’d stay out of my mind. He’d want to preserve his powers for the fight, and he thought I was trapped in a cage with fifty sentries guarding my exit if I escaped.
“So you think we’re surrounded, but he won’t drop the illusion until the Solstice starts?” Jaxs asked, still looking up at the sky.
