“This is surprising,” he says, once we're close enough to speak without shouting. “I didn't think you had it in you to escape.”
“You have no idea what I'm capable of.”
“Clearly.” He glances at the sword in my hand while readying his own. “All the more reason we should stop playing this foolish game and reunite properly. Think of what we could learn and accomplish if we worked together and trusted one another as we once did.”
“I've thought about it,” I say, glaring. “And my answer is still no.”
A smile slowly stretches across his face. His gaze darts toward the dragons. I sense the currents of controlling magic rising around him, the strands of it reaching out. As subtle as it feels, it's still enough to make one of the lesser dragons let out a shrieking cry before diving toward Sesca with newly-focused ferocity. I see that dive in the corner of my vision—still enhanced through the divine bond—but I don't allow myself to look too closely.
I know he's trying to intimidate me. To distract me. I have to turn this around somehow. To distracthiminstead, and do it long enough that Sesca can pull the other dragons far away from here, somewhere beyond his reach.
With this goal blazing in my mind, I strike first.
He's ready for it. Of course he is; aside from Briar, there's no one I sparred with more when I was learning to properly wield a blade. Nevertheless, I keep attacking, spinning and swinging with increasing fury and frustration even though he parries every. Single. Attempt.
“Five years since we last did this, and your movementsare still far too exaggerated,” he taunts, catching yet another attempted strike and shoving me back hard enough to make me stumble. “It makes you easy to predict.”
“Be quiet,” I snap. I've heard this particular critique from him a hundred times before; he's not wrong to point it out.
But I am not the same person I was five years ago.
I remind him of this by pulling threads of dark grey energy into my blade—the predominant element of the very earth underneath our feet. He blocks my next swing, but my sword has now become a conduit for earth-aligned magic, and that magic still lands; a violent tremor radiates from the point where our blades collide, rattling his sword hard enough that he nearly drops it.
His smile finally disappears as he takes a step back and struggles to readjust his grip.
My muscles pulse and my sword shivers with building magic. Blinking, I see more elements in the air all around me, brighter than ever before, as if the entire world is opening up, drawing closer and just waiting for my command.
Malachi rebalances his blade and drives in harder. Again and again we clash. I lean more fully into the divine sight I've been given, trusting the magic filling the air, channeling it into powers that I still only somewhat understand—until Malachi finally draws back, appraising me with a fierce gaze as he heaves for breath.
A tense minute passes.
Then he straightens, takes a much calmer breath, and looks skyward.
I sense more controlling threads of power lashing out from him. Another fearsome, bone-chilling shriek sounds from one of the lesser dragons. A surge of alarm from Sesca follows, and this time I can't ignore what's happening above;my eyes are automatically drawn toward her just in time to see a dragon slam into her side.
She tumbles through the air and meets the waiting claws of the massive black dragon that nearly obliterated the front lines of Mouren. That dragon moves with terrifying speed, slashing at her with a fervor matched only by the madness of the king controlling it.
I do my best to spot the threads Malachi is wielding, to gather them the same way I've been gathering elements of other energy. After a few attempts, I have some success, and for a moment we're both holding the same invisible wires, pulling in opposite directions.
But I can't drag them fully from his control.
For all my magic and the divine guidance behind it, he's had much more practice when it comes to wielding this particular kind of power. Manipulating beasts proves entirely different from shaping wisps of raw elements. Much more complicated. It's all I can do to try and interfere with his will, much less control anything myself.
Then I feel his eyes drop to me.
Without warning, he releases his hold on the black dragon.
The sudden loss of pressure destabilizes and disorients me. I realize what he's doing—and why—half a second too late. After I'm thrown off-balance, he rushes in and aims a kick at my side, then immediately slams his sword into mine, disarming me. As my sword spins away, he knocks my staggering body to the ground.
I end up on my back. Before I can recover, he's kneeling over me, one hand pressing my wrist to the ground, the other pinning my opposite shoulder down with a strength that makes struggling feel pointless.
“We could have avoided this.” His voice is quiet. Gentle, almost. “There's a much more harmonious method of what I'm about to do to you, just so you're aware.”
Before I can ask what he means, the hand on my wrist moves to more completely cover the mark he burned into my skin.
I sense the subtle coil of controlling magic again, except now it's circling toward me rather than at any of the dragons overhead. It wraps around my wrist, around the mark, settling like hooks that sear and catch into some part of me far deeper than my skin.
“It was a great honor to be Flamebound, once upon a time,” he says, almost to himself, both his voice and his gaze frighteningly distant. It's as though he's fully lost himself in whatever visions of grandeur he's concocted in his mind. “The first mark was created by a king who understood the need for a dragon's chosen one to have a more earthly counterweight.”
