Page 51 of Saving Her Dragon

Sydney went absolutely, terrifyingly still to his right. She didn't cry, she didn't scream, and she didn't plead. Instead, a wave of pure, blistering fury erupted through the Mating Bond, her White Dragon Magic flaring so violently around her hands that the air hissed.

"No," Sydney said, her voice dropping into a dangerous, feral register.

"Syd…"

"You don't get to volunteer my Mate for execution because you're scared, Dragon Man," she hissed, stepping directly into his chest, her eyes blazing with absolute iron.

"If I'm the key to the road, Sydney, they will use me to tear this homestead apart…"

"Then we break the damn lock!" she shouted back, refusing to let him retreat into a martyr's grave.

Ginnie stepped between them, her focus turning sharp. "Han. Where is Garrett's lavender light in relation to the stone door? Exactly."

Garrett went quiet, reaching inward to listen. Han looked through the smoky, dark mist of the memory. The four external lights were lined up outside the perimeter, their thin streams of energy crawling toward the base of the stone. But the fifth light, the lavender-white pulse of Garrett's soul, wasn't outside.

It was shining from beneath the gap at the bottom of the door. It was burning on the other side.

"It's behind it," Garrett relayed, a cold sweat breaking out across his collarbone. "The four anchors are outside. My light is behind the seal. Whatever this road is being built to reach... it runs straight through that door."

Ginnie didn't hesitate. She stepped up to Garrett, lifting her hands until her fingers hovered just millimeters away from his temples.

“I'm not gonna do anything crazy,” she deadpanned. “Just gotta touch you to touch the threshold.”

“Ginnie, no!” Carrick roared, reaching for her after the violent blast from moments ago. “It's too dangerous!”

“I'm barely brushing it, Carrick.”

“You don't know what it'll do.”

Ginnie looked at her Mate. “No. I don't.”

Then she turned her attention back to Garrett.

“But something changed when the fourth light appeared, and we need to know what.”

Pressing her fingertips against his skin, Garrett stood perfectly still.

The Magic didn't detonate. There was no explosive shockwave to launch Ginnie across the room. Instead, the invisible barrier within his mind simply opened. Just a fraction. A tiny, microscopic crack tore through the center of the stone door.

From the other side of the seal, a sudden, suffocating wave of cold poured straight into Garrett's consciousness. It wasn't a physical drop in temperature. It wasn't the sterile, chemical chill of the torture chambers where he’d been held, and it wasn't the freezing water of the muddy creek bed.

This cold was older. It was heavy, rotten, and saturated with a primordial, terrifying malice that Garrett had felt a thousand times before. It was the exact, oily sensation that used to coat his lungs every single time the Demon Lord breached his mind.

In an instant, the false trauma explanation died a violent death in the Guardsman’s throat. It was time to face facts.

He knew. Before Ginnie could pull her hands away, before anyone in the room could speak the name out loud, the truth ripped through his head.

"No," Garrett choked out, his eyes widening in pure horror as he stumbled backward, knocking over a chair.

"Garrett?" Sydney cried, reaching for him.

His entire body shook violently. His hands gripped his hair as the broken walls inside his head utterly imploded. The fragments weren't tiny flashes anymore; they were a raging, roaring torrent of memory.

"No!" Garrett screamed, his voice cracking as he backed into the corner of the room, his chest heaving.

Han roared a deafening, panicked war cry from within the Guardsman’s soul that poured from his mouth. Drakara answered through Sydney, her bellows shaking the rafters.

Carrick and Grey moved so quickly they were little more than a blur. Their hands reached out to anchor Garrett as the room plunged into an absolute, blinding storm of magnificent Power.