Page 122 of Awakened Ash and Alchemy

“Not like that.” The dragon’s protectiveness stirred beneath his skin. “I won’t put her in the path of danger. Not Angela.”

Martar was quiet for a moment. “Is that you talking? Or the Claiming?”

Zarek didn’t answer, because he couldn’t.

“You finally understand it, don’t you? Why the Hearthbound exist. You see why the Council pushes for it and why Gellar plays that careful game of politics with their demands.” In a rare moment, Martar’s voice had lost its jokester’s lightness entirely. “Not only do they give us quality Vanguard soldiers with the right kind of magick to help us defend the realms, sure. But for many other soldiers, like Bellus, the Hearthbound gives us something to fight for. Having someone to go home to makes us more ruthless as warriors on the battlefield, we have so much to lose. And I know you’d tear this realm apart for her.”

It was true. Until Angela, Zarek had never bothered with the Hearthbound. But all his life, he’d barely been holding on to the thread that kept his magick contained. If anything harmed her, he had the potential to be just as deadly as the Dark Lord.

A world without Angela was a world not worth fighting for. Already he knew the grief would blind him, etching wounds and cracks into his soul to erupt the fine weave that held his power like a volcano that could easily carve out a world of dysfunctional darkness.

He’d seen and danced with pain, like he’d bartered with death too many times that it had become a game. He’d been weathering storms while wrestling with loneliness for so long now it was the safest place he’d known. Back then, he didn’t know what it meant for his heart to beat until it found a home… in her.

But he lived in a dangerous world, where he was that monster his realm worried about. So what could he possibly offer her, when she was already a precious gift to him? When he was the bitter poison who’d uprooted her from her world, someone so rare and radiant that now the politics of his own world dared to interfere, and she would be made to pay that price for him.

So yeah, he understood what the Council were doing, they were playing with people’s hearts, using love like a weapon, for power.

“That’s exactly what they’ll use as leverage,” Martar continued. “Soldiers with everything to lose, makes us better weapons for the protection of the realm.”

“She’s not a tactic.”

“No.” Martar met his eyes. “But the Council won’t see it that way. And if they realize what hold she has over you…”

Zarek’s hands curled around his glass.

And then it hit him.

Not a sound. But a force, so hard and fast, it moved through him like icy fingers closing around his soul, squeezing his heart with a fear that had no bottom to it.

He’d felt this once before, when it sent him to an alley, before he knew her name or what she would become to him. Back then, he had been a warrior running toward something he didn’t understand using pure instinct to just go. Fight. Kill or be killed.

This time, he knew exactly what it was.

The Claiming roared through him like a furnace as the staves across his leathers flared gold at the edges. And beneath all of it, threading through the magic and the fear and the certainty—

Her scream.

She was calling him.

This time from Paradox.

FORTY-TWO

Zarek materialized into chaos.

What remained of the corridor was completely unrecognizable. Windows were blown out entirely. Walls were cracked open, stone and timber pieces scattered across the floor and crunched under his boots as he got closer to where the room once stood.

The wind hit him, tearing through the space with enough force to set every buckle and sheathed blade rattling against his armor.

He found Gellar pinned against the far wall, one arm braced over his face against the gale, his shield barely protecting him. While Condorr had hold of Bellus behind part of a column.

Zarek reached through the wind and grabbed Gellar by the sleeve—careful, always careful, to never touch skin, even with his gloves on—and hauled the Commander out of danger. “What happened? Where is Angela?”

“Inside.” Gellar’s hair and beard shifted with the wind. “We can’t reach her.”

Zarek turned toward the cavern that was once a doorway, where a churning wall of wind and dark air filled the room. In the eye of it was the barest outline of the floating dream bed.

Angela.