Page 102 of Dragon’s Rogue

“Caring is for the weak.” He moved ever nearer, watching her eyes, watching the idol. “You were weak like your mother.”

“My mother was stronger than you could ever imagine. She saved me.” Blaze stared into his demon-red eyes. “And now I’m going to save everyone else.”

Silas sneered, “You can’t stand against me. I know your true name. I can use it to make you do anything I want. I can make you strip naked and dance for me. I can make you kill that dragon you’ve been whoring it up with.”

He moved closer, his voice dropping to a whisper. “I can rip your soul from your body and consign it to eternal torment. Nothing but pain and agony for eternity.”

He threw his arms open, his black robe spreading like the wings of a dark angel. His voice rolled out through the cavern. “Ariella Rowan, I know your True Name, the name that rules your inner self. Moonshadow of the Silver Raven coven, I call your name. Kneel before me…”

And Blaze began to laugh.

Silas stopped, shocked.

“I stopped being Ariella Rowan a long time ago,” she said. “I am no longer Moonshadow. In pain and in darkness, I cut my ties with the Silver Raven coven and remade myself.”

She took a step forward.

“You no longer know my True Name. But I know yours.”

It had been confided to her by a seventeen-year-old boy, when she was only eleven. When he’d taken her to the ravine and his flying spell had failed. She’d saved him, used that link to his inner self to lend him the power to heal himself, and traded the knowledge of her name for his.

And he’d bonded to the idol with his true name.

Blaze raised her arms. This moment had been barreling down on her for ten years, no matter how far she’d tried to run, how well she’d tried to hide.

She’d always known it would come to this, even if it ended her. And it would.

“Silas Turner, I call you by your True Name, Sunstar of the Silver Raven coven. With it, I sever all ties you’ve made with your soul and your spirit. I tear you from this magic talisman.”

She could almost feel the cosmic rip as Silas was torn away from his connection with the idol. Silas dropped to his knees, his back arching in pain.

“I tear you from Corwyn the Sorcerer. I tear you from Vyrkos, Lord of the Draken…”

“NOOOO!” Silas screamed. The idol screamed with him, and became burning hot in her hands. The air trembled as Vyrkos roared in his tomb, and the cavern shook with a force that nearly brought her to her knees. Cracks covered the floor, and the Draken Lord’s great eye opened all the way.

Through the viewer, Zane watched in horror as Blaze put her dark magic into motion, tearing Silas’s very soul from its anchors.

This was what she had been talking about, in his lair. This spell was what she’d sacrificed to learn, the one she was ashamed she even knew.

It was the darkest of dark magics, to seize another’s soul and tear it from its moorings.

She was ripping all of Silas’s soul connections apart. But it was worse than Thorne had feared. It wasn’t just that the Draken Lord was waking. His and Corwyn’s hold on Silas was too powerful, and too deep.

To finish this against all the resistance aimed against her, Blaze was going to have to rip his soul from his body.

It was the worst sin any sorcerer could commit—and the backlash would be mortal. At best, Vyrkos would rise up and absorb the magic, binding her to him for eternity. At worst, destruction of Silas’s soul would rebound and destroy hers, and consign her to a Hell from which there was no return.

He couldn’t let that happen.

With an agonized howl, Zane forced himself into his human body, and threw himself through the portal.

Chapter 46

There was howling all around her now, dark winds whipping her hair. Blaze’s hands were blistering, but she knew she couldn’t let go of the idol. Not until it was done.

The Draken roared again, deafening her, and more cracks spread across the floor. The tomb was crumbling.

Black smoke seeped out of the cracks, surrounding Silas. Corwyn. Or Vyrkos, trying to take him back. Silas was struggling to his feet, eyes blazing red, raising his hands for one more spell. She had to finish this.