AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I didn’t have time to reread every book word-by-word, but I didn’t have to. One quick visit with Hecate, and she enchanted the book so that the next person who opened it would absorb all of its words, as promised.
It would be exhausting. But it was survivable, and that was allI needed.
I opened the book.
Words upon words assailed me. I fell to my knees, crying out as they all tried to fit into my head. There was no me, no library, no realm, just the words fighting for space. I tried to study them, to put them into coherent thoughts, but they fell apart at every attempt.
My head felt like it had a vise around it, tightening and tightening until I thought I would burst.
And then... clarity. The words slowed, coming together as I matched the endless stream with what I remembered from the book.
Between all the chapters I’d read before, there was something new. Words that hadn’t been there before, but were exactly what we needed.
“I know how to draw out the dragon.”
Never let it besaid dragons weren’t specific.
If we hadn’t found the book—if the realm hadn’t sent the book to me—we would have failed. The list of ingredients went a mile long and required a cauldron to fit them all. Herbal ingredients I knew, both common and rare. A full deer carcass. Pounds and pounds of charcoal. An assortment of animal eggs that were half-rotted, which Hecate was miraculously in possession of. Flesh of a living demon, which Phaidros reluctantly provided.
Well, which Daphne took from him, with a little too much glee in her knife work.
Now, at least, we could manage the first part of the challenge.
It remained to be seen if the dragon would come in time.
We were on the palace roof. The living shifters had been evacuatedback to their own realm. The cauldron sat squarely in the center, and four of us gathered around.
I set the cauldron on fire with my magic.
It was the smoke from a pyre my magic ignited that would find the dragon. In the wind that would reach every corner of the realm and draw the dragon out. By now, it was late. We were less than two hours from the deadline.
“Do you know what you will offer the dragon, Soteria?”
I appreciated Hecate’s confidence the dragon would come. “Not a clue. Any advice would definitely be appreciated.”
“Something only you can give,” Hecate said with confidence that I don’t think any of us felt.
How could she know when neither of us had handled a dragon before? I pressed my lips together and watched the horizon.
Like imps, dragons didn’t have souls exactly, so I couldn’t see it in my mind’s eye. But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t be aware of its arrival.
Something shifted in the air. An awareness. Cole felt it too. He adjusted his stance, drawing closer to me.
The last time he had faced this dragon, he had nearly died to keep me safe. He was more than willing to do it again.
I shut my eyes and felt the creature’s presence wash over me. It was miles away, but the air shifted, as if in anticipation. It was almost an echo of my own magic, but something entirely different. Like when I’d stepped foot in the mantle.
The thunderous sound of beating wings burst through the skies. The rhythmic pulse was a warning. To me, it sounded like hope.
The giant green beast crested over the cliffs and came into view.
It was magnificent.
Where once there had been decaying flesh, covering the skeleton in an uneven patchwork, there were now only glistening emerald scales. The dragon roared its arrival and even Cole leaned back at the sound.
I took a step forward.Come to me, I thought towards the creature.
“It didn’t feel like this before,” I whispered to Cole. There was a pull to the dragon I’d never felt in all my years of existence. How had I never found this creature before? “It feels almost like a part of me.”
