Don't be awake, Cassi thought as she cut through the ever-lightening fog, urgency fueling her speed. Please, don't be awake.
Lyana was right. It was time to face Rafe and her guilt, and the brutal truth of what she'd done. He deserved to know whatever information she could provide, especially when she was the one responsible for bringing him into this fight in the first place.
The dark outline of a ship broke through the haze and Cassi dove for The Wanderer, not pausing to hover over her mother's bed or listen to crew gossip, instead oozing through wooden planks into the room she'd been avoiding for days. Rafe slept beneath a mesh blanket, the fire in his wings stifled by the metal, but his spirit still blazed. Harsh lines cut into his brow and sweat dampened his skin. Unintelligible protests spilled from his lips as he thrashed back and forth, wrestling with his nightmares. Before she lost her courage, Cassi pressed a phantom palm to his brow and sank into his dreams.
They were black.
A violent storm of shadow and heat swept her away, pulling her deeper into the vortex. No up. No down. No color. No light. It was ebony chaos. Cassi had never experienced anything like it, as though she were fighting with a demon and not a man for control of his mind. The spirit didn’t feel like Rafe. It was dark and deadly, foreign in a way she couldn't explain. Every time she tried to grab it, the force slithered away like a snake in the night, slipping through her fingers, gone.
Come on, she silently cursed, flailing in the abyss like a bird caught in a winter storm, helpless against the furious winds. Her magic flared. She sank deeper into Rafe's mind, fighting to find the human within the beast. Come on.
All at once, the darkness imploded.
Cassi reeled, digging her power like anchors into any foothold she could find. Color and light burst into dazzling life. The sudden clarity stung her eyes. But she recognized Rafe in this madness and latched on to his spirit. Control came easily. The bedlam calmed. The swirling hues slowed. Cassi warped his thoughts and twisted his dreams into a scene they both recognized—the practice yards outside the raven castle. Same golden dirt. Same blue skies. Same still air. They'd spent many afternoons there sparring beneath the sun, Rafe as her unaware teacher while she'd categorized his every strategy, his every move, saving each morsel of information for the fight when she would need it most. When that horrible day finally came, she'd won the battle, but at the cost of her soul.
Dispelling the memories, Cassi placed her finishing touches on the dream. Rafe appeared across from her, brandishing his twin swords, made not of practice wood but of steel. The wings at his back were raven black, soft and feathered, no longer simmering with flame. But the wild look in his eyes burned. Before she could open her mouth to speak, he charged. She could have raised her weapon. She could have taken to the skies. She could have done any number of things, but she didn’t.
She froze.
Rafe closed the distance. With a yell, he raised his weapon. Time seemed to slow. The metal edge flashed in the sun and a bronze lock of hair swirled before her eyes. The sneer on his lips flattened as the anger drained from his face. But it was too late to stop. In that split second, all either of them could do was watch as the blade sank deep beneath her skin.
With a gasp, Rafe released the hilt and jerked away. Cassi stared at the sword protruding from her chest. Blood soaked through her clothes, spreading like a spilled drink down her stomach, a flowing river of red. She dropped to her knees, woozy and light-headed. The agony stole her breath. Dots spotted her vision. Her body swayed in an invisible breeze.
"Cassi?" Rafe whispered.
The horror in his eyes broke her from the trance. On some level she'd wanted this to be real, and her mind let it be so. But she couldn’t let him dwell in his remorse, no matter how much she welcomed the pain.
"I deserved that," she groaned as she gripped the leather-wrapped hilt and pulled the sword from her chest, rising to her feet. With a thought, the blood vanished and the wound disappeared. She flipped the blade, gripping it by the metal edge as she offered it to him. "And maybe I deserve to die, but unfortunately, I can't die here. Though if it makes you feel better, you can stab me again. This is, after all, your dream."
"I didn't— I wasn't—"
He shook his head, fighting the confusion that so often struck the first time someone experienced her peculiar magic. As he took the sword and slid his twin blades back into the scabbard crisscrossing between his wings, relief flooded his gaze—relief, she assumed, at not becoming a murderer. It was quickly followed by awareness, then anger, then grief as drop by drop his memories fell back into place. A storm gathered in his blue eyes. By the time he returned his attention to her, his guard was fully raised.
"Why are you here?" The words were sharp and demanding.
Because Lyana ordered me to come. Because she finally called me out. Because I only just found the strength to face you after everything I've done.
Cassi swallowed. "Because you're in danger."
Dark laughter escaped his lips. "That's funny, coming from you."
The blow hit harder than the blade he'd just put through her chest.
"I—" Cassi broke off as a knot tightened in her throat. I'm sorry. He wouldn't want to hear it, not after everything he'd been through. "I did what I thought I had to do."
The wings at his back transformed into those of a dragon, drenched in fire, the heat enough to sting her cheeks. His lips curled as he growled, "Get the hell out of my mind."
"I have a message from Lyana."
The fire shrank as his brows furrowed. A moment later, his jaw clenched and the blaze returned. "I don't believe you."
"I'm telling the truth," Cassi implored. "Malek ordered me to kill Xander, but I couldn't do it. I let him capture me, and I confessed. He locked me in the dungeons, and I would have died there when the House of Whispers fell if he and Lyana hadn't come to save my life. I owe them everything, and I've pledged my life and loyalty to their cause. You might not believe me, but all I've ever wanted to do is help save the world. For the longest time, I thought Malek's way was the only way to see that through, but I know better now. Lyana is going to save everyone. I know she will, as long as she stays focused. But if she's distracted, if all her thoughts are set on worrying about you, she'll never seal the rift."
A muscle in his jaw ticked. "Where is she now?"
"In the House of Song with Xander. They've been crowned King and Queen of the House of Whispers, and they're using their positions to try to prepare the isles for what's to come."
Rafe closed his eyes, inhaling a long slow breath as pain cut deep grooves along his brow.
"They're mates in name only," she tried to explain.
His eyelids flew open as his fists clenched. "I don't need comfort from you. You say you have a message from Lyana? Well, what is it?”
"I have two," Cassi said before taking a deep breath to calm the nerves racing across her chest. He was so angry, and he had every right to be, but this was so much worse than facing Lyana, than facing Xander. The worst she'd done to them was lie, but the man before her had been undone by her actions, completely destroyed by them. She deserved another stab wound to the heart. In fact, she welcomed it. "The first she thought I gave you days ago, so please don't blame her for being out of contact. It's my own fault it took me so long to come. I was in the sacred nest the day the House of Whispers fell from the sky and I saw something you won't believe. The god stone didn't fail. It broke open. It was an egg, and the creature inside was unlike any I've seen before, covered in black scales and oozing shadow, as though formed of darkness—"
"I've seen it."
"You've seen it?" She straightened her spine in surprise. "And you lived?"
"I don't think it wants to hurt me," he said slowly, as though trying to process his thoughts while he spoke them. "I think it—I think it tried to help me."
"Tell me everything."
He scoffed at the demand.
Cassi's nostrils flared. "So I can tell Lyana. So we can save the world."
"How do I know you won't go running back to your king?"
"You don't."
The sun beat down harder on the practice fields but neither of them moved. The sky was cloudless, the air thick, as though sensing the unspoken challenge. There was no proof Cassi could provide to show her loyalty. He had to decide what mattered more—his fury or the risk he was taking with Lyana's life, with all their lives, if she were telling the truth and he refused to believe her.
Rafe sighed. His sensitive side won out, and he reluctantly told her of his one night in Karthe and his run-in with Malek's mages. Cassi's jaw dropped open in disbelief as he described the creature who'd slipped from the shadows to snap his attacker's neck, giving him the opening to run.
"And that's not all," Rafe finished softly. "It comes to me at night, in my dreams, and shows me horrible visions."
She sucked in a sharp breath, remembering the impenetrable darkness that had devoured her the second she’d sunk into his mind. "Was it here? Tonight?"
"I had a nightmare, yes." He shrugged. "As to whether it was here, you would know better than me. Did you see it?"
A frown turned her lips. Rafe had been alone when she'd entered his rooms, not another man or beast in sight, and yet, something had been there, in his thoughts. She'd felt it. "No," she murmured. "But I wonder…"
The creature was part man, part dragon.
Rafe was part man, part dragon.
All that separated them was a split-second victory during the soul joining, one of the beast and one of the human. In manner, in attitude, in outward appearance, the two were a thousand miles apart. Yet maybe, they were far more similar than she'd ever realized.
"We've never been able to figure out how dragons communicate," she offered into the silence. "We've never understood what called them to this world, what force lured them through the rift—our magic or something more. What if they can communicate with their minds?"
"What's that got to do with anything? I'm trying to figure out what that thing is doing inside my head. What—" He broke off suddenly, alarm making the flames at his back erupt. Understanding settled like a heavy mantle on his shoulders. "When you said the god stones were eggs, you meant dragon eggs, didn't you?"
She nodded slowly.
Rafe stumbled back as though struck.
"It’s communicating with me mentally," he murmured, as though so many pieces he'd been trying to force together had suddenly fallen into place. "It thinks I'm one of them."
"You're not," she hastened to say.
The broken look in his eyes made her heart tear in two.
"Are you so sure?"
"Yes." She gripped his shoulders, ignoring the fact that he hated her, and ignoring the fact that she'd done this to him, pretending for a moment that they were those two people back in the practice yards in the House of Whispers who'd almost felt like friends. "You're nothing like that thing. It kills without remorse. It has no soul. It wants to destroy us. For all my faults, I know your heart, Rafe, and though this world has given you nothing but pain, there isn’t anything you wouldn't do to save it."
He swallowed as a grim determination lit his eyes. Cassi stepped back, dropping her hands from his jacket, aware that in the heat of the moment she’d crossed a line.
“What was your second message?” he finally said, his tone emotionless as he drew the conversation back to neutral ground.
All she wanted to do was pester him with questions, but he needed time to consider this new revelation for himself. And she was quickly losing control of his mind. Awareness pressed in at all edges as time sped forward, carrying him into the new day. She wouldn’t be able to force his spirit to continue sleeping for much longer.
“Lyana’s worried for you. I know you’ve evaded three of Malek’s ships since leaving Karthe, but he’s closing in. He’s using dormi’kine mages to follow you, and he has armies waiting at every port. Eventually your supplies will run out. Eventually he’ll catch you—”
“What’s your point?”
“We figured out a place where you can hide safely, a place he wouldn’t dare try to attack you.”
“Where?”
“The raven guest quarters in the outer isle of the House of Peace.”
A grimace passed over his face.
“They’re empty,” she pressed before he had the chance to refuse outright. “And they’re fully stocked with supplies. Think on it. Before you say no, please, just take the time to think on it.”
The castle beside them vanished into a swirling vortex of color. The edges of the practice fields grew fuzzy, the wall disappearing as the sky overhead flared with a rainbow hue. All around them, the dream collapsed. Cassi took Rafe’s hands, trying to hold on.
“Is there anything you want me to tell Lyana?” she shouted as pressure pushed against her chest, lifting her feet from the ground and forcing her to pump her wings. The chaos swallowed her ankles, creeping up her legs, her body slowly dissolving into the maelstrom.
“Tell her—” Rafe clutched her fingers as his gaze ticked from side to side, uncertain. “Tell her—”
Cassi’s control broke.
Rafe woke, throwing her from his mind, and she careened back into the world. On the bed, he gasped and jerked upright. His head snapped toward the ceiling. Though he searched the empty room for any sign of her spirit, he couldn’t sense her hovering in the air above his head.
I’m here, she wanted to scream. Just tell me.
Instead, a dejected sigh escaped his lips, and he dropped his head into his palms. Cassi groaned, as much as an invisible specter could groan. For better or worse, her work here was done. She’d lost him.