Chapter 13

“Always warms the heart when a big, strong hero swoops in an’ saves the day.”

The moment the words hit my ears, my power reached downward, sinking into the stone beneath my feet. The earth was old here - settled, content, stubborn. It didn’t want to move. It wanted to sleep. I begged it anyway. Whispered. Pleaded. I needed it to wake up. I needed help.

Hek stood at the gate, surrounded by a gaggle of cock-gargling idiots, and he looked furious. I’d heard men got like that when they had too much estrogen sloshing around their system.

Jackob tried to reason with them, bless his fuckin’ little heart, but there’s no negotiating with men who have shit for brains.

Then Seth stepped forward, putting himself squarely between us and Hek.

Of course he did. He knew my magic didn’t work on him. Knew damn well I couldn’t save his ass if things went sideways. And still he played the fucking hero. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to hug him or kick him in the dick. I figured I’d sort it out later, assuming he lived.

Ashlara appeared out of nowhere, slamming one of the armored humans into the packed dirt hard enough to rattle teeth. I felt myself relax a fraction. Having her here evened things out. Not enough, but better.

“The first time you tried to show me what kind of man you were, I broke your arm,” she spat, her face twisted with fury. Gods, she was terrifying when she was angry. “The last time, I broke your nose and three ribs. What should I break this time?”

“Not his nuts!” I shouted. “They haven’t dropped yet!”

Hek snarled and rounded on me, drawing his curved sword and leveling it in my direction. “I’m going to cut your tongue out and wipe my ass with it!”

I grinned. “Pretty sure that’s the only way you’ll ever get a woman below your belt, you needle-dicked bug fucker!”

“Jackob,” Seth said without looking back, “take Serah inside, please.”

Even now. Even now. Polite as a fucking saint. What was wrong with him? Every other word out of his mouth was please or thank you. Was that a Nomad thing? If we survived this, I was asking Grams.

Serah resisted when Jackob tried to lead her away.

“Serah, please go with him,” I said quickly. “It’s about to get ugly. Don’t worry, we won’t let anything happen to you.”

Her brow creased with uncertainty, but she reluctantly let Jackob pull her into the house. The door slammed shut, and I heard furniture scraping inside. Good. He was barricading it.

“Kill Lara,” Hek said as he advanced. “I’ll kill these two.”

I ripped a stone free from the ground and hurled it at him. The earth groaned in protest, deep and aching. He dodged, but Seth followed it with a solid crack from his staff.

I felt a grin tug at my mouth. He’d come a long way. Gods help me, I was proud of him.

Then Hek swung. The dark blade sheared Seth’s staff in half like it was rotten wood, forcing him backward. He stumbled and tripped over the sword stuck in the ground.

My pride evaporated.

Every. Gods. Damned. Time. Could he not stand on his own two feet for more than two minutes?

I flung another stone. Hek ducked. Another swing. Seth barely dodged, scrambling behind the embedded sword. I managed three more throws before the ground finally rebelled. I’d taken too much. It wouldn’t give me anything else.

Hek’s eyes flicked to me, then back to Seth. He grinned.

That was when he turned his back on Seth and stepped toward me, baiting him. Daring him. It was so obvious. And the idiot fell for it.

Seth lunged. Hek spun and thrust.

I screamed to the wind, begged it, tore at it, and it answered. A sudden gust slammed into Seth, knocking him just far enough back that the sword tip missed him by inches.

Then Hek’s backhand caught me across the face.

I hit the ground hard. The world spun, lights bursting behind my eyes. Through the blur I saw Ashlara on her knees, blood streaking her armor, a human behind her with a knife pressed to her throat.

Seth scrambled backward, the broken staff gone. Hek stalked toward him, slow and deliberate.

“Get the others inside!” Hek barked, as three more humans started battering the house’s door.

‘This isn’t how it’s supposed to end’, I thought dimly. ‘Grams told me…’

* * *

“Jackob,” Seth said, never taking his eyes off the man looming in front of him, “take Serah inside, please.”

I didn’t know this human, nor did I understand why everyone trembled at his presence. He was a fly - nothing more. Loud, irritating, barely worth notice. I wanted to swat him from the air and be done with it.

But to do that would mean revealing myself. Exposing myself. And that would mean Father…

Still, Seth stood his ground. Seth, who had endured fire - my fire - stolen and twisted by that insignificant wizard. That duplicitous human who had deceived me, imprisoned me, and very nearly killed me.

And Seth had ended him. As if it were nothing.

I resisted when the lying little man tried to pull me toward the small hovel. He deserved **** for the blasphemy he’d spoken. For the lies about Aldric and Yveth. I wanted to tear his limbs from his body and let him contemplate how ridiculous his words truly were.

“Serah, please go with him,” Mirri urged. “It’s about to get ugly. Don’t worry, we won’t let anything happen to you.”

Won’t let anything happen to me? As though this man-fly could harm me.

I hated this. I wanted to stay. I wanted to watch Seth peel the skin from that gnat and turn it to dust in the wind. But there was something in Mirri’s eyes that gave me pause - raw, irrational fear.

Reluctantly, I allowed the liar to usher me inside. He slammed the door shut behind us and immediately began piling furniture against it: the small dining table first, then chairs, then pots, then dishes.

What in the hells did he think this would accomplish? If it were me outside, I would have torn the roof free and reached in with my bare claws.

The sounds of battle echoed beyond the walls. I stepped toward the shuttered window for a better view, but the pathetic human grabbed at my sleeve.

“Stay away from the windows!” he hissed.

I shoved him aside. He tumbled and slid across the floor. Who was he to give me orders?

Through a crack in the wood, I saw the man-fly strike Mirri.

My blood boiled.

She may have been a goblin, but she was mine. A creature I had come to view with fondness. And the sight of him harming one of my things - one of MY things - filled me with a cold, furious rage.

Then he turned away, and I lost sight of him.

A heavy pounding erupted at the door. The table scraped across the floor as it began to give. The liar scrambled to his feet and braced himself against it, straining to hold it shut.

The window beside me exploded inward as a human hurled himself through. He landed clumsily, glaring at me with no respect, no sense of his own insignificance, and seized my arm.

That was enough. Consequences be damned. I would not be treated this way.

* * *

Hek grinned and turned his back on me, stalking toward Mirri. He clearly no longer considered me a threat.

I shifted the broken length of staff into an overhand grip and rushed him, driving for the space between his shoulders with the sharpened end.

He spun far faster than I expected. His blade flashed toward me -

- and a sudden gust of wind slammed into my chest, ripping the breath from my lungs. Mirri screamed as I was hurled backward. The sword missed by inches as I flew through the air and crashed hard into the ground. The splintered wood skidded from my grasp.

Hek backhanded Mirri without even looking at her. She crumpled to her knees. Then he turned and began marching toward me.

“Get the others inside!” he barked, and three of the armed men broke for the house.

I scrambled backward as he advanced, my hand clawing at the dirt for the broken staff or anything I could use. His heavy boot came down on my chest, driving the air from my lungs and pinning me in place. He raised his sword overhead.

My fingers closed around a handle - smooth, cool.

The blade came down.

I squeezed my eyes shut and dragged whatever I was holding up over my face, praying it would be enough.

Steel rang against steel.

I opened my eyes.

Hek’s dark blade rested against a shaft of shining metal - a staff of polished steel, mirror-bright, its surface reflecting his twisted, furious expression. The edge hovered inches from my face.

He snarled and drew back for another strike.

Fighting with a staff while flat on my back didn’t seem like something I was capable of. I tried to lever the end of it into position, but when the tip struck the ground, I pivoted instead. The world lurched. Hek was thrown from my chest as though flung aside, and I rolled to my feet.

That was not how physics was supposed to work.

I didn’t have time to think about it.

A horrible, dual-toned scream - part feminine, part something far deeper - shuddered through the ground. Stone trembled beneath our feet as the thatch roof of the house exploded outward. A massive, serpentine head burst free, a man clenched in its jaws.

The head snapped upward, flinging the screaming man into the air like a child’s toy. Its jaws opened and a column of fire roared straight up, so hot I felt it scorch my skin. The screaming stopped.

A clawed hand seized the side of the house, tearing more of the roof away as the creature dragged itself free. Another claw smashed through a wall. Enormous red wings unfurled, blotting out the sky as the beast emerged fully from the wreckage.

Ruby scales gleamed across the body of an enormous dragon.

The men broke and ran.

The dragon exhaled again, this time leveling a torrent of flame down the street. I threw myself flat as fire roared overhead. I heard someone scream, but I couldn’t tell who.

When I looked up, Ashlara lay motionless on the ground.

“Mirri!” I shouted. She followed my gaze, dragged herself upright, and staggered toward our fallen companion.

I rose and placed myself between the dragon and my friends, though every instinct screamed at me to flee. I didn’t retreat.

I needed to find Serah.

I locked eyes with the dragon. Huge amber orbs regarded me with something I couldn’t name - curiosity, perhaps. Hunger, maybe. It lowered its head, hot breath washing over my skin.

Jackob crawled from the ruined house, collapsed to his knees, scrambled back to his feet, and ran, shrieking, “She’s a draaaaggggooooon!”

I looked from the massive beast to him and back again.

“Serah?” I asked, lowering the staff.

Stranger things had happened.

The dragon snorted, noncommittal, and began to shrink.

* * *

I watched in stunned silence as the great crimson dragon folded in on herself. Limbs shortened, wings drew inward and vanished, the terrible maw receding until, in the space of a few heartbeats, Serah stood where the dragon had been, the beautiful, red-haired girl we’d met just a couple of days before.

Only her dress was gone.

I flushed hard, stammered something incoherent, and bolted for the shattered remains of the house in search of anything she could wear. She, on the other hand, seemed perfectly content to stand naked in the middle of the street. After a moment she wandered over to Mirri and Ashlara, entirely unconcerned.

I tried not to look. I failed.

The sway of her hips, the easy confidence in her stride, the unmistakable bounce of her - nope. She glanced back at me over her shoulder, her expression unreadable, and my face burned all over again. I turned away and redoubled my efforts, rifling through debris with far more urgency than necessary.

Eventually I found a blue dress that looked… roughly the right size. Maybe. I didn’t know. Women’s sizing was arcane nonsense. Size seven? Zero? How was zero a size?

I returned and held the dress out in front of me like a shield, high enough to block my view. She took it without comment. I turned around to give her privacy, fully aware of how ridiculous that was given the circumstances.

When I finally dared to look down, Ashlara was sitting heavily on the ground. Mirri knelt beside her, hands glowing faintly as she worked, the pale light barely visible in the harsh sun. Both of them looked drained - pale, exhausted.

“Are you going to be okay?” I asked.

“We’ll be fine,” Mirri said, offering a tired little smile.

“Good. Stay here. I’ll… try to get help?” I wasn’t sure what help even looked like right now, but standing still felt wrong.

I moved through the street, stamping out what few fires Serah’s flames had left behind. There were surprisingly few. Fewer people, too, which wasn’t surprising given what they’d just witnessed.

I eventually found Jackob hiding in a feeding trough, his face smeared with dirt and tears. It took a long while to coax him out, and even longer to get him back to what remained of the house. He gave Serah a wide berth, flinching every time his eyes strayed her way, ready to bolt at the first sign of scales.

As townsfolk slowly emerged from their homes, I tried to calm them, to explain, but fear clung to them like smoke. It was clear enough. We weren’t welcome anymore.

Jackob stood before the ruin of the house for a long time, staring. His face was slack, hollow. He’d devoted his life to this place, to Aldric, and now it was gone. Some things could be rebuilt. Others were lost forever.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly, coming to stand beside him. “I know this wasn’t-”

He turned to me. His gaze dropped to the staff in my hands.

At some point, without my noticing, it had changed. The mirror-bright steel had dulled, fading into a black, leather-wrapped length capped with metal. A leather thong hung from the top, bearing three small silver feathers.

Jackob’s expression hardened as he looked back at the ruins.

I stood there awkwardly, words failing me. Nothing I said would fix this. He’d lost everything.

“So you’ve been chosen,” he said flatly.

I blinked. “Chosen?”

“I never thought I’d see it,” he went on. “Not in my lifetime.”

“Jackob-” I started, but he turned fully toward me, eyes locked on the staff.

He seized my shoulders with surprising strength. “Do you know what this means?” he demanded.

“Jackob-”

“Adhaneth has chosen you!” he shouted. “The great goddess Miralis has named you her champion!” His eyes burned with an unsettling fervor.

I glanced from him to the staff and back again. “Jackob… Adhaneth is a sword. This is a staff.”

“NO!” he cried. “Adhaneth is the rib of Miralis! It is whatever She wills it to be!”

He spun me around, gripping my shoulders as he pointed. Where the great sword had once stood embedded in stone, there was now only an empty crack.

“I didn’t mean to… I don’t want to… You think this is…” I stumbled over the words, panic creeping in.

“You hold Adhaneth itself!” he proclaimed. “Praise be to Miralis!”

“Jackob,” I said quickly, trying to calm him. “Even if that were true, I can’t take it from you.” I stepped forward and wedged the staff back into the crack.

The moment my hands left it, it shimmered and became a sword once more.

I jumped back with a startled curse.

“You can’t return it!” Jackob shouted. “It chose you! She chose you! It is your duty now—to protect the weak, to serve Her will! Claim Adhaneth, whatever form it takes!”

“Nope,” I said immediately. “Absolutely not. I’m out.”

I turned to leave.

“Seth,” Mirri called softly.

I paused.

“Are you really going to leave that behind?” Ashlara asked. “You finally found a weapon you might not break.”

Serah watched in silence, her expression curious.

“Everything you’ve done since arriving has been about protecting others,” Mirri said gently. “This doesn’t change who you are.”

I met her eyes and shook my head.

“You’re wrong, Mirri,” I said quietly. “This changes everything.”