Gone now—just like they were before.
“It’s doing something to your Bloodwalker power, Rikyava.” Bjorn’s gaze flicks to the stone. “Something Ström and I can’t contain. And you can’t, either.”
“It’s pushing me, and making my Blood Magic superheat in a way I’ve never felt before.” I nod, as my fingers peruse the silver stone, quiet again in my chest. “It used to be just my Bone Magic that went out of control, before. Now, my Bone Magic can’t rise high enough to tame whatever’s happening with my Blood Magic and wrestle it back. They can’t balance anymore… not like the way we were all balancing after I bound Ström.”
“It was too good to last, wasn’t it?” Ström chuckles now as he rakes a tired hand through his hair. His eyes still look haunted, though I can feel how the memories that blitzed through him are just as gone as before.
They’ve left a dark imprint, however, as he shakes his head, trying to clear it.
“Ström?” I ask him, feeling his inner distress from having been pummeled by his lost memories before they vanished again. “What’s going on? Talk to us.”
“It’s just… they just rushed me.” Ström glances up, and that anguished look is still in his eyes. It comes with a vulnerability I rarely see in him, but exists deep beneath his rakish exterior. “When I tried to raise my Bone Magic to soothe whatever was happening between your Blood Magic and Aesa’s stone, I got hit with a crazy backlash, Rikyava. It was like… alchemy. Like a disastrous truth serum hitting my system. It broke wide open whatever magical locks were put on my memories from my time in Copenhagen. For a moment, all my memories from when I was ensnared to those Bone Mage thieves had hurricained back. After I passed out, it was like everything was relocked. Now, all I feel is echoes… the memories gone again.”
“The thing that rests in Rikyava’s chest is called Aesa’s Truthstone,” Bjorn rumbles as a deep and thoughtful look takes him. “Could it be that it’s causing some resonance with both your magics that is unveiling a hidden truth… something you both know, deep inside, but still need to discover consciously?”
“That makes sense.” Ström looks less shaken, thanks to Bjorn’s wise words. “All my memories from my youth are still locked away, inaccessible to my conscious mind. It would make sense that Aesa’s Truthstone produced some kind of resonance in me, opening up my deepest hidden memories—suppressed all this time by whatever Bone Magic locks are on them.”
“I could see that,” Bjorn says, as we mull it over. He looks at me. “But what the fuck was happening to you?”
Even as he says it, however, I feel the Truthstone warm upon my chest.Mates, some powerful instinct whispers deep inside me as brimstone red flashes deep within.You need more mates for your power to be complete…
“Mates.” The word drops from my lips before I realize I’ve said it.
“Mates?” Bjorn watches me, alert. “Are you saying that something about you getting heated with us caused the stone to resonate with your power, in a way that revealed something to you about mates?”
“Rikyava needs more mates. Fuck. I should have seen that coming.” Ström closes his eyes as he gets it. He opens them, pinning me with his gaze. “Aesa was a Bloodwalker, the sister of your ancient ancestor who created the Black Dragon. She would know the feel of a Bloodwalker similar in power to herself, who was still immature in her ability to raise and control that power thanks to a lack of mates. Don’t you see? Aesa’s Truthstone provoked your Bloodwalker power to go haywire, right when we were all about to fuck. It’s reminding you that no matter how strong Bjorn and I are, we’re not enough—not if we’re going to dragon up and face what’s coming. If we’re going to hunt the Black Dragon and face off with it, not to mention whomever’s controlling it, we need more firepower in the mix. We need more mates, Rikyava.Youdo… to build our fortress strong, in the face of annihilation.”
Even as Ström says it, I know how right he is. Every instinct inside me roars as a towering wave of brimstone-red magic surges through me now. As the entirety of my Bloodwalker power roars, I feel both sides of my power twist together hard, uniting as they demandfood.
I haven’t done enough for my power yet, haven’t fed it even a fraction of what it needs to be fed, to be as strong as it can be. Ström has been a nice enough meal to help me train and stabilize the first level of my massive Bone Magic, while Bjorn has done the same for my Blood Magic.
But they aren’t enough—and everything inside me knows it as Aesa’s Truthstone and my own united Bloodwalker power rush up into a blazing dark-bright firestorm inside me once more.
Because even Aesa and the Black Dragon Knights, my ancestor, and allher mates who created the Black Dragon weren’t enough to control that bastard the first time—much less kill it and put it to its final rest.
Something we need to do now.
Even as I have that realization, all at once, I understand what’s happening with Bjorn. One of my initial worries about my Bloodwalker magic was that it would drain my mates to death to power it if I wasn’t careful.
That’s happening to Bjorn now, I realize, as I watch him rake a shaky hand through his unbound hair again. With all his Blood Magic, he’s been trying to stabilize this roaring resonance my Bloodwalker power is having with Aesa’s Truthstone.
And it’s devouring him—to the max.
“Fuck.” The curse slips out of me as I plop my face into my hands. My voice is muffled as it comes out through my fingers. “I don’t want more mates. Managing you two is complicated enough. But I don’t want Bjorn to die.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Rikyava. I swear it.” Bjorn has come to me as he senses my distress. He settles upon one knee before me, taking my hands in his, warm and strong, and good. “Everything that’s happened today has just made me tired, that’s all. I’m not dying.”
“Hey, Bjorn and I come with baggage, and anyone else you might mate will, too.” Rising from the table, Ström moves behind me now, wrapping his arms around my shoulders and setting his cheek to mine. “We’ll figure it out, though, Rikyava. You mean that much to us. And this hunt does, too.”
“We love you, Rikyava; we’d do anything for you,” Bjorn says now as he holds my hands, squeezing them. “I hate the idea of you taking more mates just as much as I hated you had to take Ström as a mate, but I understand. We can’t take the Black Dragon down alone—not with how righteously it’s fucked some insanely powerful dragons and armies on its rampages in the ancient past. Weneedan army to bring it down once wefind it. And if that army starts with a strong foundation of mates, all life-bonded to you…”
“Are you saying you’re in?” I lift my head now, some part of me still astounded by this new, calmer, and far more practical Bjorn.
“I’m in.” His gold eyes blaze with the power of his drake. His hands are scalding on mine as he holds me, but in a good way. “I’m all the way in. You know I’d die for you… a thousand times over, loving you with my very last breath each and every damn time.”
“I love you, too.” I grip Bjorn’s hands, feeling tears well in my eyes from his utter sincerity. “But I don’t want to hurt you more by taking additional mates. Or kill you, from some accident of my magic going ballistic with Aesa’s stone.”
“I don’t think it can be helped, not any longer,” he says as I get that beautiful, quirk-of-the-lips Bjorn smile. “But you can mend the hurt by loving me. To the ends of the earth and back… just as much as I love you.”
