“Seven out often thousand?!” I whisper now, horrified as I stare at him. “That’s like a… less than a point-one chance of success!”
“It is.” He nods as he watches me. “Why do you think I spent my last eight hundred years doing everything I could to hone the skills I know from Hekla’s scrying that would most increase our chance of success? Those are terrible odds, Rikyava. It was why Hekla taught me the sigildric arts so intently, to make me a master of them. She went to Riksfold alone because she saw a chance of increasing our odds if she could prevent the deaths that some small, ferocious drakaina was about to commit upon the battlefield; it’s why she bound me against my will from going with her. Because even a less than point-one chance of success against the Black Dragon, small as it may seem… is a chance wehaveto take.”
“Because if we don’t, it devours the entire world into its endless night.” I breathe now, for the first time in my life, truly terrified about what we’re up against.
As both my inner dragons gnash their teeth and wail deep inside me, I see Baldur feel it. He reaches out through the water—taking up my hand and clasping it.
“I have been waiting for you my entire life,” Baldur says now as he watches me, intense. “I have been channeling all my Blood Sage passion into my art for ages—and now my sigildric art is the best, anywhere, able to not just heal but also to change a dragon’s fate. I have been harnessing my magic this entire time, waiting for the right one to come; waiting for you. I can feel how strong your other drakes are already: one is blistering rage for you, one is renegade wrath. One is darkest of the dark, as compared to your brightest of the bright, a balance of opposites all must possess. I am none of these things: I am pure power, contained. I will unleash my power for you, drakaina, and become a part of your harem… all you have to do is ask.”
“Do I dare ask?” I say now, as I ponder the immensity of this decision.
“Dare,” he says as he stares me down hard. “Use me, take me; bond me and join my abilities to your Bloodbond and your flesh. I may not be a perfect drake, but I have what you need, Rikyava. And if my thousand years of life are to have any meaning at all, I would that they be this: to be instrumental for you in banishing this terror of the ancients to its true death, at last. If not… what else have I lived for? And what might my purpose now be?”
I see it, as we come to it at last. I see the terrible, empty look that takes Baldur’s visage as he faces his true fate: that his life may not have any meaning at all if I reject him.
It’s far more pressure than I’ve ever had about whether to bond a drake. Now, it’s not just someone’s heart, or their goodness, or their humanity on the line if I refuse to do this. It’s their very life’s purpose, the purpose of their soul, that will shrivel up and die if I reject Baldur as my mate.
I swallow hard as I stare into his eyes and feel his terrified hope.
That I might take him as a mate.
Or that I might seal his darkest fate.
16
DESTINY
I’m just about to give Baldur Sigurðsson some sort of answer on his plea to become one of my mates, though I’m not entirely sure what, when something hammers me from afar. It’s Mikkel, as I suddenly feel him struggle awake; he had been slumbering from whatever Lærke and Ström did to him with their united powers, plus the gargantuan magical drain Baldur’s portals put us through for most of the day.
He wakes like a hurricane now, however, all his power renewed, thanks to the fact that Bjorn and I have been, as well. Aesa’s power was not restored with us, though; it makes the stability of our bond shudder hard now, as Mikkel wakes in human form and remembers everything that’s happened to him, his empire, and his people.
His darkest wrath rushing back.
I feel him shift up and explode whatever containment Lærke and Ström put around him, like an atom bomb. As his seething wrath surges once more, I feel it hammer through my own Bone Magic, unhinged.
As pure, disastrous energy surges through me with cold, unadulterated hate, I don’t even know I’m Wraithing up into my own black dragonwith none of my goodness left, until a strong, warm body coils all around me.
Blue and calm as glacial lakes, Baldur has me, as I breathe hard as my black dragon, caught in his coils. Rather than hammer him to get away, or struggle to get my talons in him and rip my way free, instead, I feel his ancient serenity cool me now.
He hasn’t even poured his power into mine; we’re not life-mated and he’s not trying to seal the deal right now. Only hold me, and calm me, and give me the one thing that even with all my drakes in the mix now, I can never seem to find.
Balance.
It works, as I feel the black madness of Mikkel’s and my Wraith recede. I can hardly feel Mikkel at all now as Baldur’s power envelops me; like a black tide, Mikkel’s terrible fury has been pushed back from me by Baldur’s blue serenity, and the power that lives within him.
Because although he holds me tight in his coils and breathes calmly, using his entire body to soothe mine, I feel the vast power in him. Power like suns being born, power like super-combusting stars, Baldur has it, in perfect opposition to the sheer madness of Mikkel.
But at just the same depth.
Slowly, I come back to myself. Gradually, I calm as my heart stops beating like a thundercloud and a dark madness clears from my mind.
It’s then that I see the drake who has me caught in his coils. Baldur is gargantuan, like Mikkel, as his drake; he engulfs me with his beautiful, sky-blue and midnight body, dazzling fire opal lines of sigildric script with flashes of gold running through his scales, everywhere.
His form is lean and mean, lithe and deliciously decorated with the most artful serrations and spines. His lungs are like bellows as he heaves deep breaths, rhythmic, his strangely intoxicating scent hot on my cheek where his scaled mouth lingers near mine.
His spines are viciously serrated, however, as are his scales, despite his cooling blue color. Power radiates from him as his furious mantle ofdark blue spikes flares and moves with his breath in a rhythmic pulse meant to soothe me further, his long, midnight blue wings enveloping me.
It’s only then that I recognize his vivid, opalescent markings aren’t those of a natural Blood Dragon. That he’s inscribed within hisdragon fleshsomehow, ancient sigildric art that contains and amplifies his power.
