Page 130 of This Shattered Star

“They are nothing but a mockery of the real thing, existing only in the name of spite,” Theia bit out.

“Spite towards the goddess?”

“In a way,”she surmised.

None of us spoke after that.

I turned the information around in my head, over and over. Like pieces of a puzzle with ends that did not fit, no matter how hard I tried. I was travelling bydragon, for stars’ sake. The very beings I’d been taught to fear my entire life.

But it was a glorious thing to touch the sky. To breathe in the clouds and to taste the wind. For the first time in my life, I felt at peace. Like my soul had been missing its final fragment without ever knowing. And I had just found it.

I kept turning them until mountain peaks broke off into rolling valleys of sprawling grassy hills and vast riverbanks leading further into the horizon. The closer we flew, the more I could begin to make out the frames of houses, speckled in clustered neighborhoods.

Whole. Clean. No traces of destruction or ruin. Not a single hint of what could have been a world-shattering war.

They surrounded a behemoth of a castle, its colossal towers and structure almost rivalling the one in Aedreath. But where they were similar in size, the similarities ended there.

Maverick’s castle lived as the embodiment of all things night, with stone as dark as the sky, and diamonds as bright as the stars. This one was its polar opposite.

It wasn’t the bright white stone, soaking up the sun’s rays that stole my breath away. Nor was it the fact that it almost seemed as though the treesleanedtowards it, as though they were one and the same.

It was the hundreds of thousands of different gemstones, in every shape, encrusted within the stone walls. Reflecting the beams of the sun. Warping them into an iridescent kaleidoscope of color.

We dove towards it, my heart nearly flying out of my throat once more as we descended faster than my body could handle. I scrambled forward, leaning against the long expanse of Theia’s neck to lessen the steady influx of wind threatening to overwhelm my lungs.

At the last second her wings snapped outwards, leveling us both before her powerful legs absorbed the impact of landing.

Kodhan was at our side in an instant.

“Can you make it down?” he called up.

“I think so.” The wobble in my breath was far from convincing.

“Let me help,”Theia offered, and crouched low, bringing her chest and neck flat against the ground. Still, the dirt below seemed impossibly far.

My trembling, exhausted legs obeyed as I stood, then slid down the expanse of her shoulder and the remaining length of her leg. And then Ijumped.

My ankles protested when I landed. But Kodhan wrapped supportive arms around my middle, steadying me. Supported my weight while I adjusted to the feeling of being back on solid dirt.

“Steady now. I’ve got you,” he murmured, hand lifting as if it would brush away the strands of hair that had stuck to my cheeks. It halted as my eyes met his.

I didn’t allow myself the time to read the expression that befell his face. The twinge of hurt that lay there.

My swallow was audible as I pulled away from him, away from the touch that burned invisible imprints of his fingers through my clothing.

Worse still was the tingle that lingered across my skin while I turned, expecting to face claws and scales once more.

But it was no longer two dragons that towered above me.

Theia and Brannon stood in their places. TherealTheia and Brannon. No wings, no razor-sharp teeth the length of my forearm.

It was one thing to hear their voices. But seeing them whole, seeingthem, felt like I’d awakened from a centuries-long nightmare that had taken me hostage.

Guilt marred both of their faces as I kept looking between them, convinced they would disappear again if I so much as blinked. Their competitors’ clothing was long gone, replaced with loose-fitting brown pants and similar cream-colored shirts, slightly askew on the both of them.

They were here. Alive.

And it was the truth.