Page 27 of The Last Syphon

Inara might have been a Shielder—a power known primarily for its defensive ability—but growing up, she’d honed it to be so much more.

Her mother was a Clairsentient. She could sense what abilities other people had without any prompting. With one simple look, she would just know what they could do, what they were capable of. It was how she knew Inara was a Syphon before even she did. Her mother could feel that dark, tantalising energy running through her veins. She was the one who taught Inara how to use her power, both as a Shielder and Syphon. How to reach her full potential. How to bend the power inside her to do her will. Command it to do what she wanted it to do. Not the other way around.

So Inara practiced. She trained. She honed her skills until her shield was nothing less than an extension of herself, like an arm or a leg. Controlling and using it was almost as easy as breathing for her now.

She could manipulate it to take shape in any form she desired. She could create a solid wall and send it flying in a strong, concussive burst. She could wrap it around herself like body armour, moulding it to her skin. She could shape it into a disk and use it to slice someone’s head off, and, her personal favourite, she could command it to weave itself into two impenetrable battle axes.

“Inara,” Venerable Cias pressed, urgency in his tone.

She looked down at him. His eyes were pleading, begging her not to make a tense situation worse by doing something reckless.

With nothing but a thought, Inara distinguished her shield disk. It evaporated into thin air. Her gaze clashed with that of the Crowned Prince’s and held. Tension skyrocketed.

“My Prince, I assure you, nothing untoward has happened here,” Venerable Cias continued, still trying to defuse the situation. “The Guardian Fraener chose Inara for the soul-link of its own accord.”

Those cold, violet eyes never left hers. “If what you say is true, then she will not mind accompanying me to the palace to prove it.”

“How the fuck would I do that?”

“Inara.” Venerable Cias chastised again.

“Sorry,” she threw down at him. “How, oh, mighty glorious and magnificent Crowned Prince, might I prove a metaphysical, unseen soul-link to you? Hm? Shall I just let you carve out his soul and mine so you can compare the two? Or perhaps you wish for us to do a little dance and see if we move the same? Truly, I am curious how you expect me to prove something that cannot be seen with the naked eye?”

Venerable Cias cursed under his breath. She didn’t know why. Inara thought she had reworded that quite well.

“We have methods to evaluate bonds. If it does, in fact, exist.”

“Do you seriously think I’d be sitting on the back of this dragon if it didn’t? That he would let me anywhere near him?”

“What I think is irrelevant⁠—”

“It is to me,” she whispered under her breath.

“You have taken that which does not belong to you, and you must answer for it,” the Crowned Prince finished as if he had not heard her, but based on the way his jaw ticked in aggravation, Inara knew he had. “Come with me now, and I will let your village live.”

She froze. Indecision weighed heavily on her heart. She was tempted to believe him. Everything she had heard about him said he was a man of honour, a man of his word. That he might be cold and calculating, but was also fair. Didn’t thrive on pain and suffering like she knew a lot of the royal families in the realm did. That he upheld the law, right down to the finest of details.

If there was a chance that Deadhaven could come out of this unpunished, she had to take it.

Regardless of all that, though, Inara needed to hear him say it. She needed his guarantee.

“I want your solemn vow that you will not harm anyone.”

His brows raised slightly. “It is yours.”

“That you will leave, and neither you nor your army will ever return.”

“I vow it.”

Fraener shifted his weight from his front limbs to his back legs. The movement jostled her, and she squeezed the spikes in her hands for stability. Anxiousness trickled down her spine. Fraener didn’t like their line of conversation. Didn’t like the threat the Crowned Prince posed.

It didn’t matter. She could not let the village suffer because of her. Creating the soul-link might have been something Inara had not initially chosen, but now that it was there, she couldn’t imagine being without it.

Without Fraener.

This was her choice, and she knew, deep down, that it was the right one.

For Deadhaven.