Me and My Shadow - Katie MacAlister [116]
The shard was paying attention—I could feel that—but still, it wasn’t enough. It didn’t want honeyed words. It wanted what was in my heart.
“I didn’t want to be a dragon. I wanted to be myself. But now I know that I am a dragon—if not in physical being, then in heart. I am May Northcott, wyvern’s mate and doppelganger, a dragon of the silver sept, and I thank you for making me such.”
Beneath my fingers, the phylacteries grew hot, the shard inside me suddenly burning with a searing heat that I knew was the first dragon’s fire. It burst out of me in a blaze of fire that glowed so bright it momentarily blinded me.
I stared openmouthed in wonder as the shards gathered together before my face, hanging in midair, slowly twisting themselves into an intricately spun circle of fire. Behind it, the air gathered, and a vision coalesced, that of a dragon’s head, slowly turning to regard me with eyes that reflected the ages. It was a white dragon, but not white—it held all the colors of the spectrum, light shimmering along its skin like a million fireflies. The dragon head shifted, changed into that of a man, and for a moment, for the infinitesimally small time between heartbeats, I was judged by the first dragon.
The heart, the spinning fire that made up the heart, suddenly burst into a glorious nova of light that made my soul sing with joy. It was a thousand times stronger than the feeling the quintessence gave me, a trillion times stronger, and in the time it took to burst, I felt the heart of every dragon in the world suddenly lighten and sing with mine.
I was judged and found worthy. The heart re-formed, then exploded with a song that sang to the heavens. I sank back onto my heels as the light from the now-shattered heart faded; I was moved so profoundly I couldn’t begin to sort through the emotions.
The shard was gone. It lay before me glowing softly in its crystal case, alongside four other cases. I smiled when I saw it, touching the newly filled phylactery with reverent fingers. Gabriel and I had argued over what to put on the phylactery for my shard. He claimed that it now belonged to the silver dragons, since I possessed it, but I insisted that it be left unmarked, thinking we would work out later to whom it really belonged.
“Smart shard,” I said, smiling as my fingers stroked over the gold symbol of the silver dragons that now bound the phylactery. “We will see that you are well taken care of.”
The door behind me flung open. Gabriel threw himself across the doorway, once again in human form, turning his back to me as he fought like a madman to keep Baltic out of the room.
Baltic grabbed him by the neck and yanked him forward, spinning to fling him down the hall. He turned back to me, panting heavily, blood streaming from several wounds on his arms and torso, his eyes lit with an unholy light.
“Mate,” he snarled.
“True enough, but I will never be yours,” I answered, scooping up the phylacteries and dumping them back into the strongbox.
“I felt something. What have you done?”
“Nothing you can change.”
He snarled at me. “You think not?”
I shoved the strongbox behind me, and pulled out my dagger as he reached for me. “What you felt was the dragon heart being re-formed and resharded. I saw the first dragon, Baltic. I saw him, and I know.”
He froze, confusion in his eyes. “You . . . know?”
“I saw him. You won’t have the dragon heart now. It’s been sharded again.”
Gabriel reached him just as he threw back his head and roared his anger. Eyes as bright as the full moon, Gabriel jumped onto Baltic, twisting his body as he did so, using the momentum to pull Baltic from the room, back out into the hallway, yelling over his shoulder, “Fly, little bird!”
I fled into the shadow world, taking the box of phylacteries with me, slipping past where he and Kostya battled Baltic, once again in dragon form. Baltic must have sensed me passing him, for he suddenly spun around and charged toward me. Gabriel yelled and threw himself on the dragon’s back,