Chapter Twenty Six – Whispers in the Forest

Sierra’s POV

The forest was too quiet.

Branches cracked under her boots as Sierra followed Malick deeper into the trees, her arms wrapped tightly around herself, as if that could keep the shadows from spilling through her skin again. Her breath still came unevenly — she swore she could taste iron at the back of her throat.

Malick kept glancing back at her, jaw tight. He hadn’t asked anything, not when he’d found her curled against the roots, not when her magic had blasted him off his feet, not even when she’d begged him not to look at her like she was a monster.

But now, leading her toward a moss-covered outbuilding tucked between the trees, his silence had weight. Like questions pressing against the walls of his chest, straining for release.

The little stone outhouse looked like it hadn’t been touched in years. He shoved the door open with his shoulder, then motioned for her to step inside.

“Used to come here when I needed space,” Malick muttered. “No one ever finds it.”

Sierra slipped past him. The air smelled faintly of earth and ash. Safe, almost.

For a while, they just stood there — the shadows quiet in her blood, her pulse gradually slowing. It was Malick who finally broke the silence.

“If your father is who I think he is…” His voice was careful, almost too careful. “…does that mean you grew up in the Tower? Locked away like some kind of… princess?”

Sierra let out a bitter laugh before she could stop herself. “Princess.” The word felt sour on her tongue.

Malick frowned. “Then what—”

“I wasn’t treasured,” she cut in, eyes hard on the cracked stone wall. “I was an experiment.”

Malick didn’t speak, but the sharp intake of his breath told her enough.

She forced herself to look at him. Her throat burned as she said it:

“My name isn’t just Sierra. It’s… Vaelira Kane.”

The name hung between them, heavy, dangerous. His eyes widened slightly, recognition flickering — not of her, but of the bloodline.

“He didn’t want a daughter,” Sierra continued, her voice low and sharp. “He wanted power. He used his blood like poison, forcing it into women — sorcerers, seers, healers. He didn’t care what broke, only what survived. My mother…” Her voice faltered. “She tried to protect me. But in the end, I was just another vessel to him.”

Malick’s hands curled into fists at his sides. “Vaelira…” he murmured, testing the name, like it was a shard of glass in his mouth. “You’re telling me he—”

“Yes,” she snapped, then immediately softened, guilt flashing across her face. “Yes. He raped them. He called it legacy. I call it cruelty.”

The silence that followed was suffocating. Sierra braced for disgust, for pity. Anything but—

“My mother,” Malick said suddenly, voice tight with old pain, “was taken during the war. She was pregnant when they dragged her into his hands. He forced dragonborne blood into her, into me. She didn’t survive the birth.”

Her chest squeezed. “Malick…”

His eyes lifted to hers, stormy and raw. “I should’ve died too. But someone helped. A woman. A shadow-sorcerer. She saved me when I shouldn’t have made it past my first breath.”

Sierra’s heart pounded. “My mother.” The words escaped before she thought. “It had to be her.”

For a long moment, neither moved. Then Malick stepped closer, his hand brushing her arm, tentative. She didn’t pull away. Couldn’t.

The shadows inside her stirred — not violently this time, but like a pulse. A recognition.

“Maybe we were never meant to survive him,” Malick whispered. “But here we are.”

Sierra’s resolve cracked. She tilted her head back to look at him, eyes stinging. “And if surviving him makes me like him?”

Malick’s hand came up, cradling her jaw. “Then let me remind you who you are. Not his shadow. Yours.”

The kiss was inevitable. When her lips met his, it wasn’t gentle. It was a collision — years of silence, fear, hunger breaking loose at once. His hands tangled in her hair, slid down her back, anchoring her against him as if he could hold all her pieces together.

She gasped, pulled back for air, only for his lips to chase hers again.

“Malick—” she whispered against his mouth, but the word dissolved when he kissed her harder, more desperate.

For the first time, she let herself want.

For the first time, she wasn’t afraid of being wanted.

The kiss deepened, her whole body alive under his touch. Malick’s hands mapped her shoulders, her back, her waist — never crossing a line, but bold enough to set her nerves alight. She clung to him in return, desperate, afraid that if she let go she’d shatter into ash.

For once, the shadows didn’t suffocate her.

They… hummed.

Warmth curled through her veins, mixing with the storm of his heartbeat against hers. His lips moved with hunger but also with reverence, as if every brush of their mouths meant something sacred.

Then the warmth ignited.

It started in her chest, blooming like wildfire, spilling through every inch of her. Her magic answered before she could hold it back — a surge so fierce it tore through the cracks of her control and into the air around them.

Light.

It wasn’t the choking dark that had haunted her dreams. It was luminous, blinding, brilliant.

Malick broke the kiss, stumbling back a step, his eyes wide — not with fear, but awe. “Sierra…”

The forest shuddered.

From the floor of the old stone hut, a ripple of silver-white light carved itself into runes, spiraling outward until the whole room glowed. The air grew thick with power, heavy and electric, like the first breath before a thunderstorm.

And then — it rose.

A form unfurled out of the radiance, stretching massive wings that brushed the rafters, dissolving and reforming in sparks of molten silver. The creature’s body shimmered with scales that flickered between translucent crystal and ink-black shadow. Its eyes burned like twin stars — ancient, intelligent, protective.

A dragon.

Not fully corporeal, not yet, but real.

Sierra staggered back, clutching her chest. “No—no, this isn’t—”

The dragon lowered its head toward her, exhaling a breath that smelled like frost and lightning. Its voice wasn’t words but resonance, a vibration deep inside her bones.

Vaelira.

Her real name. Spoken like it had always known.

Malick stepped in front of her instinctively, as if to shield her from it, though his voice was hushed, reverent. “Your familiar…” He turned his head just enough to look at her. “Sierra… this is no ordinary bond.”

Her hands trembled, tears pricking her eyes. “I didn’t summon it. I didn’t—”

“It came to you.” Malick’s gaze was locked on the dragon, but his hand sought hers and squeezed, grounding her. “Out of you.”

The dragon’s wings stretched wider, sending ripples of light through the cracks in the walls, illuminating the night forest beyond. Then, with one final pulse of radiant energy, the creature dissolved into sparks — vanishing as suddenly as it had appeared.

Sierra crumpled forward, knees buckling, and Malick caught her in his arms.

She buried her face in his chest, shaking, her voice breaking on the truth: “He’ll know now. My father will know.”

Malick tightened his grip, fierce and unyielding. “Then let him come. You’re not his weapon, Sierra. You’re not his vessel. You’re—” He paused, tilting her chin so she’d meet his eyes. “You’re you. And I’ll be damned if I let him take that from you.”

The words steadied her, if only for a moment.

But the echo of her familiar’s voice lingered in her bones.

Vaelira.

The forest had fallen silent, the kind of silence that warned of predators Even the night creatures seemed to have fled at the dragon’s appearance, leaving only the faint crackle of energy in the air.

Sierra sat slumped against Malick, her chest still heaving, her body thrumming with power that didn’t feel like her own.

His hand stayed firmly at her back, steady as stone, grounding her. “You didn’t look afraid of it,” he murmured.

“I wasn’t,” she admitted softly. “That terrifies me more than the dragon itself.”

Malick’s thumb brushed absent circles against her spine. He didn’t flinch at her words. Didn’t try to comfort her with lies. He just listened.

“Vaelira,” he said after a beat, tasting the name like he wasn’t sure if he had the right to speak it.

Her throat closed. “Don’t—”

“I’m not using it against you.” His eyes searched hers, raw with honesty. “I just… needed to know if it was yours, or if it was his.”

A shiver went through her. Because she knew what he meant. Her father’s claim on her blood. The truth that she had never been born for herself.

“It’s mine,” she whispered, almost daring herself to believe it. “For the first time… something was mine.”

The shadows under her skin quieted at those words. Just a fraction.

Malick’s lips twitched, the faintest ghost of a smile. “Then that dragon is your answer. Not your father’s. Not Gloria’s. Not anyone’s. Yours.”

Her chest ached with a strange, painful warmth. The urge to kiss him again nearly consumed her — not out of desperation this time, but because she wanted to. Because he was the first person who had ever made her feel seen.

She leaned in, brushing her forehead to his. The air between them buzzed, not with magic, but with something gentler. Fragile. Human.

For the first time since she could remember, she didn’t feel like she was drowning.

They stayed there a long moment, wrapped in silence, until the forest finally stirred again — a distant owl’s cry, the whisper of wind in the branches, the faint rustle of movement deeper in the trees.

Sierra stiffened.

Malick felt it too. His body tensed, hand moving instinctively toward the blade at his hip.

“The Crows,” Sierra breathed, dread clawing back into her chest.

But Malick only pressed his lips once, fleeting and fierce, to her temple before pulling her gently to her feet. “Then let’s face them together.”