A Crown of Gold

Fated

The flames danced in my glossy eyes. Sephraim's body blazed into ash, immersed in Darius's fire.

"A dragon must be burned from the inside out,"  He'd told me. "It's the only way they'll burn."  He cast a column of fire through her mouth, causing her insides to erupt into a slow burn. I knew it hurt him more than anything to do so.

"I'm so sorry, Darius," I consoled.

"It's my fault," He told me. "She knew there were Slayers encroaching, she knew the True Bond between us might cause fate to eliminate her to make way for it. I should have done something. I should have made both of you stay, or gone with you."

"This is not your fault, Darius. How could you have known? How could we have known?" I rested my hand on his leg. "We can't slip into a darkness now. We need each other."

"We should take her back to the cave," Darius suggested. "That was her home, her territory. It's where she belongs."

I agreed. Her people deserved to know of their protector's demise, and Sephraim deserved to be in the place she built as her home to rest.

"What does it mean for us to bond?" I asked. "What will become of us when we do?"

"For one, it will fulfill what has apparently been fated to happen," He began. "It'll make the both of us more powerful, and it will make us inseparable."

Ever since Sephraim took her last breath, Darius became the only thing to ease my grief. Even his presence alone seemed to soothe the ache that should've still be eating away at my heart. It made sense now, why we found it so hard to get along as we grew. The bond I shared with Sephraim stood directly between the one I was meant to share with Darius. I wasn't pleased by Sephraim's death by any means, but the loss of our bond made way for the True Bond, which is what caused the sense of relief.

Should we bond before we go? I suggested, using our link almost out of fear to suggest such a thing out loud. I didn't want to come off as eager--after all, I had just lost my Flight. I don't know how well a flight that far will go for an unbound pair.

Darius seemed to think on this for a moment, most likely sharing the same reservations I did. I think... He projected after a while, I think I just need a little while. We can postpone the journey to the cave until then.

Alright.

I wanted to give him the space and time he needed. His mother had just been assassinated by an organization hellbent on exterminating their kind. After thinking about, I decided I needed a moment to gather my thoughts on this whole situation too. I retreated to the airy chamber I'd called home for the past few weeks. It seemed to hold a strange emptiness now. Because of the fated bond I now had with Darius, I didn't exactly feel the emptiness in my heart that I had when I crawled onto the beach the day before. But now, standing in the room Sephraim had provided for me, I felt my throat tighten.

And all at once, everything came crashing down on me. I cried and cried, cried so hard I had to gasp for each breath. She hadn't just been my Flight, she'd been my rescuer, my liberator. Without her, I would've been trapped. Someone stole her from me, from us both. Suddenly my sadness was turned to anger. I screamed a horrible, throaty shout. I grabbed the closest thing to me--a wooden desk chair I'd dragged in from the maid's quarters--and threw it, more flung it, across the room. The old wooden structure broke violently into splinters and bits when it crashed into the ground. A burning, similar to the one Sephraim had given me to intimidate the seamstress back in the trade town, built up inside me. I could feel my eyes glow with a new fire now, Darius's fire, and this one was so much more intense. I could've almost lost my own anger then, simply at the feeling of raw burn inside me. I was shaking, rage filled tears blurring my eyes.