Read Chapter 39: The Leap of Faith

The wind clawed at them as Elara and Aurelia stood at the summit’s edge, the world falling away into a sea of clouds below. Behind them, the ruins of the first riders stood silent witness, their carvings faded but their truth still burning in Elara’s chest.

She had read the words with her own eyes. *The bond is not mastery. It is surrender.*

Elara pressed her palm flat against Aurelia’s neck, feeling the dragon’s tremble beneath her hand. The queen’s wings lay folded against her flanks—useless, heavy, cursed. Her golden eyes met Elara’s, and there was no fear there, only a question.

*Are you ready?*

“I don’t know,” Elara admitted, her voice raw against the wind. “But I’m here.”

Behind them, the others gathered at the ruin’s edge—the knights, the riders, the scholars who had followed her up the mountain with prayers on their lips. Cedric stood apart from them, his hand resting on his sword, his jaw tight. He had not tried to stop her when she explained what she meant to do. He had only nodded, the way a man nods when he’s already lost the argument.

“Elara.” His voice carried across the stone. “If you fall—”

“Then I fall knowing I tried.”

She turned away from him before he could finish. There was no room for doubt now. Aurelia shifted beneath her, and Elara climbed onto the dragon’s back, settling into the hollow between her shoulders. She felt the queen’s heartbeat through her thighs, slow and steady. Too slow, perhaps. The curse was draining them all.

She pulled the locket from beneath her tunic. It burned against her palm, warm as a live coal, pulsing in rhythm with Aurelia’s heart. Whatever the ritual had done to her, whatever the locket had become, she could feel it now—a strand of light connecting her chest to the dragon’s, taut and glowing.

“No more waiting,” Elara murmured.

Aurelia roared once, a sound that cracked the sky, and stepped off the edge.

The fall was instant and absolute.

Wind screamed in Elara’s ears. The mountain wall blurred past them, grey and streaked with ice, and the clouds rushed up to meet them like a hungry sea. Her stomach dropped away. Her fingers dug into Aurelia’s scales, and she felt the dragon’s terror spike through their bond—not death, but failure. Failure in front of the whole world. Failure in front of the one human who had believed in her.

*No,* Elara thought. *Not failure. Trust.*

She closed her eyes. She let the wind take her breath. She let the fall take her weight. She did not grip with her thighs. She did not cling with her hands. She opened herself like a door left ajar on a stormy night and let everything pour through—every fear, every hope, every moment of doubt she had carried since the day she had first looked up and seen a dragon in the sky.

She gave Aurelia all of it.

And in return, the dragon gave her everything back.

A surge of warmth exploded from Elara’s chest, and the locket flared so bright she saw its light through her eyelids. Aurelia’s body stiffened beneath her, a single terrible instant of resistance, and then—she remembered.

Her wings snapped open, catching the air like sails catching a gale. Elara’s body slammed against Aurelia’s spine, and she heard the dragon’s roar of fury and triumph as the membrane stretched, blood rushing through veins that had been frozen by the curse, sinew and bone remembering what they had always known.

They were falling. And then they were flying.

Aurelia pulled out of the dive with inches to spare, wings carving an arc through the cloud layer, scattering mist like shattering glass. Elara screamed—not in terror, but in release, in joy so complete that it hollowed her out and filled her back up again. She had let go. She had trusted. And the sky had caught them.

Below them, the valley unfurled like a green tapestry, rivers glinting silver in the morning light. And high above them—above even the ruins, above the mountain’s crown—she heard it.

A cry.

Then another.

Then a hundred.

Dragons rose from every fold of the land—from the forest eaves, from the cliffside caves, from the pasture towers of the academy where they had been grounded and silent for too long. They climbed into the sky on wings that had been dead weight only moments before, their roars stitching together into a single impossible hymn. The sound was enormous, ancient, alive. It was the sound of the world remembering itself.

Elara laughed. She couldn’t help it. She lay forward against Aurelia’s neck, tears streaming backward off her face, and she laughed until her throat was raw.

They circled up, Aurelia’s wings beating strong and true, joy pouring off her in waves. Around them, the sky filled. Riders rose from their grounded dragons, shouting, weeping, riding on updrafts of pure wonder. Below, on the ruin’s ledge, Elara saw Cedric on one knee, his head bowed, his shoulders shaking.

She hoped those were good tears.

Aurelia leveled out, riding a thermal, and let out a low, satisfied rumble that vibrated through Elara’s bones.

*You held on,* the bond seemed to say, though no words passed between them.

*You didn’t let go.*

Elara looked at the locket still clutched in her fist. It was warm, not burning now, its light steady and soft, like a heartbeat that had finally found its rhythm. She tucked it back inside her tunic.

A shadow passed over them—wide, dark, familiar. Elara looked up.

It was coming from the east, out of the sun itself, too huge to be any beast she had ever trained with, too wild to be a mount, too free to be commanded.

The black-scaled dragon descended toward them, wings banking to match Aurelia’s turn, and Elara’s heart clenched with recognition.

*Ignis.*

So you came back, she thought.

In answer, the wild dragon let out a cry that cut through the chorus of the sky—a sound that wasn’t about the curse or the ritual or the weight of destiny. It was just a greeting.

Elara reached out her arm, and Ignis dipped low enough that she felt the wind of his passing on her skin. She caught his eye, only for a moment, and she saw something there that she had never seen from any creature that wasn’t Aurelia.

Recognition.

Then he was past her, climbing high and rolling, a black streak against a sky that had been empty for far too long.

Elara pressed her cheek to Aurelia’s neck. Below them, the world was filling with color and sound and motion, and she let herself hang there, suspended between earth and sky, home and freedom, and simply breathed.