“Told you there was something wrong with her eyes,” Tara muttered.

  “I can feel your distress and anger,” Kimba said through their bond. “I heard you were called to the great hall, but I had some business to deal with. Who do I need to eat?”

  “How does bone soup sound for dinner?” Rory asked her. “I’ve found out where I came from, what I am, and why Danni lied to me and used me. Take a deep dive into my memories and get the info. I’m still talking to my uncle.” Rory focused back on the room, letting Kimba have access to her recent memories. She could feel her dragon’s rage building. She’d have to deal with that later.

  “How did they die?” she asked Collin. Rory had mixed feelings as she looked at the man she’d believed to be her uncle. He’d never been mean to her, but neither had he helped her when she’d needed it. She’d seen the contempt in his eyes when he’d looked at his sister, but no matter how much he disliked her, he never stood against her.

  “In a house fire,” he answered, as his shoulders rolled forward. “I’m sorry, Rory. That doesn’t change anything, I realize that. But I will do anything I can to help you now.”

  “A little too late, don’t you think?” Aston asked. Rory felt contempt flow through him, directed at her uncle.

  Collin visibly swallowed as he looked from Aston to her. “I won’t make excuses for my lack of action then. I can’t change the past, no matter how badly I wish that I could. But I can make better choices now.”

  “What happened after the fire?” Nasima asked.

  Rory’s stomach twisted as she waited for his answer. She tried not to think about how horrible it must have been for them to die in such a way. Images attempted to force their way into her thoughts, but she shoved them out. Later she would mourn their deaths and the manner in which they happened, but not here with the eyes of others looking on.

  Collin’s jaw clenched as he seemed to wrestle with himself. “I can’t believe she wiped my memory,” he said softly, almost to himself.

  “Based on what you’ve said so far about your dear sister,” Gabby said, “it doesn’t really sound like you should be surprised. She sounds like a class A jackass.”

  “Wait,” Rory said as she held up her hand. “I was ten years old when Danni took me. I should have memories of my life. If she jacked with your memory, then–”

  “She most likely jacked with yours,” Gabby finished for her.

  Rory’s stomach twisted up in a knot as she looked at Aston. Maybe she should be surprised that she immediately looked to him for comfort, but it just seemed natural to lean on him. He pressed his lips to her forehead, and she felt his concern through their bond. After giving herself a second to breathe, she turned back to Nasima and Collin. “How am I supposed to break a spell on myself?”

  “You don’t,” Ra said. “We can ask the witch, Penny–the one that helped me at Blackhorn coven.”

  Rory’s first instinct was to say, “ell no.” She didn’t want another witch messing with her mind, not after the mind freak Danni had put her through. But she knew that the only way for her to move forward was to get to the bottom of the crap storm her so-called mother had caused.

  “What do you want to do?” Aston’s voice filled her mind. “I’ll support whatever decision you make.”

  “Is there really a choice?” she asked. “I need to know about my life. I need to remember who my parents were, and who I was.”

  “The witch must be brought here,” Sepheron said, the large dragon king’s head now hovering high above them.

  Rory tilted her head back to look at him. “What if she won’t come?”

  “She will,” Ra assured her.

  Shelly smiled, her eyes twinkling as she looked at her mate and then back to Rory. “He can be very persuasive when he needs to be.”

  “It’s the black eyes.” Liam motioned towards his friend. “Before his eyes started looking all demonish, he couldn’t intimidate a fly.”

  Ra’s face remained blank as he looked at the water elementalist. He didn’t say anything, just stared.

  Liam held up his hands and laughed. “Kidding, dude. You totally make people shake in their boots.”

  “Babe,” Gabby huffed. “Maybe don’t poke the already irritated pharaoh's buttons. Mm’kay?”

  Liam’s shoulders dropped. “But it’s so fun,” he whined.

  “It’s all fun and games until Ra kicks your ass,” Elias called out from where he stood with Tara.

  “I will get the witch,” Ra offered. “Considering I’ve built a rapport with her.”

  “I’ll join you,” Shelly said quickly.

  Ra looked torn as he looked at her. Rory saw the struggle on his face. She imagined that, much like Aston, Ra didn’t want to let Shelly out of his sight, but leaving the dragon realm meant putting herself in danger, which her mate would equally dislike.

  “Don’t ask me to be separated from you,” Shelly said, her voice soft and vulnerable sounding.

  Ra ran his hand down the back of her head, wrapping his fingers around her hair and holding it possessively. “Okay,” he finally answered. The moment was so intimate that Rory had to look away.

  “It’s settled,” Nasima said. “Ra and his mate will get the witch. Sepheron, please call for me as soon as she arrives.”

  “Of course,” he said, inclining his head at her.

  “Umm,” Liam began, his lips pursing, “do dragons have cell phones?”

  The air queen smiled. “No, but the wind carries sound. He needs only to speak my name with the intention of contacting me, and I will hear him.” The air queen opened a portal and then looked at Collin. “I need to return to my realm. Are you coming with me?”

  Rory looked at her uncle, not my uncle, she corrected her thoughts. She didn’t know what he was to her anymore. She couldn’t really call him a friend, but she couldn’t call him family anymore either.

  He returned her stare and then sighed. He must have seen the confusion on her face. “That’s probably best.” Before he followed the air queen through the portal he said, “I don’t know if I can ever make things right between us, but I hope one day you will allow me to try.”

  Rory didn’t know what to say because she didn’t know if he could make things right. She didn’t know if she even wanted him in her life. He represented a time in her life that wasn’t pleasant. Would she always look at him and see his sister’s face? Could she ever move past the fact that he’d turned a blind eye from what Danni had done? It wasn’t something she wanted to worry about at the moment. For now, she just needed to figure out what and who she was. She also needed to see Kimba. That dragon had a lot of explaining to do.

  Collin must have realized Rory wasn’t going to answer him because he eventually turned and stepped through the portal.

  “Well that was informative,” Gabby said, as she rubbed her hands together. “Now, let’s go get us a witch.”

  “Witch hunt!” Liam called out as he threw a fist in the air.

  “It’s not a witch hunt considering we know where the witch is,” Ra said dryly.

  “Way to rain on my hunting party,” the water elementalist grumbled.

  “Only Ra and his female will be retrieving the witch,” Serpheron said. “The rest of you have work to do.”

  Aston took Rory’s hand and smiled down at her. “Feel like sparring with me? I promise to go easy on you.”

  Rory narrowed her eyes on him. “You do remember that you have to sleep sometime, right?”

  “It’s never a good idea to coddle your chick,” Gabby said. “You may be stronger in some ways, but we’re much more vindictive.”

  Aston grinned at Rory. “Does that mean you’re going to do wicked things to me?”

  “Good grief,” Tara muttered. “Finding his soul bonded has turned him into Liam.”

  “Not okay, mate,” Elias said as he looked at Aston. “Do better.”

  CHAPTER 9

  “I am a queen without a king. Half a soul on the verge of self destructing, but I don’t have that luxury. My dragon bonded has been hit with devastating news. We’re going to have to trust a witch to help her. And with every passing hour, more darkness takes hold of the human realm.” ~ Kimba

  The afternoon sun hung low, slanting over the clearing and painting the snow in bruised gold and sharp, blue shadows. It should have been beautiful, and would have been, in a world where hell hadn’t ripped open and spilled its poison everywhere. But the silence in the dragon realm was thick and uneasy, broken only by the crunch of boots, the snap of a branch, the occasional crackle of dragon fire drifting down from above.

  Kimba stood at the edge, arms crossed, eyes narrowed on the soul-bonded pairs scattered around the training circle. It was only the three youngest couples at the moment, as the light royals elementals had requested the seasoned warriors return to the human realm because of an increase in Marks being found. She knew that they needed them, but she hated that they couldn’t get more time with soul bonded training. Something was better than nothing, and when the time came for them to open the gate, they’d bring all of them back.

  Her focus shifted back to the current group. She could feel the ache of her bond with Rory throbbing in the background of her mind like an old wound freshly torn open. The girl’s pain, her confusion after learning the truth about her parents, about Danni, about everything–Kimba felt it as surely as if it were her own. The connection between dragon and rider was always intense, but with Rory, it was a double-edged sword. The girl’s grief scraped raw against Kimba’s own and left her feeling exposed, vulnerable, and–Mother Gaia, help her–protective in a way she hadn’t felt in centuries.

  The others hadn’t missed the shift. Gabby, as usual, was the first to fill the silence, not with wisdom but with volume. “So let me get this straight: Rory’s not a witch, her fake mom was an actual murderer, and now someone’s got to fish the real memories out of her head before we can do our next round of ‘save the world’?”

  Liam, lounging against a tree, cracked a grin. “Oh, the joy of family drama, although in my drama, nobody got stabbed.”

  “That’s surprising, considering you’re you,” Aston muttered. “Unfortunately, witch drama comes with knives, and elemental drama comes with existential crises.”

  “Don’t forget the dragons, darling,” Rory said, her voice brittle as she flicked a pebble at Aston’s knee. “It’s not a real day until someone threatens to barbecue you.”

  Kimba almost smiled, almost. She tried to focus on Rory’s banter, watching how the girl leaned against Aston, how their bond glimmered faintly in the air between them. It was fragile, that calm, and Kimba could sense the undercurrent of fear, anger, and loss rolling beneath it.

  She shifted, her thoughts a storm of guilt and frustration. Rory’s agony echoed through her, twining with her own pain from Osiris, from being incomplete, from the pressure of holding everyone together when she herself felt like she was coming apart at the seams. She wanted to help, to shield, but some wounds had to bleed before they could heal.

  Gabby’s voice broke through again, sharp as flint. “So, is this a new low or just a Tuesday for us? Because personally, I’m running out of sarcasm.”

  Tara, who’d been quietly watching Elias draw sigils in the snow with a stick, finally piped up. “If this is Tuesday, I’m terrified of what Wednesday looks like.”

  Elias glanced up, deadpan as ever. “Statistically, we’re due for either a demon attack or a surprise therapy session. It’s really a toss up.”

  Gabby whooped. “Dibs on therapy. Let’s unpack our trauma with interpretive dance.”

  Liam rolled his eyes. “Babe, if you start dancing again, I’m going to eat you, and not in the way a dragon would eat you.”

  “Where is Ra when we need to shut him up?” Aston sighed as he jerked a thumb at Liam.

  Banter. Always banter. It was their lifeline, the rope they clung to as the world burned. Kimba let it wash over her, even as her mind spun with Rory’s grief, her own longing for Osiris, and the gnawing worry for Shelly and Ra, gone to find the witch Penny, their absence another hole in the web of connection Kimba tried desperately to maintain.

  She could still feel the thread of their bond, her and Ra’s, her and Shelly’s, faint and distant but unbroken. It was like a melody played in another room, familiar and comforting, yet out of reach. Each missing person was a missing note, and the song of the soul bonded felt discordant, incomplete.

  Aston nudged Rory. “You okay?” he asked quietly, his voice meant for her alone but echoing in Kimba’s mind, thanks to the bond.

  Rory shrugged, the gesture brittle. “Define ‘okay.’”

  “Breathing. Not cutting anyone. Not summoning a tornado in your sleep,” Aston replied, a smile tugging at his lips.

  Rory huffed. “Give it time.”

  Kimba’s heart clenched. She remembered when Osiris had been her comfort, her anchor. Now his absence was a wound, and the ache of missing him warred with the instinct to step in for Rory, to be the steady presence the girl needed. Except she wasn’t steady, not now, not with the world teetering on the edge.

  She tried to focus on the others. Gabby and Liam were laughing about something, probably another of Gabby’s threats to set Liam’s pants on fire, which he seemed to find more endearing than alarming. Tara and Elias were, as always, a study in contrasts: his calm to her storm. Kimba could see the pieces of Tara’s soul that Elias restored like a beautiful stained glass that had been shattered and then put back together.

  Kimba’s gaze drifted skyward. Dragons wheeled overhead, vigilant and restless. The tension in the group was palpable, like a storm waiting to break. They were all waiting for news, for purpose, for something to make sense.

  And then, as if summoned by her doubts, the air shifted again. The dragons stilled, their heads turning toward the path leading from the caves.

  Osiris entered the clearing.

  He moved differently than before, less like a ruler with an over-inflated ego and more like a man who’d been stripped down to the bone and survived it. The soul bonded fell silent, every head turning, every breath held. Even the dragons watched, muscles tensed, as if uncertain whether to bow or to burn.

  Kimba’s heart hammered in her chest. The ache of their bond flared, a live wire between them, and she wondered if he felt it, too: her pain, Rory’s pain, the weight of everything they’d learned and everything still left unspoken.

  Osiris met her gaze, just for a moment, and in that instant Kimba saw something different. Not the pride or anger she’d come to expect, but something raw and uncertain. He broke eye contact, turning to the group.

  “I have something to say,” he began, voice low and rough. “And you all need to listen.”

  Gabby, who never missed a beat, looked Osiris up and down. “You look like you lost a fight with a thunderstorm. Or maybe a goddess.”

  Aston murmured, “Maybe both.”

  Osiris ignored them, his focus absolute. “Mother Gaia came to me. She reminded me what I am, what we are. And what the soul bonded are meant to be.”

  The banter faded, tension thickening as the truth pressed in.

  He spoke, not as a king, but as a man who’d been broken and rebuilt. “The fifth element soul isn’t just another magic. It’s the axis. The thing that keeps everything from collapsing. When it’s whole, the world is whole. When it’s broken like now, everything falls apart. Only the soul bonded can fix it. Only we can cleanse the places where darkness has taken root. Only we can put souls back where they belong.”

  He paused, scanning their faces. “When Kimba and I were whole, there were only two realms in the underworld. But when I fell, when I forgot myself, the underworld fractured. Seven hells, and none of them right. The innocent are lost. The guilty run free. And it’s on us, on me.”

  For a moment, the only sound was the distant beating of dragon wings.

  Osiris looked at the group, then back at Kimba, and she felt the weight of his words settle on her shoulders. “We can’t just fight. We have to heal. We have to restore what’s broken. The soul bonded together are the only ones who can wield the fifth element at its full strength. We’re the keepers, the cleansers, the gatekeepers. If we don’t learn to use this power, nothing gets fixed. Not hell, not earth, not any of it.”

  Liam, never one to let a heavy moment hang, piped up. “So, basically, we’re the world’s janitors. Complete with mops, cleaning rags, and that spray stuff that smells like trees?”

  Gabby snorted. “Speak for yourself. I’m more of a flame-thrower than a mop girl.”

  Tara rolled her eyes, but there was no real heat. “I think it would be harder for you to learn to use a mop than to save the human realm from hundreds of demons.”

  Kimba stepped forward, her voice steady and clear despite the storm inside her. “You heard him. We’re not here to play. We’re here to heal. To restore. To become what we were always meant to be.”

  Rory met her gaze, defiance and pain warring in her eyes. “And if we fail?”

  Kimba didn’t look away. “We don’t. Not if we’re together.”

  There was silence for several minutes. The air in the clearing didn’t immediately lighten with Osiris’s pronouncement. If anything, the tension thickened, clinging like cold mist around their feet. The soul bonded exchanged glances–some wary, some openly skeptical.

  Aston was the first to speak, his voice measured but sharp. “So, we’re just supposed to believe you’re a different man now? That centuries of ruling hell are suddenly erased because Mother Gaia had a heart-to-heart with you?”

  Gabby crossed her arms, face hard. “Yeah, no offense, oh mighty former hell king, but forgiveness doesn’t rain down just because you say you’re sorry. I want proof. Not words.”

  Liam nodded, his usual humor absent. “You sat on a throne made of broken souls, Osiris. Now you want us to trust you with ours?”

  Elias spoke quietly, but his words had weight. “A man can change, but trust is earned. Can you even remember what it’s like to care about anyone but yourself?”