Legions of Bone: Dragon Rider Book 3

Chapter 10: Dancing Roach

Guys, I spent all week writing ahead for this book and I got like 15 chapters ahead and OH MY GOD THIS BOOK IS KILLING ME IN THE BEST WAY POSSIBLE!😂 and you have no idea how happy I am that you guys read this series  and are so supportive in my mage chapters ❤️❤️  I am like internally squealing because the book gets INTENSE and it gets lovely and there is so much development. It basically gets real fucking good and I just can't wait to share it with you amazing people! And I hope you guys like this chapter : )

Norah

    It'd been fifteen minutes and Norah still hadn't made the cockroach dance.

Dagen sat on the ground with her, one hand braced behind him, the other spinning his dagger with a lazy, almost mindless thought. Eoin, of course, was attentive as he watched the bug, his fingers bouncing in his lap.

Anticipating. Eager.

Norah focused on the bug in front of her, it's legs bent and shriveled toward the clear sky. She curled her fingers gently over the bug's remains, and reached.

Cold rippled through her as she searched the darkness for a thread, a filament, a wisp of life. She couldn't call upon it like Dagen, not yet, so she had to go by feel. Jagged, black veins appeared in her hands, the cold, sharp and biting in her blood. Her lungs ached, but she kept reaching, reaching--

A leg twitched. Then fluttered. Like a heart.

Dagen's bored gaze sharpened. But the dagger never stopped spinning.

Norah could feel the barest hint of a thread in the cockroach and thought of the scar on her chest that bonded her to Rima. Gingerly, she tugged at it.

Another twitch.

She pulled again. A little too hard.

The thread snapped.

Norah sat back onto her calves and sighed.

"Souls are fragile things," Dagen had said their first night here. "Once they're broken, they're broken forever."

Norah thought of the thread. "When you bring something back, is it bonded to you?"

Dagen stared at the house, where a guard stood watch in brown armor and a sword clasped to his belt. "Yeah," he said, as if he hadn't ever given it much thought. "But it's not an emotional bond. Rotters only come back because you've created a thread between yourself and them."

    She nodded, staring at the roach. "Should we find a new one?"

He stood, extending his hand which Norah gladly took. Sharp pains turned the colors bright and sickening as she stood. Her muscles and bones ached in a steady, horrible way. As if acid were being pumped through her veins.

"Thank you," she said and he shrugged, either unknowing or unbothered by how much work he did to get her to her feet.

Rima followed them as they had to wander farther from the house where the rocky ground wasn't worn smooth from her training. They searched between the crevices of rocks and between shoots of pale grass and did not talk of Etin or the pain flowing through her, or how she controlled the darkness.

"Control's not the right word," Rima mused, one slitted eye narrowing. "You explode."

Norah shrugged, as if to say, "And?" But they both knew she hated the lack of control.

Harnessing the darkness wasn't hard--in fact, it was easy. In the moments of violent black, she felt as if her magic could stretch for miles. Each time she trained, she ventured farther and farther from the house, afraid she would destroy it but needing more.