I wished I knew ways of using dragon magic to try to heal, but I hadn’t spent that kind of time studying it. I didn’t even know if dragon magic could be used in such a way. Not without the dragon helping.
And not without being a part of the cycle.
“We have to get through to him,” I said. There was only one way I knew how to do that—by forming a cycle—but I didn’t know if it was safe to do with the Sharath. “We have to join him to our cycle.”
I started to push power, but felt Natalie resist. She fought, pulling it toward herself, and I withdrew, not wanting to overpower her.
“Not that way,” Natalie said. “You aren’t of the people. I have to be the one to do it.”
Power flowed out from her, and it joined with the white dragon first, but differently than it had in other circumstances. I could feel the way she cycled that power, though it was as if she created a separate circle. There was the one that looped through her, connecting me and the other dragons, and now there was one that connected her to this other dragon. When it formed, she pushed even more, forging a connection, and then went from there to her father.
It was strange that I was aware of it, and it took me a moment to understand why I should be so aware of it. There was power coming from her, and that power radiated outward, circling in a way that borrowed from this cycle and added it to the other.
They were interconnected.
Trust. Her father had said it was about trust. I could feel that. I was aware of that energy and the way it flowed outward—aware of just how much power she now could connect to. She borrowed even more power, and when she did, it surged from our cycle, into her father, and something shifted.
He sucked in a breath and turned toward her.
“Natalie?”
She smiled. “Father,” she whispered. “There you are.”
“What happened?”
“It’s not the Vard,” I said, and proceeded to tell him what happened.
His eyes widened, and Natalie filled him in on more of the details, including what happened with the Servant. I looked down while they were talking and stared. Something was off, wrong, and it took me a moment to understand just what it was that I saw.
The lava flow had reached the city.
It seemed as if it had hit a barrier along the outskirts of the city, and as I stared at it, I wondered whether the king was right: perhaps there was no way for the attack to reach here. Perhaps the city truly was as protected as he believed.
Something else caught my attention.
Places around the city seemed to glow with bright light.
Lava.
There was a glow near the Academy. Behind the Academy, at the back of the garden . . .
The caves.
What had Eleanor said? There were places like that scattered around the city.
The attackers didn’t need to pass through the barrier. They could pass under it. They could use whatever lava they had intended and burst into the city. They had already infiltrated the city well enough, gaining access to places within the Academy, possibly even within the palace itself, that had shown them everything they needed to know about how to target the capital.
Which meant that we were in far more danger here.
But it was the kind of danger that very few would believe existed.
They could attack with Affellah in that way.
“We have to stop that,” I said.
Her father pulled on power from his cycles, along with the cycle he was now part of with us, and pushed energy out from him. It was an enormous amount of power, far more than I could have drawn on my own. I could feel that energy, and suddenly the flowing of fire eased. The glowing let up.
I looked over to him. “What did you do?”
“I’m holding it, though I don’t know how long I can.”
“How?” I asked.
He looked over, shaking his head. “It does not matter. You need to find a way to stop this.”
It would take getting the Servant. I had to figure out where to find him. I focused, thinking about the cycle. Thomas was a part of the cycle, and I could use the cycle to find him now.
As I focused on it, I could feel energy pulsing, carrying through.
It was faint.
It poured through me, flowing outward and through the dragons.
By using the cycle, I could figure out where Thomas was within the cycle. I didn’t know entirely where he might have ended up, only that he was still within the city. And the more I pulled on that energy, the more I could detect the sensation of him. He was there, within the cycle, close enough that all I had to do was reach out for him.
“He’s on the edge of the city,” I said. Strangely, it was a place I had been before. I turned to her father. “See if you can’t get through to the king. Try to convince him that we can’t hold the Servant. I don’t know why, but I believe that if we try to hold him, the Vard will do whatever it takes to get him back. That involves using an awful lot of power to destroy the entire city.”
He regarded me for a moment. “This might be a mistake.” He sighed. “But my duty is to the people more so than it is to the kingdom.”
We hurried, racing through the city, and we reached the Academy grounds.
I ran toward the back of the grounds, and as I suspected, there was a flickering pattern in front of the opening to the cave.
Eleanor stood in front of it.
“You’re working with Thomas,” I said, approaching slowly, glancing over to Natalie.
Eleanor looked at me. She began to weave strands of dragon magic together.
She was connecting to her dragon that I had already added to the cycle. I pulled that
