Ashes and Silver: Reborn to Save My Dragon Mate

Giana POV:

The darkness held no peace.

When I fell asleep due to weakness, the nightmare still hovered over me.

I saw the deep shadows of the Whispering Woods during our first-year survival trial.

I had wandered off the marked trail, arrogant and desperate to harvest a rare cluster of moon-lilies to impress Colin.

The sun had dropped, the venomous night-creepers had closed in, and I had twisted my ankle in a hollow root.

It was Emmett who found me.

He hadn't mocked my stupidity.

He had simply hoisted me onto his back and carried me through five miles of brambles and howling dark, his breath ragged, his own bare hands bleeding from clearing the briars.

Then the scene shifted violently.

The humid, sulfurous air of the Advanced Potions laboratory.

My brass cauldron had developed a fissure under an unstable brew of Draught of Living Flame.

It was about to detonate, threatening to splash flesh-eating liquid across the entire row.

I stood paralyzed, dropping my stir-rod.

It was Emmett who threw himself across the workbench, casting a dual-layered barrier with his bare left hand while dragging me down beneath the slate table.

The boiling potion had sprayed over his forearm, the corrosive acid eating through his sleeve down to the tendon.

He had not made a sound.

He had only checked my face for burns.

And again, in the crags of Gloomfang during our outdoor beast study.

A rogue pack of transformed wild lycans had caught our group in a canyon.

Emmett had deliberately sliced his own palm, using his rich Dragonkin blood to draw the predators away up the scree slope.

When the teachers finally found him hours later, his robes were shredded, his ribs broken, lying in a pool of his own cooling blood.

Every single time.

Every single milestone of my youth was paved with his blood, and my repayment had been a roll of severance vellum and a sneer about his tainted lineage.

"Stop it," I whimpered in my sleep. "Please... don't show me anymore..."

Suddenly, a sound like that of a bell woke me up.

"Giana Sterling!"

"If my lecture on structural barrier counter-curses is boring you to tears, you are entirely welcome to test your luck with the Disciplinary Board!"

My eyelids tore open.

The ceiling above me was an immense, sweeping vaulted dome of midnight-blue stone, inlaid with spinning brass rings that traced the living orbits of the northern constellations.

The air was dense with the sharp, clean scent of crushed sage, beeswax, and powdered dragon-scale polish.

Sunlight, golden and unapologetically bright, slanted through high Gothic lancet windows, illuminating floating motes of dust and dozens of tiered desks carved from dark oak.

Desks filled with teenagers.

Teenagers wearing the distinctive charcoal robes of Wanling Magic School.

I sat frozen, my breath trapped in my throat like a stone.

On the raised dais at the front of the hall stood Professor Eleanor Foster, the Head of Blaze Spirit House.

Her stern, hawk-like features were framed by iron-gray hair pulled into an unforgiving bun, her square spectacles glinting with annoyance.

Foster had retired three years ago.

She had moved to the southern coast to cultivate fire-ferns.

She wasn't supposed to be standing before a blackboard covered in glowing runic diagrams.

"Sterling," Foster said, her voice dropping into that dangerously calm register every student dreaded. "Are you with us, or have you decided that passing your Intermediate Magic Examinations is beneath a daughter of the Sterling house?"

I looked down at my hands.

They rested on a sheet of fresh, unwrinkled parchment.

The skin was smooth, unblemished, glowing with youthful health.

My heart hammered against my ribs with such violence I thought it would shatter the bone.

To my right, a hand reached over and sharply poked my ribs.

"Giana, sit up!" Collette hissed under her breath.

Her freckled face was alive with panic, her curly brown hair bouncing as she mouthed frantic warnings.

"She's already taken ten points from Abyssal this morning, she won't hesitate to dock us!"

I must have returned to being nineteen again.

This wasn't a Pensieve.

The Pensieve was cold, passive, washed out in shades of liquid silver.

Here, the wood under my fingertips was warm.

I reached down beneath the desk and pinched the flesh of my upper thigh as hard as I could.

A sharp, stinging pain bloomed beneath the cloth.

A choked gasp escaped my lips.

"Sterling," Foster sighed, turning back to the blackboard with a dismissive flick of her wand.

"Keep your focus on the parchment. We are covering the Tripping Impediment hex, a staple of the practical defense syllabus. If you fail the casting demonstration on Friday, I will see you in remedial detention."

I didn't hear the rest of her words.

Hot, blinding tears surged into my eyes, spilling over my lashes before I could stop them.

I dropped my head onto my folded arms, burying my face in the wool of my sleeves to stifle the sound of my ragged sobbing.

My shoulders shook uncontrollably.

A few students whispered around me, and I felt Collette's hand rest gently on my back, confused and worried, but I couldn't explain it.

I couldn't tell them that I had just spent five years suffocating in an empty house.

I was back.

The tournament hadn't happened.

The Hungarian Horntail was still locked in its reserve across the sea.

The severance agreement was unwritten.

And Emmett Kowalski was alive.