Page 14 of Waking Her Dragon

When he looked up, his expression was completely blank. The panicked friend was gone. The tactical commander had taken over entirely. “Why Garrett?” he asked.

The question hung in the cool air of the room. Ginnie blinked, shifting her gaze from her Mate to Sydney. Even Kara fell dead silent inside Sydney’s mind.

“What do you mean, why Garrett?” Sydney asked, her brow furrowing. “He’s a Dragon Guardsman. He was captured.”

“Leviathan is one of the seven Demon Lords,” Carrick said, his voice flat, dangerously analytical. “One of the primordial entities with enough strength to possess a Dragon King. If he wanted to torture a Guardsman to make a point, he could have picked anyone. If he wanted to break Aodhan, he could have ripped the Dragon King from Garrett’s flesh and consumed him. Instead, he has gone to extraordinary, universe-altering trouble to cage his soul in The Abyss. And the second you touched the bond, whoever is holding that cage reacted instantly to slam the door on you.”

Carrick stepped closer, his shadow falling over the table. “Why go through that much trouble for a single prisoner?”

Sydney swallowed the dry lump in her throat, trying to think through the exhaustion fogging her brain. “Because he wants information,” she suggested, though the words felt weak even to her. “He wants to know our defense networks. He wants information about the Clan.”

“Then he'd have killed him when he couldn't get it,” Carrick countered instantly, his tone sharp and unyielding. “An enemy like Leviathan doesn't keep a stubborn soldier alive out of curiosity. If Garrett were just an information source, his body would have been dumped in a ditch weeks ago.”

The silence that followed was suffocating.

Ginnie let out a soft, trembling breath. “He isn't just a prisoner,” she whispered. The fact that realization had struck her all at once was written all over her. “He’s an asset.”

Sydney looked between them, a cold dread twisting inside her gut. Carrick’s words forced her to look past her own desperation, past her burning need to be with her Mate, and see the terrifying reality.

Garrett wasn't just a hostage being punished in the dark. He wasn't a victim of circumstance.

He was necessary. Whatever dark ritual or catastrophic event the enemy was planning next, they couldn't execute it without Garrett’s specific soul locked inside that cage.

Sydney couldn't shake the echo of Carrick’s words. Necessary. Garrett was an asset, a missing gear in a machine they couldn't see yet.

Her mind spun backward, retreating once more to the phrases burned into her memory from the Hall of Knowledge. She didn't need to reread the whole text. She didn't need to analyze the grand poetry of it. Instead, a single, jagged line began to claw at her thoughts, refusing to let go: A king without a throne, a heart without a beat…

“Aodhan,” Sydney muttered aloud, her voice breaking the heavy quiet.

Carrick paused, his eyes narrowing. “What about him?”

“The prophecy specifically calls out a King without a throne,” Sydney said, leaning against the table, her mind racing. “We always assumed that just meant Aodhan was a lost King, a Ruler in exile because the ancient world ended. But what if it’s literal? What if it’s about his current state? And right before that, it says tethered but untraceable.”

She looked up at Ginnie, her eyes wide with a frantic sort of clarity. “Tethered to what? To me because of the Mate bond? To Garrett’s more-than-mortal body? Or is it something else entirely?”

Ginnie stood perfectly still, her lips slightly parted as she processed Sydney’s frantic questions. She looked down at the empty air between them, her analytical mind pulling apart the vocabulary of the cosmos.

“Sydney, say that again,” Ginnie murmured, her eyes suddenly shifting as the pieces clicked into place in her own head. “The exact words.”

“Tethered,” Sydney said. “Tethered but untraceable.”

“A tether,” Ginnie whispered, a chilling realization washing over her features. She looked up, her gaze snapping between Sydney and Carrick. “We keep calling The Abyss a prison. We’re treating this like Garrett and Aodhan are locked behind bars, and we just have to find the key to let them out.”

“They are in a prison,” Carrick said, his brow furrowing. “You said it yourself—a metaphysical confinement.”

“Yes, but a prison is designed to keep something in,” Ginnie countered, her voice dropping into a sharp, terrifyingly clever register. “A tether is designed to keep something from getting away.”

Nobody spoke. The distinction hit Sydney like a physical blow to the sternum.

“Those aren't the same thing,” she breathed, the frost in her chest flaring back to life.

“Exactly,” Ginnie pressed on, stepping closer to the table. “If Leviathan just wanted them gone, The Abyss would dissolve them, or he would have destroyed their essence. But he hasn't. He has them tethered. They aren't just hiding Garrett and Aodhan in the dark, Carrick. They are anchoring them to a specific point in the universe. They may be using a Dragon King's immortal soul as an anchor.”

Sydney stared at her, the scale of the horror expanding exponentially. They weren't just dealing with a cage. Were they dealing with an anchor? “Anchoring what?”

“That’s what scares me.” Ginnie’s eyes opened wide. “I don’t know.”

And if they pulled Garrett out of the dark without understanding what he was holding down... They might unleash whatever was waiting on the other side.