Ashes and Silver: Reborn to Save My Dragon Mate

Giana POV:

"Giana, if you still want to recall that memory, then drink the calming draught. Otherwise, we'll stop here."

Madame Eva's voice cut through the heavy silence of the stone therapy room, yet I barely heard a word she said.

My mind was filled entirely with the man who had died for me.

"I don't need a sedative. Bring the basin."

Eva did not move at once, only stared at me.

"You have relived that afternoon eleven times," Eva said softly, her dark wand resting loosely between her fingers.

"The Pensieve is not a tool for self-flagellation, Mrs. Kowalski. If your mind rejects the final sequence again, the psychic backlash will tear your sleep cycles apart permanently."

"His name is Emmett," I snapped. "I'm going back in. Bring it."

Eva sighed, worn out by weeks of my stubbornness.

She flicked her polished wand.

From the shadows of the stone alcove, a dark granite basin carved with runes drifted across the room and settled on the pedestal between us.

Inside swirled a pool of mercury-bright mist.

"Clear your lungs," Eva instructed.

She raised her wand to my right temple.

The tip was icy cold, a sharp chill sliding down my neck.

With a slow, skilled tug, she drew a shimmering silver thread of gossamer from my skin.

It clung to the wood like liquid cobweb before falling into the basin with a faint, melodic chime.

As the memory unfolded across the stone, an uninvited face flashed through my mind-Colin Reynolds.

The radiant Avian boy with golden hair and broad wings, the star chaser of the skyball pitch whom I had chased blindly like a fool all through my youth.

The phantom of my foolish past devotion turned my stomach, and I squeezed my eyes shut, refusing to look at him.

"Open your eyes, Giana," Eva whispered. "Do not fight the descent."

I leaned forward and dipped my face into the swirling mist.

The scent of old parchment, damp soil and bitter wolfsbane flooded my nostrils, and gravity vanished.

When my boots touched solid ground, the blinding gray fog dispersed, revealing the parlor of our small stone cottage on the outskirts of Wanling Keep.

I once again returned to my memories.

I stood watching my younger self.

I wore a brand-new crimson travelling cloak lined with gold-the proud colors of Blaze Spirit House.

The kitchen latch clicked.

Emmett walked into the parlor.

My heart clenched sharply.

He held a steaming ceramic mug of star-mist brew, his knuckles red and rough from scrubbing cauldrons.

His Abyssal House robe was faded from constant washing, with frayed threads hanging from the seams he had mended himself.

He looked haggard and fragile, his tall, lean frame hunched with exhaustion.

Then he lifted his head.

Those silver vertical pupils-the ancient, unyielding mark of Dragonkin blood-locked onto mine.

There was nothing but endless, bottomless stillness.

"Emmett," my past self said, her voice cold as biting frost. "We need to end this now."

I watched my younger self reach into her cloak and pull out a rolled sheet of thick vellum.

Beneath the red wax seal stamped with the Magic Council's crest lay a Binding Severance Contract.

I stepped forward and slammed the parchment onto the wooden table between us.

"Sign it," past-me ordered. "Before the Triad Tournament begins tomorrow. Once you step into that arena as Wanling's champion, our arrangement ends. We are even."

Emmett did not glance at the parchment.

His silver gaze remained fixed firmly on my face.

He suppressed every faint tremor, forcing himself to stay steady.

"Why?" he asked.

His voice was barely louder than the hearth's crackle, yet it pierced straight through my bones.

"I never wanted any of this," past-me said, every word sharp and surgically cruel. "I never wanted to be bound to a penniless Dragonkin, whose family owes blood debts to every dark alley in this realm. There is no place for you in my future."

I wanted to scream.

I lunged toward the phantom scene, grabbing at my younger self's shoulders, desperate to tear those cruel words from her throat.

But the past could never be changed.

"Emmett, look at me! Don't listen to her! Don't let her finish!" I begged, yet nothing could alter what was happening.

Emmett stared at the paper in agonized silence for a full minute.

Without a single word of protest, he slowly stretched out his ink-stained hand, picked up the eagle quill, and pressed his mark to the bottom of the vellum.

"All right," he whispered.

The memory accelerated violently.

The parlor blurred into streaks of gray.

The roar of cheering crowds drowned out the howling wind.

In an instant, I stood in the stands of the grand arena, the banners of Blaze Spirit fluttering above my head.

Below, the pit churned with sulfur and shattered stone.

A deafening roar split the sky.

The enormous Hungarian Horntail, driven mad by a rogue binding curse, shattered its steel restraints.

A wall of blazing dragonfire swept across the lower student stands-straight toward my frozen, terrified younger self.

Amid the raging inferno, a dark figure abandoned the golden egg.

Emmett did not draw his wand to defend himself.

He simply ran.

He leaped over the stone barrier, throwing his frail body over my past self and locking his arms around my head like iron hoops.

The stench of burning skin filled my senses.

The searing heat tore through the memory, scorching my soul as an onlooker.

"Giana..." he gasped against my ear, his hot, thick blood splattering across my cheek. "Run."

Then came utter darkness.

The memory shattered into jagged shards of glass.

I was wrenched back into the void, gasping for breath, until I collapsed against the arm of the velvet chair.

Cold sweat soaked the collar of my dress, my hair sticking to my temples.

"You lost him again," Eva said softly, kneeling beside me with a glass of water. "Trauma severs the connection the moment impact occurs. You cannot force your mind to overcome the shock of death."

"I have to know," I sobbed, pressing my trembling palms to my eyes. "He died saving a woman who discarded him like trash. I have to know how he died, Eva. I have to hear the sound of his last breath."

"Go home, Giana," Eva murmured, her warm hand resting on my trembling shoulder. "Rest. Grief is not a trial you can win."

I did not reply.

I dragged myself out of the chair, left the clinic, and walked through the cold, drizzling streets until I reached my silent house.

I collapsed onto my bed and pulled Emmett's worn, faded emerald school robe to my chest.

It held faint traces of crushed sage, dry ink, and a bitter hint of burnt ozone.

"Take me back," I whispered into the coarse wool, my tears soaking through the fabric. "Please, whatever ancient magic still listens... take me back."

Giana POV:

This night, at three o'clock in the morning, I was suddenly awakened from a nightmare.

I shoved the damp hair off my forehead and swung my legs over the edge of the mattress.

I couldn't wait until next week's session with Eva.

I couldn't endure another five days of watching him burn in my nightmares while waking up to this hollow silence.

I said to myself, "I will use the meditation basin once again. I will see him again! No matter what the cost might be!"

I need to see that blank section, and what happened to him!

"I can do it myself," I muttered, crossing to the wardrobe, pulling open the hidden lower drawer, and lifting out a velvet pouch.

Inside lay my wand-ten inches of polished elder wood-and a small, sealed glass vial containing three drops of memory-clarifying essence.

Moving quickly into the parlor, I set it down on the low wooden table and grabbed a silver platter.

"Engorgio," I tapped the rim with my wand.

The platter expanded, its edges curling upward until it formed a rough, shallow basin.

I uncorked the vial with my teeth, spitting the stopper onto the carpet, and let the iridescent oil slide into the silver.

"Aguamenti."

A thin stream of clear water pooled inside, mixing with the draft until a familiar, milky-silver fog began to crawl over the lip of the dish.

I raised the wand to my right temple.

"Focus," I commanded myself through chattering teeth. "The stands. The flame. The aftermath."

I flicked it into the silver basin.

The liquid instantly boiled, churning with frantic white ripples.

Without giving myself time to reconsider, I plunged my face beneath the surface.

The familiar sensation of weightless vertigo struck immediately, dropping me down through a storm of noise.

The roar of thousands of spectators hit me like a physical blow.

Banners of red, green, blue, and gold snapped in the high winds of the arena.

I stood on the tiered wooden benches of Blaze Spirit House.

To my left, my best friend, Collette, was jumping up and down, her hands cupped around her mouth as she screamed encouragement for the first school champion.

Past-me stood beside her, my arms crossed tightly over my chest, my gaze wandering completely away from the arena floor, scanning the high aerial boxes where the Avian students perched.

I was looking for Colin's white wings.

I was actively ignoring the boy who had spent half the night mending his defensive amulets.

I looked at my younger self and felt nothing but profound disgust.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" the booming voice of the stadium announcer echoed across the stones. "Representing Wanling Magic School... from Abyssal House... Emmett Kowalski!"

A smattering of polite applause rippled through the higher stands, but around me, the Blaze Spirit students sneered.

"A destitute Dragonkin?" someone muttered two rows behind me. "Did the Headmaster draw his name from a scrap heap?"

I turned toward the sandy pit.

Emmett stepped out from the dark archway of the beast tunnel.

He looked impossibly slight against the towering cliff walls of the quarry arena.

His dark robes whipped around his thin ankles.

His silver dragon pupils were narrowed to razor slits against the daylight, his pale jaw locked in rigid concentration.

He didn't acknowledge the jeering from the Slytherin-like pureblood factions or the silence of his peers.

He raised his wand.

Chained to the center of the rocky crater was the Hungarian Horntail.

Its black scales glistened like wet coal, its barbed tail gouging trenches in the granite.

Between its massive talons rested the golden egg.

Emmett flicked his wand in short, sharp arcs, weaving illusions of mist and freezing the ground beneath the dragon's claws to slide it off balance.

It was brilliant.

He was seconds away from retrieving the prize.

Then the chain snapped.

A rogue flaw in the dwarven-forged iron gave way under the beast's thrashing.

With a deafening shriek of rage, the Horntail twisted away from the sand pit entirely, snapping its wings wide and launching itself toward the crowded spectator tiers.

Directly toward the Blaze Spirit benches.

Directly toward me.

The crowd dissolved into pandemonium.

Shield wards flared and shattered like brittle glass under the creature's immense aura.

Past-me froze, my boots rooted to the floorboards, eyes wide with incomprehension as a tidal wave of white flame gathered in the dragon's throat.

Emmett had the egg in reach.

All he had to do was seize it, cast a downward charm, and drop into the safety of the reinforced runner trench.

He didn't even look at the gold.

He cast the egg aside, his body blurring as he vaulted the stone barricade, throwing himself over past-me just as the sky turned white.

I felt the phantom agony of it tearing into my spectator form.

Emmett's back bowed under the impact of the firestorm.

His flesh blistered, the fabric of his worn green robes charring to gray ash in an instant.

His blood hissed on the scorched stones, boiling as it dripped from his lips onto my younger face.

"Giana..." he whispered, his body trembling with the strain of holding the weight of the collapsed timber off me. "Run..."

"No, no, no!" I wept, lunging for Emmett's frozen, bloodied shoulder. "Don't stop! Show me the end!"

A jagged crack echoed through the memory.

The air froze.

The flames stopped moving, turning into solid, jagged spikes of crimson glass.

The faces of the screaming students distorted, stretching into horrible, melted masks.

A deafening ping rang out.

The scene shattered into silver dust.

I was violently expelled from the vision, slammed back onto the hard parlor floorboards.

The silver platter had split cleanly down the center, its metal torn as if by claws.

The murky potion was spilling across the Persian rug, hissing softly as it ate into the wool.

The silence returned, heavier and colder than before.

"Nothing," I whispered to the empty dark. "I am still a coward. I still know nothing."

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.