Reborn To Save My Dragonkin Mate

Giana POV:

"Drink the calming draught, Giana, or we stop right here."

Madame Eva's voice cut through the heavy silence of the stone therapy room, but her words barely registered against the roar in my ears.

My fingers clamped around the curved velvet armrests of the chair, digging into the fabric until my knuckles turned porcelain white.

"I don't need a sedative," I said, my voice raw, scraping against my throat like broken slate. "Bring the basin."

Eva did not move immediately.

Her hazel eyes drifted down to my left wrist, lingering on the faint, pale silver line etched into the skin.

It was the ghost of a cut made with an enchanted silver blade the night after the funeral.

The night I realized that living in an empty house smelled entirely of ash.

"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 was Emmett," I snapped, my chest heaving against the tight velvet collar of my mourning robe. "And I am going back in. Bring it."

Eva sighed, a sound worn thin by weeks of my stubbornness.

She flicked her polished wand.

From the shadows of the stone alcove, a shallow, rune-carved basin of dark granite drifted across the room, settling silently onto the pedestal between us.

Inside it, a pool of mercury-bright mist swirled sluggishly, glowing with a cold, sickly light.

"Clear your lungs," Eva instructed, stepping closer.

She raised her wand to my right temple.

The tip was icy, sending a sharp shiver down the back of my neck.

With a slow, practiced pull, she drew a shimmering thread of silver gossamer from my skin.

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

As the memory uncoiled across the stone surface, an unbidden face flashed through my mind-Colin Reynolds.

The radiant Avian boy with the golden hair and sweeping wings, the star chaser of the skyball pitch whom I had chased like a blind fool throughout my youth.

The phantom of my own pathetic devotion made bile rise in my throat.

I squeezed my eyes shut, choking down the nausea.

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

I leaned forward, thrusting my face into the swirling fog.

The smell of old parchment, damp earth, and bitter wolfsbane rushed into my nose, and gravity vanished.

When my boots struck solid ground, the blinding gray mist resolved into the living room of our small stone cottage on the outskirts of Wanling Keep.

The hearth was burning with low gray flames, casting long, melancholy shadows across the floorboards.

I was standing there, watching my younger self.

I wore a pristine crimson travelling cloak lined with gold-the proud colors of Crimson Dawn House.

My younger hands were violently snapping shut the clasps of a leather trunk.

I remembered that exact tightness in my throat, that frantic, poisoned urgency to get out, to escape a life I thought was beneath me.

The kitchen latch clicked.

Emmett stepped into the parlor.

My heart seized, slamming against my ribs so hard it stole my breath.

He was holding a steaming ceramic mug of star-mist brew, his knuckles raw and red from scrubbing cauldrons.

His Abyssal House robe was washed out, the deep emerald fabric faded to a dull moss at the cuffs, frayed threads trailing where he had repaired the seams himself.

He looked so agonizingly young, so fragile, his tall, lean frame stooped with exhaustion.

Then he looked up.

Those silver vertical pupils-the ancient, unyielding mark of the Dragonkin bloodline-locked onto me.

There was no anger in them.

Only a quiet, bottomless stillness that made my stomach twist into knots.

"Emmett," my past self spoke, her voice ringing out like a frostbite wind. "We need to finish this now."

I watched myself reach into my cloak and produce a rolled sheet of heavy vellum.

The red wax seal bore the crest of the Council of Magic-a Binding Severance Contract.

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

"Sign it," past-me commanded. "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 look at the vellum.

His silver eyes remained fixed on my face.

A tremor, tiny and instantly suppressed, passed through his lower lip.

"Why?" he asked.

His voice was barely louder than the crackle of the hearth, but it rattled through my bones.

"Because I never wanted this," past-me said, each word chosen with surgical cruelty. "I never wanted to be tied to a destitute, disgraced Dragonkin whose family owes blood debts to every dark alley in the realm. My future does not have room for you."

I wanted to scream.

I threw myself across the spectral room, hands clawing at my younger self's shoulders, desperate to tear the words out of her throat.

My fingers passed harmlessly through empty light.

"Emmett, look at me! Don't listen to her! Don't let her say it!" I begged, my ghost-voice dissolving into nothingness.

Emmett stared at the paper for a long, agonizing minute.

The gray fire sputtered and died down to embers.

Slowly, without a word of protest, he reached out his ink-stained hand, picked up the eagle quill, and pressed his mark into the bottom of the vellum.

"All right," he said softly.

The memory violently accelerated.

The parlor smeared into streaks of gray and crimson.

The sound of cheering crowds roared over the whistling wind.

Suddenly, I was standing in the stands of the great arena, the banner of Crimson Dawn flapping above me.

Below, the pit was a churning sea of sulfur and shattered boulders.

A deafening roar split the sky.

The Hungarian Horntail dragon, colossal and maddened by a rogue binding curse, shattered its steel moorings.

A wall of white-hot dragonfire swept toward the lower tier of the student stands-directly toward where past-me stood paralyzed with terror.

Through the blazing 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, his frail body throwing itself directly over past-me, wrapping his arms around my head like iron bands.

The smell of burning skin filled my senses.

The searing heat ripped through the memory, blistering my spectator's soul.

"Giana..." he gasped in my ear, his blood hot and thick as it splattered across my cheek. "Run."

Then the darkness fell like a falling guillotine.

The memory fractured into jagged glass shards.

I was yanked backward through the void, gasping and thrashing, until I collapsed against the arm of the velvet chair in Eva's office.

My lungs burned.

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

"You lost him again," Eva said gently, kneeling beside me with a glass of water. "The trauma severs the connection at the exact moment of impact. You cannot force the mind to see past the shock of death."

"I have to know," I sobbed, pressing my trembling palms into my eyes until stars bloomed behind my lids. "He saved a woman who threw him away like trash. I have to know how he died, Eva. I have to know what his last breath sounded like."

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

I did not answer.

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

I collapsed onto the bed, pulling Emmett's worn, faded emerald school robe against my chest.

It smelled faintly of crushed sage, dry ink, and the bitter trace of burnt ozone.

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

Giana POV:

The scream ripped through my throat before my eyes even opened.

I sat bolt upright in bed, my fingernails tangled in the sheets, chest heaving as if the dragon's sulfurous breath was still searing my windpipe.

My heart battered wildly against my ribs, a trapped bird in a cage.

On the nightstand, the bronze mechanical clock chimed three times, its small clockwork owl ducking back behind the brass door.

Three in the morning.

The witching hour, when the stone walls felt less like a sanctuary and more like a tomb.

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

My bare feet hit the cold floorboards, sending a jolt of ice up my calves.

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 can do it myself," I muttered, the sound of my own voice small and pathetic in the dark room.

I crossed to the wardrobe, pulled open the hidden lower drawer, and lifted 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, a restricted draft I had bribed an apothecary runner in Star-lantern Alley to acquire.

Moving quickly into the parlor, I ignored the empty chairs, the cold hearth, the absence of life that clung to every corner.

On the mantelpiece sat a decorative silver platter, an ancient heirloom from my mother's estate, etched with serpent patterns along the rim.

I set it down on the low wooden table.

"Engorgio," I whispered, tapping 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.

It was crude.

It lacked the stabilizing enchantments of a true granite Pensieve.

If the memory surged too violently, the silver would warp, but I didn't care.

I needed to see the gap.

I needed to know who dragged me from the ash, and why Emmett never made it to the healer's tent.

I raised the wand to my right temple.

My hand was shaking so badly the tip rattled against my skull.

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

A silvery strand of thought pulled free, clinging tenaciously to the wood.

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.

The scent of roasted nuts and ozone washed over me.

I stood on the tiered wooden benches of Crimson Dawn House.

To my left, 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.

A profound disgust seized me.

I looked at my younger self and saw nothing but an arrogant, empty shell.

"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 Crimson Dawn 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 moved with terrifying grace.

He didn't trade brute spells with the beast.

He 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 Crimson Dawn 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, his Dragonkin blood driving him with unnatural, lethal speed.

He threw himself over past-me just as the sky turned white.

The heat was absolute.

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..."

"Show me!" I screamed at the memory, stepping directly into the burning inferno, clawing at the smoke. "Who took you? Why didn't you heal?"

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.

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

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.

I lay on my side, curled into a ball, my forehead pressed against the freezing wood.

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.

Even as my conscious mind slipped into exhaustion on the floorboards, fragments of other memories began to tear through my sleep like jagged glass.

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 scolded 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, my soul curling inward under the crush of guilt. "Please... don't show me anymore..."

"Giana Sterling!"

The voice cracked through the void like an iron bell.

"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 not the cracked white plaster of my lonely bedroom.

It 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 Crimson Dawn 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.

I slowly turned my left wrist over.

The scar was gone.

There was no faint silver line.

No trace of the blade.

My sleeves were crisp, heavy wool, trimmed with brilliant crimson silk and braided with gold thread at the cuffs.

The brass pin of the Crimson Dawn phoenix gleamed proudly against my collarbone.

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!"

Collette was nineteen again.

Her cheeks were round, her eyes clear, untouched by the long, bitter years of the border conflicts that would later take her brother.

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.

The ink on my quill smelled pungent and wet.

The thrum of ancient magic coursing through the castle's granite foundations reverberated through the soles of my boots.

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.