I went still in Morgrith's arms.
The thread wasn't part of the bond between us—that was solid, eternal, the river of starlight I could see now when I closed my eyes and looked with my dragon-kin senses. This was different. Older, maybe. A connection that had nothing to do with our union and everything to do with what ran in my veins.
My bloodline.
The inheritance that stretched back ten thousand years, through generations of wound-walkers and healers, through daughters who had never known why they could absorb pain, through a lineage that began with a woman who had broken the world by running from love.
Evara's blood in my blood.
And now—
"I can feel her," I whispered.
The words came out hushed with wonder. I didn't know if I meant them to be spoken aloud until Morgrith's arms tightened around me, until his attention sharpened through the bond like a blade being drawn.
"Evara," I breathed. "Not inside me—out there. Somewhere."
He went utterly still.
I felt his mind working through the bond—ancient intelligence processing implications, theories, possibilities. When he spoke, his voice was careful. Measured. The voice of someone who'd been searching for exactly this for millennia.
"Your bloodline connection. The transformation must have awakened it fully." His hand found mine, interlaced our fingers, pressed our palms together.
"I can feel where she actually is."
The soul that had been seeking a vessel. The woman they'd been hunting across all seven territories. The key to healing Valdris, to undoing the corruption that threatened everything.
She wasn't me.
She was someone else, somewhere else, carrying the same ancient resonance in her blood. Another descendant of Evara's line. Another woman who didn't know what she was or why strange dreams had begun haunting her sleep.
I closed my eyes and followed the thread.
My new senses reached out along the connection like fingers tracing a strand of spider silk. I felt the thread stretch across vast distance—over mountains, over water, over territory I'd never seen with my physical eyes. The world assembled itself in my awareness like a map being drawn in real-time.
A fishing village on the Storm Coast.
I could smell the salt air somehow, taste the brine on my tongue even though my body lay in the Umbral Sanctuary. I could feel the rhythm of the tides, the creak of wooden boats, the particular quality of sunlight filtered through coastal mist.
And there—
Something waited for us.
"I know where she is," I breathed. My eyes flew open, meeting Morgrith's starlight gaze. "A fishing village on the Storm Coast. She's not fully formed yet. We need to find her before he does."
The implications hung between us like something sacred.
The hunt for Valdris's salvation was over.
All those failed leads, all those candidates who didn't carry the right resonance—none of it mattered now. Evara's soul had found its vessel. And I—wound-walker, dragon-kin, descendant of the woman who had broken the world ten thousand years ago—was the one who would lead them to her.
My bloodline was my compass.
My transformation was my map.
“Come,” he said. “We find her now.”
Chapter 8