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."