Page 17 of Lucent Academy: Trinity Awakens
I stood there, blood still dripping from my hand, completely unable to process what was happening. Three beings. Threevoices. Three entities from the Pacted Realms, all trying to claim me at once. That wasn't possible. The principal had said so. One Manaborn, one mate. It was a law of magic itself, as fundamental as gravity or the passage of time.
"Ehm, boys?" I said, and my voice came out as a squeak that I immediately wished I could take back. "I'm still waiting? I-it's embarrassing... so can you hurry, please?"
The arguing stopped. Three sets of eyes—golden, red, and green—turned to focus on me with an intensity that made me want to crawl out of my own skin.
"Look, you made my lady wait," the deep voice growled, and suddenly the first portal tore fully open. "That's it, you two weaklings! I'm coming first, so you can just piss off!"
A dragon emerged from the rift.
Not a drake, not a wyrm, not some lesser cousin of dragonkind. A dragon—massive, pitch-black, with scales that seemed to absorb the light around them and eyes that burned like molten gold. It was enormous, its wings spreading wide enough to cast the entire courtyard into shadow, and when it roared the sound shook the mountain itself. An Abyss Dragon, one of the Primordial Dragons, the diamond-rank beings that had existed before the world took its current form.
The dragon flew high into the air, circled once, and then landed on the stone before me with a grace that belied its size. As it touched down, it began to change, its form shrinking and reshaping until where the dragon had stood there was now a man. He was tall and broad, with black hair that fell in wild disarray around a face that could have been carved from obsidian. His eyes were still gold, still blazing with inner fire,and when he looked at me I felt like prey being evaluated by a predator who had already decided it was hungry.
"Your mom didn't lie," he said, his gaze traveling down my body with shameless appreciation. "Your hips are... breedable."
Before I could respond—before I could do anything—the ground around the circle erupted with growth. Grass pushed up through the cracks in the stone, flowers bloomed in impossible profusion, and a tree began to grow beside the altar, shooting up from nothing to tower over us in the space of a single breath. The second portal tore open within the branches, and another figure stepped through.
He was beautiful in a way that hurt to look at, with silver hair that fell past his shoulders and eyes the color of spring leaves. His ears were pointed, his features sharp and aristocratic, and he moved with a grace that made even the dragon's transformation look clumsy by comparison. A Fae Prince, one of the royals of the eternal courts.
"You can return to your cave, barbarian," the Fae said, his voice dripping with contempt. "And step away from my Queen."
"Your Queen?" The dragon laughed, a sound like boulders tumbling down a mountainside. "She's my mate, grassboy. The one for whom I've been building my hoard for centuries. And if you want to fight..." His smile showed far too many teeth. "You know the outcome, don't you?"
I looked frantically toward the principal, hoping for guidance, for intervention, for anything. But he stood frozen at the edge of the courtyard, his face pale with shock.
"T-this can't be happening," he whispered, and for the first time since I had met him, he sounded uncertain. "Am I going crazy, my love?"
"No, you're not," Crystalline replied, and her voice held none of its usual levity. "It seems we have found our Trinity."
Before I could ask what she meant, the sky above us went dark.
It happened in an instant—one moment the sun was shining, the next the courtyard was plunged into shadow as night fell in the middle of the day. I looked up and saw the moon hanging where the sun should have been, crimson red, casting a bloody light over everything below. And from the third portal, which had torn itself open in the sudden darkness, a figure emerged.
He was pale, impossibly pale, with long black hair that framed a face of terrible beauty. His eyes glowed red in the moonlight, calm and measuring, and when he smiled I saw fangs. A Vampire Monarch—one of the ancient rulers of the blood courts, beings whose power and age made even the other diamond-ranks seem young by comparison.
"Dumb lizard and brat," he said, his voice carrying the weight of millennia. "You think you're worthy of my lady? Can you give her what I can? Immortality? Eternal devotion? No, you can't, you selfish pricks."
"There's nothing I can't buy with my riches!" the dragon snarled. "Not even immortality!"
"She won't ever age as long as she's in my Court," the Fae retorted. "Who would ever choose your filthy castle over my forest, bloodsucker?"
The three of them stood there, bristling at each other, power crackling in the air between them as they argued about whohad the better claim on me. The dragon's eyes were blazing with golden fire, the Fae prince had summoned vines that were creeping across the stone toward his rivals, and the vampire's shadow seemed to be growing, stretching out to encompass more and more of the courtyard. They had completely forgotten that I was standing right there, watching this absurd display with a mixture of terror and exasperation that I didn't know how to express.
"Ehm, boys?" I said, and somehow my voice came out steady despite everything. "I already summoned the three of you, so... let's all get along, shall we?"
I smiled at them, the same smile I had always used on my brothers when they were fighting, the smile that said I am in charge here and you will behave.
And to my absolute astonishment, all three of them answered in unison: "Yes, my lady!"
Then they seemed to realize what they had just said, and their expressions shifted to matching looks of consternation that would have been funny if I hadn't been so completely overwhelmed by the impossibility of my situation.
The principal finally found his voice. "The summoning is complete," he announced, and even through the magical amplification I could hear the tremor in his words. "Leah Wood has successfully bonded with... with three diamond-rank beings from the Pacted Realms. This is... unprecedented. This is..."
"This is the Trinity," Crystalline finished for him, and despite everything, she was grinning again. "The first in recorded history. A living legend." She looked at me, her ice-blue eyes sparkling with something that might have been mischief ormight have been prophecy. "I told you to remember her name. Looks like the whole world will remember it now."
I stood in the center of the ruined circle, surrounded by a dragon and a Fae prince and a vampire lord, with the impossible crimson moon still hanging in the sky above us, and I thought about my mother's words from what felt like a lifetime ago.
Adventure has a way of finding people whether they want it or not.
