PROLOGUE
The parchment in King Erik’s hands pulsed with magic—fresh magic, not ancient law. Vector had written it himself, his dragon blood the ink, his will the binding force.
“This is insanity.” Erik’s ice blue gaze focused on Vector, his face expressionless. He was a king, just like Vector’s brother, Ryker. Ryker ruled the dragon clans of Italy. Erik ruled the north, the ice cold north whose howling winds sliced through Vector’s skin to bone, his fire dragon howling a protest at nature’s assault.
“I cannot ask this of my brother.” Vector waited as Erik decided his fate. Death by dragon, as Vector preferred, or death by Elven blade. It would take days to summon the executioner, dangerous hours during which Ryker might discover his intentions. Try to stop him. Vector could not take that risk. He was too close to losing control, even with the dragon chains around his neck.
Erik’s silver eyes snapped to the document, sharp as a blade. "So, you want me to be the one who kills you?”
Vector’s determination didn’t waver. “You won’t be responsible. That’s the point.” He nodded at the parchment. “It’sall there. The magic seals it. No Draquonir will call it treachery. I have made the request in the old way.” Dragon to dragon. A request for relief. For mercy.
For death to end the torment ofdragonfireburning through his bones and blood without relief, without a mate.
Talon, one of King Erik’s guardians, stood next to his ruler with arms crossed. He huffed a breath of disbelief. “You think that matters to us? That it will matter to your brother?” His dark gaze swept over Vector. “You think we care about politics right now?”
The artic sea stretched behind them, waves crashing, indifferent. The courtyard of Erik’s northern stronghold sat on the cliffs, high above the water’s edge, untouched by human eyes. The sun had dipped below the horizon, casting the sky in a fluorescent, blue-green swirl of Northern Lights—the kind of night that inspired ghost stories and wonder in equal measure.
A fitting end.
Vector stood with his hands behind his back, feet planted in the cracked stone, his posture betraying no hesitation, no doubt. Inside?
His bones ached with exhaustion. His dragon, once a steady, simmering presence beneath his skin, had become a relentless force of chaos. The chain at his throat—the only thing that had kept him in control—seemed heavier than usual, its magic fighting a losing battle against the storm rising inside him.
Everyone had thought Ryker would be the first to fall. The mighty king, the eldest among their kind, lost to his own madness. Ryker was born with the ferocious and passionate magic of a black dragon, untamed and eager for battle. Hard to control. Aggressive. Impulsive.
But Ryker had found a mate.
He had been saved.
The Draquonir line was secure. Their kind had a future. Vector’s family bloodline was secure. He’d done everything he could to protect that legacy, help his brother survive when Vector himself hung on to sanity by the tips of his dragon’s claws.
Vector had nothing left to fight for and the nearly infinite well of self-control that had kept both him and his brother alive the last few hundred years wasn’t just empty, it had imploded into an abyss of darkness and agony, as if every moment he’d spent protecting his brother, he’d added a drop of acid to his own bones, eaten away the fabric of his soul until there was nothing left but an emptiness so vast and deep nothing would ever fill it.
His dragon would never be able to kill enough to fill it.
Dragon heard him and snarled the same threat he’d been uttering for the last few years.I will kill them all.
Quiet.
Vector ignored his dragon and held Erik’s gaze, spoke the truth aloud for the first time. “The dragon is beyond my ability to control.”
“Fuck.” Talon’s chin dropped and he looked away. Perhaps he saw himself in the stark despair Vector knew shined from his own eyes.
“You could have called Prince Alrik.” Erik’s voice was flat. “If you’re as far gone as you claim, the elven executioner would have handled it.”
Vector’s lip curled. “Alrik would have stalled. He would have told Ryker.”
“Would that be so terrible?”
Vector’s hands clenched behind his back as he struggled to keep keep his tone steady. “Delay would be pointless. Ryker would waste time trying to stop me. Time I don’t have.” His voice was even, controlled. Too controlled. “This is the only way.”
Kael—another guardian standing off to Erik’s left, silver-haired and watchful—studied Vector like he was a puzzle to be solved. “And you chose Erik for this because…?”
Vector’s emerald gaze flicked to Erik. “We may not be enemies, but we are not allies. You will do what needs to be done to protect your people. You must do what my brother cannot.”
A muscle in Erik’s jaw twitched. “Your brother nearly gutted me when I took his mate, and that was just because I needed to speak to her. Your death would start a war.”
“No,” Vector disagreed. “Once it is done, my brother will have no choice but to accept my will in this.”
