Lark had earth in her gaze—stone-sense making her movements deliberate, each step placed with perfect awareness of the ground beneath her feet. She was smaller than the others, built compact and strong, with mica-like freckles scattered across her throat and collarbones that glinted when light hit them right. She clutched a rag doll to her chest, and something about that simple gesture made her feel more real than any of the dragons' majesty.
All three bonded brides looked at me and saw themselves. I watched understanding dawn in their eyes—the exhaustion I carried, the fear I was fighting, the desperate hope that maybe, maybe I'd found people who understood what it meant to be marked, claimed, transformed against your will and then offered salvation by the very beings whose nature had made you a target.
They knew. They knew, and that knowledge sat in the air between us like a living thing.
Kara stepped forward first, and her voice was kind but commanding in a way that said she'd learned authority from her dragon. "Show us. We need to see what we're fighting."
I looked at Caelus, who nodded. His hand found the small of my back—not quite touching, hovering just close enough that I could feel his warmth—and guided me forward into the center of the courtyard.
The Dragon Lords formed a protective circle, and despite their power, despite the legends, despite everything I'd heard about dragons being cruel and capricious and caring nothing for human suffering, I felt something unexpected bloom in my chest.
Family.
These beings who could level cities, who'd lived for millennia, who commanded elements like extensions of their own will—they were looking at me with concern. With determination. With the kind of fierce protectiveness that said they'd burn the world before they let one of their own fall to corruption.
Caelus's hand pressed briefly against my back, warm and steady. Through the bond, his voice was soft. "You're not alone anymore, little one. We're going to save you."
Caelus guided me to the center of the chamber with a hand that didn't quite touch my back. The Dragon Lords and their mates arranged themselves in a loose circle, giving me space while still maintaining that protective formation from the courtyard. I could feel their attention like physical weight, and my fingers trembled as they found the hem of my tunic.
This was necessary. I knew that. But knowing didn't make it easier to expose myself to strangers, even strangers who wanted to help. Showing the mark meant showing my back, my skin, my vulnerability. Meant letting them see how thoroughly the Unnamed had claimed me, how its corruption was spreading like rot through wood.
I pulled the tunic over my head before I could talk myself out of it, and the morning air hit my bare skin with shocking cold. The bond marks on my arms—those beautiful cloud patterns in storm-gray and silver—pulsed with warmth against the chill. But between my shoulder blades, the Unnamed's mark answered with its own rhythm, cold and wrong.
The sound the brides made—all three of them gasping in unison—was worse than any alarm crystal. Through the bond, I felt Caelus's horror spike sharp enough to make me dizzy. My hands clenched into fists at my sides, nails biting crescents into my palms.
"How much has it spread?" Kara's voice was carefully controlled, but I heard the anger underneath.
"Show me the mirror," Mira said quietly to Sereis, who gestured and conjured a surface of frozen mist that hung in the air.
I made myself look.
The mark had doubled in size since yesterday. What had been a contained eye between my shoulder blades had erupted outward in seeking tendrils, black veins of corruption spreading across my back like a malignant web. They reached toward my spine with clear intention, following the pathways of major nerves. Other tendrils curved around my ribs, seeking my heart. The eye itself pulsed with that sickening heartbeat, and each throb sent visible ripples under my skin.
But the worst part was how it interacted with the bond marks. Where Caelus's beautiful cloud patterns glowed with warm life, the Unnamed's designation consumed. Light that touched it simply disappeared, creating an upward-falling shadow that defied physics. And wherever the corruption's tendrils got close to my bond marks, the silver-and-gray clouds flickered, fighting to maintain their integrity against something trying to devour them from within.
"It's eating the bond," I whispered, and my voice cracked on the last word.
"Fighting it," Davoren corrected, moving closer. Heat preceded him like a physical presence, and I felt sweat break out across my skin despite the chamber's cool temperature. "May I?"
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
His hand hovered near the mark without touching, and fire magic shimmered in the air between his palm and my corrupted skin. The flames were beautiful—red and gold and colors that had no names—and they cast the mark's wrongness into sharp relief. Where his fire touched the spreading corruption, it recoiled slightly, pulling back from heat that was anathema to void-cold darkness.
"It's actively fighting the bond," Davoren said, and his voice carried the weight of millennia studying magic's fundamental laws. "Not just existing alongside it—actively trying to corrupt Caelus's claim. Every time the bond pulses with desire, with the need to complete itself, the mark surges in response. It's using that energy against you."
"Feeding on it," Sereis added, stepping forward to take Davoren's place. Cold preceded him the way heat had announced Davoren, and I started shivering before he even raised his hand.
Frost formed in the air near the mark, delicate patterns that mapped the corruption's spread with crystalline precision. The ice didn't touch my skin but hovered just above it, creating a three-dimensional diagram of how deep the tendrils had burrowed. What I saw made my knees weak.
The corruption wasn't just spreading across my surface—it was rooting inward, seeking major blood vessels, nerve clusters, anything that would give it access to my core. And everywhere it touched, it left traces of void-magic that pulsed in time with my heartbeat, slowly synchronizing my body's rhythms to the Unnamed's will.
"The compulsion Wren is feeling," Sereis said quietly, his glacial eyes meeting Caelus's across my bowed head. "That overwhelming need that's been building since the bond formed—it's not entirely natural. The mark is weaponizing the bond's desire for completion. Amplifying it, distorting it, turning healthy want into desperate compulsion."
Through the bond, I felt Caelus's guilt slam into me like a fist. He'd thought he was fighting normal bond-madness, the kind that made new mates desperate for each other. He hadn't realized the mark was making it worse, using our own connection against us.
"Don't," I said, turning my head to look at him. "This isn't your fault."
But his expression said he didn't believe me.
