His eyes find mine. Something in them—surprise, maybe. Or regret. Three hundred years too late for it to matter.
"I did," he manages. Blood bubbles from his throat, from around my teeth. "I did love you. I just couldn't?—"
I bite down.
The crack of his neck echoes across the courtyard.
He goes limp.
I let him fall.
For a long moment, I don't move.
Just stand there in dragon form, blood dripping from my jaws, staring down at the body of my father. The man who raised me. Trained me. Blamed me for my mother's death and never let me forget it. The man who came here to kill the woman I love and the children she's carrying.
I should feel something. Grief, maybe. Or triumph. Or at least the sick satisfaction of finally ending a threat that's loomed over me for three centuries.
Instead I just feel empty.
I shift back to human. The change is harder than it should be—my body protesting, wounds screaming as they compress into smaller form. I stagger, nearly fall, catch myself on a pile of rubble that used to be part of my castle wall.
Kess.
I have to get back to Kess.
I turn toward the throne room. What's left of it—walls half-collapsed, ceiling gone, silver circle still glowing faintly in the growing dark. And there, in the center of it all, a figure that's only barely human anymore.
She's on her knees. Scales cover her arms, her shoulders, spread across her collarbone in patterns that catch the dyinglight. Her eyes are gold—fully gold, with slitted pupils that track my movement as I stumble toward her. Claws where her fingernails used to be. Teeth too sharp for a human mouth.
Transformed.
Changed.
Alive.
"Kess." Her name comes out broken. I drop to my knees in front of her, bloody hands reaching for her face. "Are you—the transfer—did it?—"
"It worked." Her voice is strange—rougher, with harmonics underneath that resonate in my chest. "The twins are safe. Both of them. The curse is..." She presses a clawed hand to her chest. "Inside me now. Contained."
"You're alive."
"I'm alive."
The relief hits me so hard my vision blurs. Or maybe that's tears—I can't tell, can't separate anything from anything else right now. She's alive. The twins are safe. The curse is broken.
My father is dead in the courtyard behind me.
"Rhystan." Her gold eyes look past me, toward the body. "Your father?—"
"Dead." I don't look away from her face. "He tried to kill you. While you were transforming. The blade was at your throat. I stopped him."
"You killed him."
"Yes."
I wait for horror. For disgust. For her to pull away from the man who committed patricide, who has his own father's blood still wet on his hands.
Instead she reaches up and cups my face with clawed hands, careful not to scratch.
