The dreams are fragmented and strange—blood on stone, golden eyes in darkness, my aunt Isla's face dissolving into mist when I try to look at her directly. I wake twice gasping for breath, once with tears on my cheeks that I don't remember crying. The fire burns low and the candles gutter and somewhere in the castle, separated from me by stone walls and locked doors and whatever distance he thinks will keep me safe, Rhystan is probably not sleeping either. I can feel echoes of him through the bond, which I push away and ignore, not wanting to acknowledge that it even exists.
Dawn comes gray and cold through the narrow windows.
I dress in the practical clothes someone left folded on the chest at the foot of the bed—simple trousers, a linen shirt soft from washing, boots that fit better than the ones I wore to the altar. The dagger goes back in my boot. The note goes in my pocket, though I couldn't say why I'm keeping it.
I need answers.
That's what I tell myself as I slip out of his chambers and into the maze of corridors beyond. I couldn't kill him last night, couldn't make my hand complete the motion that would have ended three hundred years of murder and bloodshed, three hundred years of omega lives being treated like wheat for the harvest. So if I can't kill him yet, I need to understand him first. Understand the curse, the god who made it, the blood that carries it. Understand why so many others died and I simply... didn't.
The castle is quiet at this hour—servants not yet stirring, guards stationed at distant posts, the whole fortress holding its breath in the thin light of early morning. I move throughempty hallways, following instinct more than any clear sense of direction, letting my feet carry me where they will.
I find the library almost by accident.
A door standing open where others have been closed. Warm light spilling into the hallway like an invitation, golden and flickering, nothing like the gray dawn filtering through the windows. The smell of old paper reaches me first—dust and leather and ink gone dry with age—and beneath it something else. Smoke, maybe. Or the memory of dragon fire, burned into the stones themselves.
The room beyond steals my breath.
Three stories tall, the space soars upward into shadow. Balconies circle the upper levels, accessed by a spiral staircase that looks grown from the stone itself rather than built by human, or rather dragon, hands. Shelves cover every wall from floor to ceiling, stuffed with books and scrolls and loose papers weighted down with smooth river stones. A fireplace big enough to roast a whole boar crackles in one corner, throwing dancing shadows across spines stamped in gold and silver and faded copper.
His scent is everywhere in this room, layered into the leather and the paper and the smoke from countless fires. He's spent years here. Decades. Maybe centuries, sitting in that worn chair by the window, searching for... something. Whatever it is that a dragon king wants when eternity greets him and the world itself bows beneath his massive wings.
But he's not here now. The bond sits quiet in my chest, no tug of proximity, no prickle of awareness. I'm alone with all this knowledge and no idea where to start.
I start with genealogies.
The Vhal'kar dynasty takes up an entire shelf—thick volumes bound in leather that's cracked with age, spines stamped with the family crest in gold that's worn to bare impressions inplaces. Rhystan said his family name brings up nothing but bad memories, and it's not hard to imagine why. The Vhal'kar dragon shifters are the strongest and most powerful of all the dragon-ruled kingdoms, and they've expanded their borders with merciless bloodshed for generations. His given name may not be well-known in my village, but everyone knows that we're ruled by a Vhal'kar king and have been as long as anyone anywhere can remember. I pull down the largest tome and carry it to the table near the fire, settling into a chair that's seen better centuries.
The family tree sprawls across two facing pages, four generations of Beast Kings laid out in careful calligraphy. Each name annotated with dates and details, the cold facts of lives lived under a curse.
Thorian Vhal'kar (First Generation): Bonded to Omega Lysara after one death. Ruled 247 years. Killed in battle expanding the northern border.
Gareth Vhal'kar (Second Generation): Bonded to Omega Meira after three deaths. Ruled 198 years. Died of natural causes.
Valdris Vhal'kar (Third Generation): Bonded to Omega Sera after seven deaths. Ruled 391 years. Abdicated throne to son. Currently living in self-imposed exile.
I pause on that line. His father is still alive. Somewhere out there, in self-imposed exile, the previous Beast King still draws breath. I file that information away—not sure what to do with it yet, but certain it matters.
Rhystan Vhal'kar (Fourth Generation): Unbonded. Forty-seven deaths over 300 years. Current ruler.
The numbers climb like a staircase descending into hell. One. Three. Seven. Forty-seven. Each number a woman who walked into the forest, was chained to the altar, and didn't walkout. Each one someone's daughter, someone's sister, someone's friend.
My aunt Isla. Ten years ago. One of his forty-seven.
I remember her hands in the garden, showing me which plants healed and which ones killed. Remember her laugh, low and warm, when I asked too many questions. Remember the way she looked at me the morning they took her away—not scared, not yet, just sad. Like she already knew she wasn't coming back to braid my hair for the spring festival.
Six weeks later, they sent back her belongings. Her mother's ring. A lock of dark hair. A scrap of white fabric stained so dark with her blood that it was almost black.
I close the genealogy and set it aside.
The answers I need aren't in family trees. They're deeper, older, hidden in whatever texts explain why this curse exists at all.
The restricted section is on the second level, tucked into an alcove behind an iron gate worked into the shape of dragons devouring their own tails. Ouroboros—the symbol of endless cycles, of things that consume themselves.
The lock is elaborate. Bronze and silver twisted together in patterns that might be decorative or might be magical, marked with symbols I don't recognize.
I study it for maybe ten seconds.
Then I pull out my knife and get to work.
