She now shares my chamber completely, her few possessions mingling with mine in a way that should feel intrusive but somehow does not. My nest—our nest—carries her scent, a subtle marker that transforms the space from merely mine to ours. Our mornings begin with shared passion, nights end the same way, and the hours between pulse with awareness of her presence within my realm.
Yet even as Leira softens the edges of my burdens, unease coils beneath my scales. As I approach the war chamber, the more I feel that familiar tension gathering at the base of my spine, spreading upward like poison.
General Thorne grows restless. Reports come daily of movement along our borders, of weapons being stockpiled. Malikor and the six scouts he requested have heard whispers that the treaty was merely a ruse to gain time. I trust Leira, trust the truth of her feelings, but her father is another matterentirely. Lord Valen's complacency is the rot beneath the treaty’s surface, and General Thorne's hatred needs no reason to flourish.
More troubling still is the silence from the TrueCoil. With Leira’s arrival, their presence was unmistakable. Etched graffiti, cloaked traitors slithering about. Now, nothing. I have lived too long to mistake such silence for surrender. And what of Lurok? His loyalists pledge allegiance to neither Crown nor Coil, serving a darker purpose. Something is being planned, patient predators waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
The war chamber looms ahead. Beyond the imperceptible door waits my council, and my responsibility to keep my people safe. I pause, drawing a breath that feels heavier than it should.
For a moment, I allow myself one final image of Leira—not writhing beneath me in passion, but as I left her this morning, curled on her side in our nest, one hand reaching unconsciously for the space I had vacated. The vulnerability of that reaching hand had pierced something in me, a sweetness sharper than any blade.
I straighten my shoulders, let the fire within me rise closer to the surface. My scales shimmer with subtle heat as I prepare to be what my people need; not the male who whispers love against a human female’s skin, but the Sovereign Flame, ruler of Vessan-Kar.
The door melts at my approach, and I leave my softer self behind, gliding into the chamber where duty awaits.
The room glows with the eerie blue-white light of an activated serpentglass, casting sharp shadows across the angular features of my Second Fang, Traven. Sareth stands to his side with his back to me, his massive shoulders hunched forward as he speaks in low, urgent tones to the shimmering surface. Within the glass, Malikor's face appears, lined with tension, his bronze scales dulled by poor lighting where he's laying lowinside the caverns on the eastern border. Their conversation halts abruptly as I enter, both warriors straightening to attention.
"Sovereign," Sareth acknowledges, gliding aside to give me full view of the serpentglass.
"What do you have to report, Malikor?" My question falls easily into the clipped tones of authority. The males before me in the flesh and the one captured in the shimmering surface are my most trusted Talons, warriors who have bled alongside me through countless battles. No need for ceremony between us.
Malikor's image wavers slightly, the connection between his hidden outpost and the palace maintaining despite the distance. "Movement along the southern border, Sovereign. My scout’s report Thorne's Shadow Division have established three new encampments within the past two days."
"Show me," I say.
Malikor turns, gesturing to Jarik off screen. The serpentglass ripples again, its surface reshaping to display a crude map drawn in ash on stone. Three points glow with a dull red light, markers placed by Malikor's scouts to indicate the human positions.
"Here, here, and here," Malikor says, his claw touching three points of the compass. West, south, and east. "The first appeared two nights ago, just after moonrise. The others followed in quick succession. They are moving supplies under cover of darkness; my scouts counted at least thirty crates."
“What kind of weapons?” Sareth asks, his ash-streaked hair catching the light as he leans closer to the glass.
“Mostly standard issue,” Malikor replies, “but we have confirmed at least four crates of arc launchers. My scouts overheard talk of arrows tipped with gloomroot.”
A cold surge of fury rolls over me. In refined extracts, gloomroot burns through flesh and scale from within. It is contained in the locked garden beneath the Temple of Threads,tended only by sworn guardians and healers. To hear it named as a weapon in human hands is blasphemy.
“For the humans to weaponize it would require access none outside the Temple possess,” Sareth says, his scales flaring in alarm.
“Or cooperation of a healer,” Traven mutters. “Someone within Vessan-Kar must be supplying them. Someone with clearance to the garden.”
“Lurok loyalists.” Sareth's fangs flash as he spits the words that mirror my own suspicions. “A healer sympathetic to his cause, perhaps.”
My claws bite into my palms. If that is true, if a healer within our own walls has traded a poisonous root to the enemy, I will see the garden cleansed in fire before another fragment leaves its soil.
"Have the humans crossed into naga territory? Breached any of the outer tunnels within the mountain?" I ask, my mind calculating distances, escape routes, defensive positions.
"Not yet, but they are establishing a perimeter. Their pattern suggests they are preparing for something large scale." Malikor pauses, his eyes flicking to something off screen before returning to meet mine. "There is more. Captain Halvane arrived at the largest camp to the east yesterday.”
The Harbinger. A name naga warriors still mutter that the air tastes of iron when his banners rise. He commands the Iron Vanguard, a strike unit known for swift, surgical assaults that leave no survivors. In the last few years of the Sundering, warriors came to dread the glint of his silver insignia, a serpent impaled through the eye, because it meant annihilation would soon follow.
Beside me, Sareth makes a low sound, somewhere between a growl and a hiss. "They mean to break the treaty."
I trace the positions marked on the map with a claw tip. "Or they are baiting us to strike first," I say, noting how the encampments curve in a deliberate crescent from east to west. "They have positioned themselves to trap us, our tails against the mountains. If they attack, we would have no choice but to retreat underground, leaving General Thorne free to claim the Ashlands without resistance."
"Which was his plan all along," Malikor hisses, his fangs briefly exposed in a grimace of disgust.
"How many fighters?" I ask.
"Two hundred at the primary site to the east. Perhaps eighty each at the smaller camps." Malikor's voice is steady, but I catch the subtle tension in his jaw. "They are rotating scouts in six-hour shifts. The pattern suggests they are waiting for something specific."
