A strange ache tightened my throat.
Duty. Love. Sacrifice. All tangled until no one could tell them apart.
“But when she became pregnant with the Winter King’s heir, the Shadow Thane could not bear to know that her body had been used against her will, however belatedly she may have come to accept that fate.”
Something cold flickered down my spine.
The Shadow Clan.My clan.
“When he wasn’t able to free her, the Shadow Thane sought vengeance. And vengeance, once it roots itself, rarely remains contained.” Isren shook his head sadly. “It spreads. Corrodes. Devours. It is a fire that convinces itself it is justice.”
His expression darkened, his gaze going distant as he stared out the window at the auroras lighting the sky.
“In the end,” he continued, “his pursuit of that vengeance shattered far more than the heart he’d lost. It fractured the realm itself. And once the divide began… it did not stop.”
I parsed through his story. As usual with the Unseelie and the Seelie, they were both right… and they were both wrong. The king had made a choice to choose his realm over one fae. Maybe I had suffered on the other end of that choice, but I had also agreed to send the spies to their likely deaths, knowing they were tricked into serving an Unseelie queen.
And the Thane had lost his love, only to see her forced into marriage and bearing heirs. If someone tried to take Draven from me… what would I do to get him back? To get revenge if he was hurt?
I could feel the reluctance from his side of the bond, the unwillingness to admit that the Skaldwings hadn’t been in the wrong when the war began.
What would you have done if it were me?I pressed him.
I got a brief flicker of myself chained inside the cave, a flash of fury from Draven’s side of the bond.
I would have stopped at nothing,he admitted.
Draven cleared his throat like he wanted to be discussing anything other than how the very thing he had done to me had started the war that was destroying his kingdom.
“What does this have to do with the Dragon exactly?” he asked.
Isren nodded like he had expected the question. “Dragons are… a family unto themselves. A dynasty. Pride is their marrow, and legacy their heartbeat. Veyr’s descendant began this fracture. Whether by choice or by folly, the first spark of the divide came from his line.” His gaze flicked toward me with quiet weight. “And he is not the sort to leave a family stain unattended.”
I considered that for a moment, weighing it against the conversation I’d had with the Dragon, and the things he’d shown me in the memory with my mother.
“He said he had a vested interest in protecting my line,” I said.
Isren inclined his head. “Of course he does. Your line is part of the fracture he means to mend. To him, protecting you is not kindness. It is… preservation. A necessary piece on a board he has been watching for centuries.” His gaze deepened, gold catching the light like burnished metal. “Veyr guards his legacy as fiercely as he guards his blood. Since your lineage was touched by the breaking, he will see that it is bound to the making as well.”
The temperature of the room seemed to dip. My throat tightened. “So he’s watching me.”
“Undoubtedly.”
Draven’s mana ghosted along the edge of mine in response—a protective flare, cold and sharp as midwinter steel.
Veyr guards his legacy as fiercely as he guards his blood.The words echoed in my mind, threading themselves through memories I had spent years trying not to examine too closely.
Dragons protect their own,my mother had said in the memory Veyr forced me to relive. She had been so sure of those words. So sure that the Dragon would respect them.
Was that why I’d survived for so long?
Why every attempt to break me—every punishment, every test, every brush with death—had stopped just short of finishing the job? Because something ancient and furious and scaled had wrapped itself around my bloodline long before I ever drew breath?
The thought coiled through me, dark and dizzying.
And if dragons protected their own… was that why my uncle had let my mother live even after she’d betrayed him? And was it why she had left him alive after everything he did to me?
Was it why he hadn’t let me die at the mages’ hands? Because of this twisted brand of loyalty that was ingrained into the marrow of our bones?
