I met her eyes. “I do.”
“You ask to be cage and key.” Her fingers flexed at her sides, drawing sparks from the sigils at the edge of my vision.
"Yes."
“You ask to carry the hunger that unmade men before your father, that gnawed through priests and warlocks and saints. You ask to bind it to your own blood.”
“Yes.”
“And when it drives you to madness as it did him?” Her chin tilted toward Uther, who had begun to laugh—a choking, broken sound that might once have been regal but now sounded only like something burning. “What then?”
“Then,” I said, “you will know I kept it from waking in anyone else. That is enough.”
Something like pity flickered across her face. Merlin’s jaw clenched beside me.
“Blodeuwynn,” he said quietly. “We have no other choice.”
“There are always other choices,” she answered. “Only cowards pretend there are not. But you are not cowards, are you?”
Her eyes moved over each of us—the mad king, the prince who would be prisoner and prison, the sorcerer, the knights. The forest hushed around us, the whispers of leaves drawing in like held breath.
“Very well,” she said. “Kneel, Arthur Pendragon.”
I went to my knees opposite Uther, on the far side of the blood ring. The earth was cold and damp under my palms. Up close, the sickness in him was worse. His skin had the waxy sheen of a candle about to go out. His pupils were blown wide, swallowing all color. Only the dragon made him bright—white-gold light moving under his flesh like something swimming just beneath ice.
“Look at me, boy,” Uther gasped, his head snapping toward me with a speed that didn’t belong to his failing body. “Look at what you beg for.”
I forced myself to hold his gaze. “I’m not begging.”
“I tried—” He coughed, dark spittle flecking his beard. “Tried to carry it. For you. For the realm. You think you’re stronger than me? You think—”
His words cut off in a raw howl as Blodeuwynn lifted her hands.
The sigils carved into the stones around us flared, every line blazing with sickly green fire. The circle of blood between us pulsed, then steadied, then rose—not physically, but in the way a drumbeat rises. I could feel it in my bones, in the marrow, in the spaces between thoughts.
Merlin began to chant. The language was old, older than the dragon, older than the Wilds. His voice threaded through the clearing, low at first, then stronger, each word stitching another layer of power into the air.
Blodeuwynn’s voice joined Merlin's, higher and colder, cutting across his like a blade. Where his magic felt like the slowgrinding of ancient stones, hers was a clean incision. Together, they wove something that hurt to look at.
Uther arched in Lance and Corvin's grip, every muscle rigid. Light burst from his throat in a searing column, the flesh burning away and then remaking itself again and again as the dragon fought the summons. His scream turned inhuman, rising in pitch until it was less sound than pressure, pushing against my eardrums, hammering at my ribs.
“Hold him!” Merlin shouted.
Lance gritted his teeth and locked his arms, muscles standing out along his neck. “For God’s sake,hurry.”
The light in Uther tore free.
It didn't leave through his mouth, or his eyes, or any human opening. It ripped out of his chest—no wound, no blood, just a sudden eruption of brilliance that made the world go white. In that blinding moment, I saw it for what it was.
Not a dragon in the way bards sang of them. Not wings and scales and fire made flesh.
It was hunger given shape.
A great serpentine coil of light and shadow, every scale a burning, shifting rune, its body made of heat and memory and endless want. Its head was a suggestion more than a form, eyes like twin suns eclipsed, jaws full of nothing and everything at once.
The dragon slammed against the ward's edge.
There was no impact, no sound—but I felt the collision in my teeth, in my skull, a shockwave that had nothing to do with air or earth. The creature coiled and thrashed, its luminous body stretching as it searched for an exit that didn't exist.
