Vaeris’s lip curled. “The fae were the victors. Of course they painted themselves as heroes and the dragons as monsters.”
“It’s the truth,” Kairos snarled.
“I’m trying to right an ancient wrong.” Vaeris swiveled toward me. “Think about it. Two thousand years in a prison—no trial, just eternal suffering because they feared their power. Does that sound familiar?”
My chest tightened.
“I’m not saying trust me blindly,” Vaeris continued, his eyes on mine. “I’m asking you toquestionwhat you’ve been told. The dragons I’ve spoken to are not mindless beasts. They’re intelligent and yes, they’re angry. Wouldn’t you be?”
“They’ll kill us all,” I whispered.
“They’ll kill the fae, but we are not fae,” Vaeris thundered. “We are their possessions. Their slaves. You grew up in slums, surviving off their garbage, and I spent my life paraded as an heir while being treated like filth. A halfbreed.”
“And yet,” Kairos said coldly, “you’ve bound her with a deal she can’t break.”
The heat of Vaeris’s glower could’ve stripped the walls. “She begged me for a bargain.”
Kairos sneered. “And did you explain the risks? How a single careless word could bind her for eternity? Or did you let a desperate girl sign away her will because it served you?”
Vaeris’s lips thinned. “I gave her what she asked for.”
Kairos scoffed. “You talk about fae cruelty like you’re above it, but you took everything you could from her.”
“I saved her sister.”
“You bought her sister.” Kairos’s lip curled. “You’re just a slaver who’s convinced himself the leash looks better in his hands.”
Vaeris’s shadows lashed like angry serpents, and then the corner of his mouth twisted. “What didyoudo to earn her trust, I wonder? Lock her in your keep? Remind her at every turn that she’s prey in your realm?”
Kairos clenched his fists tighter.
“A cage is a cage,” Vaeris whispered harshly. “The only reason she’s alive is because you’ve decided she’s useful. The moment that changes?—”
“Enough,” Kairos snarled.
“—she’s food for your Dreadfae.”
Uther stormed to the pool, snarling, “Oh, fuck right off. The only predator in this room is you. Even the dragons would spit you out.”
Kairos’s eyes stayed locked on Vaeris, murder simmering behind them.
Vaeris only smiled faintly, turning to me. “Aelie, these savages would slit my throat to restore honor to my house, and they’d rut you like an animal before tossing you back in the streets.”
Kairos’s breath shuddered with fury.
“The fae didn’t just rule us. They broke us. You think the dragons want revenge?” Vaeris laughed bitterly. “They want justice, and so should you!”
“What did they promise you?” Kairos barked. “Whatever it is, you’ll die before you ever see it. When that seal breaks, they’ll burn you with the rest of us.”
Vaeris’s piercing stare never left me. “You know what living under them is like. It’ll never change unless we do something about it.”
Ugly memories slipped inside my head. Henrik’s hand “accidentally” patting my ass at dinner while I forced a laugh. The plague cart rumbling down frostbitten roads while my mother’s body jostled. Rheya and I scraping coins to buy bread, only for the baker to say,Not for your kind.The guards who pretended not to see when a noble dragged a girl into an alley. The way her sobs turned to silence. How everyone walked faster.
“Don’t listen to him,” Kairos snarled.
Gods, how could I not? Ihadlived under the fae my whole life. They built their glittering homes on human backs and acted like it was mercy. A wounded part of me wanted to screamyes, make them pay.
But those who’d suffer first would be people like Rheya. His version of justice would swallow us all.
