“Speakers?” I asked.
“Hybrids. Created when fae bred with dragons.” Lioren’s tone was detached. “They could hear dragon speech and interpret it. After the sealing, every known bloodline was hunted down and destroyed.”
My stomach dropped. “All of them?”
His gaze never left mine. “So we thought.”
The room tilted.
I gripped the edge of the table, my vision tunneling. “You’re saying I’m part dragon?”
It sounded completely absurd.
“A descendant,” Lioren corrected. “Your bloodline is watered down by generations of human breeding, but you heard dragon speech. It was inside your head, right?”
“Yeah.”
Lioren nodded grimly. “Then that confirms it.”
A high laugh scraped out of me. I reached for Elwen’s wine and drained half the glass in one swallow. The warmth hit my belly, but it didn’t steady anything.
I set the glass down hard. “I thought maybe there was some fae in my bloodline. A great-great-grandmother who made a bad decision. Not that someone—” I gestured vaguely, hysteria creeping into my voice. “Not that someonefucked a dragon.”
Uther choked.
“Aelie,” Elwen said gently.
“How does that even work? They’re enormous. They have scales and breathe fire. Did they—I mean how?—”
“Dragons can take any shape they wish.”Lioren shrugged, utterly unbothered. “They often wore human forms when they wanted to… couple.”
“Fuck,” I ground out. “My ancestorfuckeda beast withwings.”
Uther pointed at Kairos. “He’s a beast with wings.”
“I have a name,” Kairos deadpanned.
Uther grinned. “I’m just saying, if you’re going to be upset about dragon-fucking, you might want to reconsider?—”
Wine sprayed out of my nose and mouth, dripping all over the table. Elwen handed me a towel as I mopped my face, laughing, and suddenly I couldn’t stop. My chest ached, but I kept giggling.
Elwen’s hand found my shoulder. “Breathe.”
I rubbed my eyes, forcing the madness down. When I glanced up, everyone was watching me with varying degrees of concern. Except Lioren, who seemed to be cataloguing my breakdown for future study.
“I’m fine. It’s just…my mother died from sickness, and she never mentioned anything about this.”
“She likely didn’t know,” Elwen said softly. “The hybrids would have hidden their children and married into human families. Over time, the truth was forgotten.”
I breathed in deeply, clinging to Kairos’s hand.
The worst part was his face—calm, resigned, like he’d suspected this and it simply confirmed every strange thing about me.
My heart squeezed. He’d known. Maybe not the specifics, but he’d sensed I was something else, and he’d still done everything he could to keep me safe.
“So what does that make me?” I whispered.
Lioren didn’t blink. “The first Speaker in nearly two thousandyears.”
